TCM Greatest Classic Films: Murder Mysteries (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Dial M for Murder, The Postman Always Rings Twice) (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

Again, let me remind you that Warner Bros. own what is probably the most extensive back catalogue of great older films in the world, and they never tire of devising new ways to repackage them. In 2009 they began a series of sets they call the "TCM (Turner Classic Movies) Greatest Classic Films Collection," which package four classic movies per set. Although the studio has released all of the films separately, the collections are a relatively inexpensive way for fans to acquire a large number of great motion pictures for a pittance. Just look at the titles in this particular collection: Two of the greatest detective movies of all time, a classic film noir, and a Hitchcock. Simply put, these sets are among the best values in the history of DVDs.

The set reviewed here, "Murder Mysteries," is in WB's third wave of collections and offers four top-notch Warner Bros. and MGM mystery classics. (For the other collections in WB's third wave, see the closing paragraph.) Each set contains two double-sided DVDs, one movie per side, enclosed in a double slim-line keep case, with a slipcover and unique bonus materials. Let's look at the movies chronologically.

THE MALTESE FALCON
If "The Maltese Falcon" doesn't qualify as the best private-eye yarn ever filmed, I don't know what does. Hollywood had brought Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel twice to the screen before this one, but never better. John Huston, in his directorial debut in 1941, also adapted 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.

For Bogart, detective Sam Spade was a breakthrough part. Consigned mainly to play second-fiddle tough-guy roles in the thirties, Bogart had usually played heavies who died in the final reel. He did get good notices as Duke Mantee in "The Petrified Forest" (1936) and Mad Dog Earle in "High Sierra" (1941), but he was mostly getting plugged at the end of things like "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938), "The Roaring Twenties" (1939), and "The Return of Doctor X" (1939). When he finally got his chance to play the lead in "The Maltese Falcon," he never looked back. The next year it was "Casablanca," and he had firmly etched his star into Hollywood's roster of all-time favorite actors.

As Sam Spade, the hard-boiled detective, Bogart is the quintessential antihero. He is the loner with no particularly noble ambitions or romanticized notions. He is an ironclad realistic. When somebody murders his partner, he shrugs it off as part of the job. Everybody 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 Maltese Falcon" is a story of double-dealing and double crosses in the search for a fabulous "black bird." 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.

The supporting cast were so good together that WB invited many of them 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. (The film's closing credits spell it "Kasper," but Hammett spelled it "Casper" in the book.) 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 carrying on an affair. And Lee Patrick is Effie Perine, Spade's ever-loyal secretary and assistant. The director even talked his father, actor Walter Huston, into playing a brief, unbilled bit part as Capt. Jacobi, master of the boat "La Paloma," a fellow shot in the chest and still clutching the falcon in his dying grasp. Apparently as a joke, the elder Huston required his son take hours of retakes for his moment of screen time.

The dialogue crackles in Huston's script--as it should, taken almost verbatim from the novel--and the direction is secure and taut. Critics often credit Huston and "The Maltese Falcon" 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. Yet it is not a depressing motion picture despite its surplus of shady characters and suspicious events. Huston doesn't allow it. The film's vitality and pacing do not permit us to ponder for long the consequences of any one scene or action. Instead, we get caught up in the pulse of the film, pretty much swept along by its deeds, not even particularly saddened or surprised by the pessimism of its ending.

Film rating: 10/10

THE BIG SLEEP
"Private eye," "private investigator," "private detective," "shamus," and "Doghouse Reilly" are among the various terms Humphrey Bogart uses to describe himself as P.I. Philip Marlowe. Director Howard Hawks brought author Raymond Chandler's 1939 fictional creation to the screen in this 1946 film-noir classic. "The Big Sleep" may not pack the punch of Bogart's earlier detective thriller, "The Maltese Falcon," but it does create a character and a milieu that other films would imitate more times over than any other private-eye flick in film history.

The reaction of novelist William Faulkner, who helped write the screenplay, best sums up the story's convoluted plot when he said he couldn't figure out from the book who killed one of the characters, namely, the chauffeur. To settle the matter he called up the author and asked him about it. Chandler admitted he didn't know, either. But don't worry about it. Chandler didn't. Just enjoy the proceedings as a multimillionaire named Sternwood summons Marlowe to his house and explains that somebody is blackmailing him, and he wants something done about it. Sternwood's two daughters, a high-society type (Lauren Bacall) and a nympho sex kitten who sucks her thumb (Martha Vickers), are trouble for Marlowe the moment he steps through the door. And things don't get any better as he gets involved with a host of shady individuals, double dealings, and multiple murders.

No, none of the characters are as memorable as the ones in "The Maltese Falcon," but they're plenty colorful and ominous, nonetheless, played by actors like Elisha Cook, Jr., John Ridgely, Regis Toomey, and Bob Steele. What's more, "The Big Sleep" skirts even more forbidden territory. In 1946 the self-imposed movie censorship codes disallowed direct references to sex, pornography, or homosexuality, all of which play prominent parts in Chandler's novel. So, we find dialogue filled with innuendo and many scenes strongly suggestive. For instance, we see Marlowe meet a young woman clerk (Dorothy Malone) in a book shop, flirt with her, and offer to while away an hour. She closes the store early, pulls down the blinds, and the scene fades to black. Or we see Marlowe walk into another bookstore across the street and snoop around, while the clerk with a knowing nod allows a furtive customer into a secret back room. We get the picture (and, apparently, so does the customer). Then when the police find the owner of the bookstore murdered, we wonder for a moment why his young male assistant seems so determined to go gunning for the assailant, until we see Marlowe going through the victim's handkerchiefs and finding them perfumed. That was about as far as a mainstream movie would take things in those days.

"The Big Sleep" is fast, witty, and exciting. It may not make a lot of sense, but it's got layers of mood and ambiance. Incredibly, a 1978 remake with Robert Mitchum moved the locale from Los Angeles to London and the time setting from the mid forties to the late seventies, effectively destroying the period atmosphere so essential to the story. Stick with the original; few detective yarns have equaled this one.

Film rating: 9 /10

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
Quintessential film noir.

As you probably know, the French coined the term "film noir" (or "dark film") back in the Fifties to describe movies of the previous decade that derived from the cynicism of World War II, movies popularized in the United States, movies depicting a dark and despairing atmosphere where paranoia abounded. The settings for these enduring films were usually urban worlds of shadow, smoke, and fog, and the subject matter usually concerned some sort of crime or detection. A film like "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) is among the first good examples of the genre, which reached its peak in things like "Double Indemnity" (1944) and "The Third Man" (1949).

"The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) exhibits all the characteristics of the noir film, including the femme fatale, the deadly female who lures the hero into a web of mystery. The filmmakers based the script on the best-selling novel by James M. Cain, whose admirers were none too pleased with the changes the filmmakers made to the author's rather racy book; but there was the Production Code to consider at the time, and the studio had to impose a good deal of censorship on the story. Which means they had to suggest almost everything in the way of sensuality rather than show it.

The movie features the enigmatic tough guy John Garfield as a drifter who picks up a job at a lunch room and garage located on a side road outside Los Angeles. Garfield's character, Frank Chambers, is a decent sort, but he's not above the occasional con game, and it's obvious he has led a rough-and-tumble life, never settling down. He's also something of a ladies' man, and the boss's wife, Cora, is a knockout. It takes him less than two minutes of meeting her before he plants a big one on her kisser, and she doesn't resist.

Movie siren Lana Turner plays Cora Smith, the young woman who has married a much older man, Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), for security rather than love, and who is quick to see the prospects of the hired hand. The first time Frank sees Cora she's in shorts, all legs, and looking helplessly, teasingly sexy. It's a terrific introduction to Cora's character, actually, shown from the feet and ankles up.

From there, the movie develops two stories. The first is the romance between Cora and Frank being carried on under the nose of the naively trusting husband; the second is the mystery and its consequences when Cora and Frank decide the old man's got to go. Cora persuades Frank to arrange an "accident" for the unsuspecting sap.

But the local DA (Leon Ames) is on to them and their schemes, and before the movie's out, you'll find further infidelity, suspense, blackmail, double crosses, triple crosses, and surprises galore. In fact, if there is any serious problem with the film, it's that it tacks on too many twists, especially at the end.

Still, in addition to Garfield and Turner, you'll relish a standout performance by Hume Cronyn as the couple's clever but unscrupulous lawyer, a performance that almost upstages Garfield and Turner themselves. And along the way there is some smoldering passion, at least in appearance if not in deed, and some terrific noir cinematography in the use of light and shadow.

Finally, the film treats the viewer to a few delicious double entendres as well. If the censors wouldn't allow the filmmakers to show too much, at least they were going to imply what was going on, and the film projects an undercurrent of barely disguised passions and sexuality. The looks between Garfield and Turner are a joy to behold. Then there are lines like Garfield's "I could sell anything to anybody" and Turner's "You won't find anything cheap around here." Even the "Man Wanted" sign at the beginning of the picture suggests more than it says.