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The Maltese Falcon Three-Disc Special Edition (1941 & 1931 versions / Satan Met a Lady) Posters
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Rating:  -
An excellent film all around. I'd like to see any of today's directors or actors produce all this complication in a one room setting. I also want to point out that the official Amazon review terms the title "Maltese Falcon" as a "Middle Eastern" treasure. Don't tell any Maltese that! Malta is in the western mediterranean just south of Sicily, hardly near the Middle East. Occupied for centuries by Italy, it was the site of the famous 16th century battle where a smaller contingent of Catholic European knights (9000, most of whom were common islanders) held off a huge seige by 40,000 Mulsim Turks, establishing the order of the Knights of Malta that is still an official Roman Catholic Knightly order. At the time, Spain contolled the island and Charles V gave the island to the Knights of St. John to resist the advance of the Ottoman Turks, who he feared might conquer Rome and end Christianity in Europe. A "Maltese Falcon" therefore would have been a object associated with this period and the Knights of Malta as the Wikipedia quote from below seems to prove.
From Wikipedia;
The Maltese Falcon: When Charles V handed the island over to the Knights, one of the conditions attached to the handover was that the Order would send the King a live falcon as an annual tribute. The jewel-encrusted golden falcon of Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon (adapted by John Huston into a famous 1941 film) is entirely fictitious.
The fact that Malta is part of the British Commonwealth and a member of the European Union as well as its location refutes the idea that Malta is a Middle Eastern or the fictitious falcon statue of the film a Middle Eastern treasure. It is true that like Spain it was occupied by Muslims in the 8th century and the Arabs influenced the Maltese language. It was also under Norman rule in the 12th century and today Matlese and English are the official languages of the island. According to Wikipedia, the islands first occupants in pre-bronze age history seem to have come from the north and established the well known, Central European Goddess culture with a notable temple existing in 3600BC - the oldest free standing structure in the world.
All of this surely shows why the movie, "The Maltese Falcon" was so intriguing. Malta is a very ancient and historically complex island.
Rating: -
The Maltese Falcon is considered the first Film-Noir ever made and is a classic and highly innovative film starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Peter Lorre. The movie is #23 on The American Film Institute's Top 100 and is written and directed by John Huston. Right from the beginning of the movie I realized how many movies this thing has inspired. The first ten minutes of the film kept bringing to mind the first ten minutes of another classic film called "Chinatown." Ironically, "Chinatown" co-starred this films director John Huston. Bogart, in one of his most famous roles, plays Sam Spade, a Private detective who is hired by Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Astor) to chase away a man her sister is dating. Spade sends his partner Archer, but Archer (and the sisters' date) is killed. But Spade smells something fishy and his sense of smell is heightened when a mysterious man named Joel Cairo (Lorre) offers him $5000 dollars to find a jewel-encrusted falcon. Frequent scenes in which Sam outsmarts or outmuscles the bad guys are hilarious. The movie's final line is one of films most famous. This film doesn't evoke the same mood and tone that I associate with "film-noir" but whatever you want to call it...It's a great film. It's very entertaining, Sam Spade is one of Bogart's greatest creations (kind of the opposite of Rick, the character he would go on to play in "Casablanca"). Peter Lorre is wonderful as Cairo, although he's not quite as bugeyed as he was in the German-classic M. For another example of how good (and important) this movie is, I must mention that you can see echoes of this film in almost any detective movie that was made after it. This is a masterpiece of cinema. Don't miss it.
GRADE: A
Rating: -
I give this five stars because the film is superb and there are some very nice special features on this new reissue - however, I have some complaints about the actual packaging of the discs. Rather than follow the route of Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with the WB "cardboard" fold-out cases, which feel similar to Criterion DVDs and are higher quality, "Maltese Falcon" is just a standard DVD container with three smaller DVD cases inside - the same type of cheap, plastic DVD cases HBO began using for their DVDs of television shows a few years ago. They're the same as the "Arrested Development Season One" discs - it works for television shows because it's a bit easier to maintain, but I honestly think these are very annoying for films and they just don't appear to be as high quality as the standard WB classic reissues from the past few years.
I just wanted to voice a concern over this because I noticed that recently a LOT of DVDs are being re-issued with these flimsy, small, plastic DVD cases. They're smaller than standard cases (which his annoying if you have a DVD collection and like to have them all fit in a row together) and not nearly as nice, either.
Rating: -
"The stuff that dreams are made of," or, for some, the greatest private eye movie there ever was gets the royal treatment in this "Three-Disc Special Edition." "The Maltese Falcon" has ensnared so many fans in its 65 years- so many that its been lampooned and "Looney-tuned" the world over. It's hard to know where to begin. Let's just say it's here where the whole Humphrey Bogart mystique truely takes hold in his incomparable role as Sam Spade.
Both crafty and shafty, a "hero" only in the sense that he wins the game of "the smarter crook," Bogart is riveting to watch. He's also superbly supported by a steller cast including a heart- aching turn by Mary Astor as Spade's "love interest" and a classic rouge's gallery of criminals including Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (Bogart's two "Casablanca co-stars). My fave, though is Elisha Cook Jr. as creepy man/child bodyguard, Wilmer who Bogart laughable taunts throughout.
First time director John Huston wisely did not stray from the book as Hammett's prose is fabulously tart ("Shoo her in, darling. Shoo her in.") and orchestrates the dialog and situations in such a frantic pace that you're consistantly jucied even though most of the action consist of few characters on small, dimly lit sets (add a thunderous musical score and you have the perfect example of the Warner Brothers house style).
This dvd edition is indeed historic as it finally, FINALLY, puts all in one package the original, little seen, "good-on-its-own-terms," 1931 version of "The Maltese Falcon" as well as its inferior, thinly veiled 1936 remake "Satan Met a Lady" (co-starring Bette Davis) one . Starring Ricardo Cortez as a slicker, prettier Spade, the original like its 1941 remake follows Hammett's book closely and is fascinating to watch just how much of Huston's version was actually derivative. It's just that Huston built the better mouse trap.
Rating: -
After working as a screenwriter, John Huston was finally allowed to direct a film in 1941 when Warner Brothers chose him to adapt Dashiell Hammett's classic detective novel "The Maltese Falcon." Actually, Warners had already filmed the story before, with rather mixed results. It is a tribute to Huston's abilities that he was able to produce the definitive film version of the story and establish Humphrey Bogart as a major star.
Bogart had, of course, already been steadily growing as an actor, particularly due to his work as gangsters in the legendary "The Petrified Forest" and "High Sierra." In "The Maltese Falcon" Bogart played a private detective and brought a combination of sarcasm and menace to the role. His portrayal of Sam Spade became one of the greatest roles of his career and established his versatility, even if he sometimes complained about being forced to play parts he didn't like (the fate of other major Warners stars such as Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland).
It's delightful, however, to watch Bogart's detective matching wits with the likes of Gladys George, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet (in his screen debut at age 61!), Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Ward Bond, etc. Huston clearly had a very good cast and he used them well, even challenging the censors with Peter Lorre's prissy Joel Cairo. The onscreen relationships are all rather unusual and remarkable for a 1941 film.
The pacing of the film is also quite good, through skillful use of the camera and careful editing. Huston was innovative in using sets that appear to have real ceilings, something that Orson Welles also did that same year in "Citizen Kane." Although filmed on the Warners lot in Burbank, Huston was able to use some second unit shots of San Francisco and clever intercutting with duplicates of San Francisco scenes to create the illusion that the film was actually filmed entirely in San Francisco. Huston also accurately represented key elements of "the City," as local residents called it, whether it be the use of actual street names or buildings much like those found in San Francisco.
For the first time Huston even utilized his own father, Walter, in a brief but key scene in which the actual statue of the falcon is delivered. Years later, of course, Walter Huston had a major role, again with Bogart, in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
Perhaps the bird in the story is much like Alfred Hitchcock's "MacGuffin" in so many of his films. While the falcon is supposedly found, only to prove a fake, the really important thing is learning who was responsible for the three murders in the story. As with the original story, Huston manages to keep us guessing, not revealing the final truths until almost the end of the film. Little wonder that many consider this the greatest detective film ever made.
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