Noir or Not: "The Maltese Falcon"

Do you believe "The Maltese Falcon" should be categorized as "noir"?

Suzanne Lummis:
It's a terrific movie but ultimately not as dark as others -- Noir Gris. But regardless of the quality of darkness, I'd feel funny about any poet of my generation, or the one following, who hadn't seen John Huston’s classic with the great Warner Brothers cast (Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha J. Cook). I'd wonder what else they hadn't seen, or read. Had they seen On the Waterfront? Had they read Orwell's 1984, or only read about it?  Et cetera. But re. Noir or Not, there's an undercurrent of pessimism that we usually feel from film noir and don't in The Maltese Falcon. However, it has many noir elements, the dialogue certainly, especially in the final scene where Bogart tells Mary Astor,  "I don't care who loves who. I won't play the sap for you! You killed Miles and you're going over for it. If you're lucky you'll get life and be out in twenty years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you."   

David Lehman:

The Maltese Falcon, one of my all-time favorites, is similar to a noir movie but not the same thing, mainly because the male protagonist does not succumb to the wiles of the femme fatale.  Compare Bogart in The Maltese Falcon to Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. The former belongs to a different genre, the detective story, in which justice, however much compromised, does prevail in the end.  Sam Spade refuses to “play the sap” for his femme fatale; that is alas exactly what Mitchum does with Jane Greer in Out of the Past. The division is epitomized in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. The detective stories such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” stand on the one side, and the gothic horrors (“The Fall of the House of Usher”) on the other.  The detective story affirms the possibility of justice, of the restoration of order. The noir movie suggests the opposite and introduces the figure of a femme fatale to ensure that failure or death is the likely end of any criminal or questionable enterprise.

Beyond its antithetical relation to Out of the Past, there are plenty of reasons to consider this, John Huston’s first movie, in the context of noir.  Sam Spade is not unambiguously a servant of law, order, and ethical kashruth.  The brilliant Warner Brothers cast – Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Mary Astor join Bogart – arouses noir expectations, and the status of the sculpted bird,  a fake responsible for at least three deaths, elevates the tale to the level of a parable about fortune, value, and desire.

There are a lot of other movies that I like to consider in relation to noir: Le Jour se leve [Daybreak] (Marcel Carne), if only because of the number of cigarettes that Jean Gabin smokes, and A Bout de soufflé [Breathless] (Jean-Luc Godard), primarily because of Belmondo’s imitation of Bogart. Neither is noir, but the former is like it, and the latter is an homage to it that testifies to the genre’s success. 

Click here for last week's exchange in which Night and the City and The Asphalt Jungle are discussed. 

-- 2019

Comments

[Susan Aizenberg]

Enjoyed this -- thanks. Love those last lines of Bogart's.

[David Lehman]

Thanks for your comment, Susan.

[jim c]

We sometimes forget that some landmark Hollywood films seem to predict the future while others, equally good in their way, sum up the past. 'Falcon' is more the second kind while 'Citizen Kane,' same year, 1941, is more the first. 'Falcon' is a sleek summation of some of what H'Wood did best: tight script, ensemble acting, filmed play (especially in last third, in Spade's apartment); even Spade's edginess took into account that he mostly used to play cowardly heavies in the '30s. Gregg Toland's innovations in camera work have been exhaustively analyzed, but it's hard to imagine all that followed 'Kane' not being influenced. Mary Astor was the third incarnation of Hammett's ff after two previous filmings of the 'Falcon' material; and though she was 'unsuccessful' most of the 'bad' girls came to bad ends: Claire Trevor in 'Murder, My Sweet' (maybe the bff); Jane Greer in 'Out of the Past'; Gaby Rodgers in 'Kiss Me Deadly'; Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Grahame, a hundred others. And what do you do with sweet Jean Wallace in 'The Big Combo'? Director Joseph H. Lewis's comments on what Richard Conte was doing while he was kneeling behind Jean, with the camera fixed on her expression, are very interesting, especially as they pertains to what 'badness' Ms. Wallace was guilty of. And speaking of the split between detective story/noir story, 'Combo' is especially relevant since it's as noir as you can get, but structurally it's a detective story. 'Falcon' is slick, sleek, brilliant Hollywood entertainment, and 'Out of the Past,' 'The Big Combo,' 'Kiss Me Deadly,' et al, are disemboweling.

Have a great time at the December 5 panel--it sounds wonderful. And what a great group to discuss all this stuff!

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Jim, for the terrific comment.