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The Maltese Falcon Three-Disc Special Edition (1941 & 1931 versions / Satan Met a Lady) Posters
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Rating:  -
This is a great DVD that features all three film versions of Dashiell Hammett's greatest novel, The Maltese Falcon. Each version has a story surrounding it. The first one, made in 1931, starred Richard Cortez as Sam Spade. Cortez's performance wasn't half bad, although he looks too much like Gene Kelly when he flashes his grin. The screenwriter also added a superfluous scene at the end that tends to edge toward pedantry in that it beats the viewer over the head with the message. Satan Met a Lady (1933) is the secod version, featuring a young and gorgeous Bette Davis as the femme fatale. She's wasted in this one, though, which was complately reworked to try to make it more like the Thin Man movies, which were popular at the time. The dark theme of Hammett's novel was erased and replaced with a light-hearted, British sounding motif. The characters were reworked as well, with disappointing results. The movie is interesting only because it shows how great Huston's 1941 version, with Bogart, was. Huston took Hammett's tough, lean dialogue and transferred it to the screenplay with Bogie, Sidney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, and Peter Lorrie to deliver the lines. Who could ask for a better combination? This one's a must for any fan of The Maltese Falcon.
Rating: -
I love Humphrey Bogart movies. In this film, he plays no nonsense private eye Sam Spade. He is asked to investigate the alleged disapperance of a woman's sister. But really, the woman is trying to catch up to the person who has the coveted Maltese Falcon, a costly artifact that is centuries old.
Bogart meets many unscrupulous characters as he looks to not only solve the mystery, but to clear his own name, as he has been implicated in the death of his own partner.
The acting is terrific, the dialogue is deep, and the ending is surprising and satisfying. An all time classic!
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If I see a better film on DVD this year (2007), it's going to have to be quite something to beat this. Based on the novel by Dashell Hammett Bogart plays Sam Spade (Private Detective), a role he was born to play. He and his partner are hired by a woman who claims a man is keeping her and her sister separated. Soon after this things spiral out of control.
The screenplay by John Huston is magnificent. The dialog is sharp and there isn't a wasted breath. Mind you Huston's direction is equally good and as for the the cast, well perfection is the only word I can think of. Peter Lorre as the oily Joel Cairo has never been better than he is in this film. Sdyney Greenstreet is fabulous as Kasper Gutman. Amazingly at the age of 62, and weighing close to 300lbs this was Greenstreet's debut film performance. Finally there is Bogart, an icon certainly, but also a great actor with a huge amount of screen presence. What surprised me watching the film again recently is how small Bogart seemed, but checking the records it turns out he was 5' 10.5".
The film is currently ranked 57th on the IMDB (www.imdb.com) all-time top 250 films, which for a film that is 66 years old is pretty amazing. However when you watch it you will find out why.
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This movie was supposed to be simlar to "The Big Sleep". Since I enjoyed "The Big Sleep" so much, I thought I'd give this one a try.
On the surface, this movie seems almost identical to "The Big Sleep". Both are classic hard boiled private detective movies. Both star Humphry Bogart. Both take place in California. And both movies even create a similar atmosphere.
Indeed the similarities between these movies do seem to outway the differences, but there are some differences. For example "The Maltese Falcon" is not about the adventures of Philip Marlow, but of Sam Spade, a different private detective from a different series of books. I've not read any of Sam Spade's books, but the general consensus among book reviewers seems to be that Raymond Chandler (the author of the Philip Marlow series) is much superior.
That, perhaps added to the fact that this film has no William Faulkner or Leigh Brackett credited on the screen play might account for the fact that the dialogue isn't as near as good as "The Big Sleep". But dialogue aside, I actually enjoyed the general story of "The Maltese Falcon" more.
The premise of "The Maltese Falcon" itself is based on a legend about the knights templars (just like another more recent popular novel/movie combination you may have heard of.) Several different people are interested in recovering the lost Templar treasure of the maltese falcon. There are several different characters with conflicting motives, and lots of betrayals and changing alliances. It requires a certain amount of close attention to keep track of everything, but if you watch closely, everything makes perfect sense in the end. Unlike "The Big Sleep", there are no big plot holes in this movie (or at least I didn't catch any. If someone out there has a quick eye, there welcome to point some out to me).
And there are a couple great shockers at the end. One of the them I saw coming, the other one took me by surprise. But both of them make perfect sense once you think about it.
The lighting and cinematography are superior in this movie as well, although I'm almost hesistant to bring that up because it makes it sound like I'm discussing a classic movie. From my point of view this was a really fun movie that just happens to be a classic. Like "The Big Sleep", it can hold its own against any of Hollywood's modern thrillers today.
Finally, this movie is worth seeing if for no other reason than it has a great performance by Peter Lorre. Peter Lorre was the Austrian-Hungarian actor who was famous as a great character actor. You might be thinking you don't know who he is, but actually you probably do. He usually plays the creepy characters in old movies. He's been parodied a million times by a million different people.
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A gallery of High-living lowlifes will stopp at nothing to get their sweaty hands on a jewel-encrusted falcon . Detective Sam Spade (Humprey Bogart 1899 - 1957 ) wants to find out why -and who would take the fall of his partner's murder . An all-star casting ( including Sydney Greenstreet 1879- 1954 , Peter Lorre 1904-1964, Elisha Cook ,Jr 1903-1995 , Mary Ashtor 1906- 1987) joins Bogart in this cracking mystery masterwork written for the screen (from Dashiell Hammett's (1894-1961) novel) and directed by John Houston (1906 - 1987). This nominee for 3 academy awards (1941) Captulted Bogart to stardome and lauched Huston's directional career all with a bird and bang ! . Warner Brothers has one of the greatest film catalogs of any studio; yet they don't appear to take their DVD issues very seriously. Who on earth would put "Goodfellas" on two sides of a disc? or not release the "Director's Cut" version of "Eyes Wide Shut" (imagine the added revenue if they had)? or almost never digitally enhance the audio or visual transfer or provide any significant extras? Compared to the deluxe packages that Universal, Criterion, are a peculiar desecration of a vaunted film legacy.
Case in point: "The Maltese Falcon". Arguably the greatest detective film ever made, Warners at least releases it with a decent video transfer. Unfortunately, the audio synchronizing is off during the last 15 minutes of the movie (by a second but it's still noticable) and I wasn't able to access all the people on the "Cast and Crew" menual though I enjoyed the "Trailers of Humphrey Bogart" section, it would have been nice if Warners spent the money to create a documentary history of the film the way they did on Universal's "Casablanca" release.
Much ink has been spilt praising "The Maltese Falcon" so I won't go into any panegyrics here. It's just a shame that Warners doesn't take this market seriously enough to put more care into the DVD releases of their finest films. High Quality Transfer . Recommended
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