Maltese Falcon, The (DVD)

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I am reluctant to call anything the outright best of its kind, but if "The Maltese Falcon" doesn't qualify as the best private-eye yarn ever filmed, I don't know what does. Dashiell Hammett's story of double-dealing and double crosses in the search for the "black bird" was twice brought to the screen before this one, but never better. John Huston, in his directorial debut in 1941, also wrote the script for this fast-paced mystery; and Humphrey Bogart practically bought the rights not only to the character of Sam Spade but to every future movie gumshoe who would ever pull a gat. In fitting tribute to the best, Warner Home Video's DVD transfer of the film is truly "the stuff that dreams are made of."

The object of all the mischief is a fabulous, jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon that has had people cheating, stealing, and killing to get their hands on it for over 400 years. Now, a new group of scoundrels are after it, and their trail has led them to San Francisco and the investigative agency of Spade and Archer. "Trust no one" should be the byword of everyone in the story and the caution to anyone who watches the film. Lies, treachery, deceit, and homicide are the order of the day as nearly all the characters in the movie try to stab one another in the back in their greed for the bird.

Like most great films, this one has a great cast. For Bogart it was a breakthrough part. Consigned to play mainly second-fiddle gangster roles in the thirties, he finally got his chance in "The Maltese Falcon" to play the lead, and he never looked back. The next year it was "Casablanca," and his star was firmly etched into Hollywood's roster of all-time favorite actors. As hard-boiled detective Sam Spade, Bogart is the quintessential antihero. He is a loner with no particularly noble ambitions or romanticized notions. He is an ironclad realistic. When his partner is murdered, he shrugs it off as part of the job. Everyone knows the risks. And when it comes to love and women, he is equally pragmatic. Bogart may have become the world's leading actor, but he would remain the cynical tough guy throughout his career, right up to his last, wry performance some fifteen years later in "The Harder They Fall."

The supporting cast were so good together many of them were invited back to costar in later Bogart films. Mary Astor plays Brigid O'Shaughnessy (or is it Wonderly, or Leblanc?), whose lies seem to mystify even her. Peter Lorre is Joel Cairo, the weaselly, effeminate little crook who would sell out his mother for the right price. Sydney Greenstreet is the fat man, Kasper Gutman, the urbane heavy (really heavy) imitated in about 200 movies since. Elisha Cook, Jr., plays the young-punk gunsel, whose felt hat and twin automatics are bigger than he is. Ward Bond and Barton MacLane are the cops, the sympathetic Detective Polhaus and the hard-nosed Lt. Dundy, forever hounding Spade. Jerome Cowan plays Spade's partner, the dandy Miles Archer. Gladys George plays Archer's wife, with whom Spade has been intimately involved. Lee Patrick is Effie Perine, Spade's ever-loyal secretary and assistant. Even the director's father, actor Walter Huston, shows up in an unbilled bit part as Jacobi, the captain of a steamer, shot and still clutching the falcon in his dying grasp.

The dialogue crackles in Huston's screenplay--as it should, taken almost verbatim from the novel--and the direction is secure and taut. Huston and "The Maltese Falcon" are often credited with starting, or at least popularizing, the film noir style so favored by crime flicks of the later forties and fifties. The "Falcon's" city setting, frequently photographed at night, its murky shadows, and its grim, derisive attitude toward people and their motivations all influence our dark perceptions of the story.