The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is said to be the epitome of what film noir is all about. When someone is asked about film noir they usually think of a movie resembling the Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade is a private investigator. His partner Miles Archer and him are in the room and the two of them are relaxing when a woman enters. Miles is mesmerized by her looks and when this damsel in distress comes in he is there to protect. The woman's name is Ms. Wonderly. She asks the two of them to follow this scary man Floyd Thursby who has run off with her sister. Archer takes the job of tailing Thursby with joy.

One day later Tom Polhaus, a fellow detective, comes in later that day and informs Spade that his partner has been shot and killed while following Thursby. Later that night two officers come into Spade's wondering where he has been for the past few hours. It turns out the accusations are against Spade right now in terms of who killed Archer. Thursby is dead as well which knocks him off as a suspect.

Spade then gets a visit from Archer's wife who has been in an affair with Spade for some time now. This doesn't help Spade's cause. She asks if Spade would kill Archer so that the two of them could be together. He kicks her out of his office and later that night he gets the secretary to get rid of all of Archer's stuff and also to make the company name not Spade and Archer but just Spade. This seems to not help his cause out too much either.

We then learn that Ms. Wonderly is not a wonderful person at all. Her real name is Ms. O'Shaughnessy. She never had a sister in the first place. Thursby was just betraying her and was a partner. We then also meet Joel Cairo who offers five thousand dollars for a black bird that has recently arrived. Will Spade descend into darkness amidst accusations and betrayal? What significance does the black bird have? You have to watch to find out.

The character of Spade is also the character of Nick in Casablanca and the character is almost synonymous in terms of the spunk that the two exude. The two characters also develop the same way as the movie goes on but I find Nick to be the more warm character. The movie was kind of bland but at the same time it helped me think of what really is noir. The thing is that the overall storyline has a couple comic lines but the storyline is very linear and the characterization I think isn't that great. They sort of rush a lot of elements at the audience. An example is towards the end when the bird is found, the character of Spade almost seems to be going to be a bad guy but uh oh! Psych! He's been a good guy in disguise. There's no lead up to all of this though.

I guess I give this story a 5/10 for entertainment but an 8/10 for learning purposes.