Two Americans, the dead John Huston and the dead Humphrey Bogart,
decided to exercise their mutual independence in 1941 (when they were
alive) and remake this Dashiel Hammett story, although it had already
been made twice before (in 1931, and in 1936 as "Satan Met a Lady"
with that jezebel, Bette Davis). Given the cartoonish nature of their
endeavor, these two misfits should be forever unforgiven as killers of
originality. This film is no more than candy for a slow mind, and
although a breakout for Huston, it's still little more than a victory for
stupidity.
The bible on film noir is simple: Law and order gives way to
Freudian dialogue as strangers meet in the asphalt jungle (in this case,
San Francisco) and attempt to beat the devil (their own dark desires)
while swirling in the black cauldron of fat city. In this case, Sam
Spade (Bogart) takes a walk with love and death when Brigid O'Shaughnessy
(Mary Astor) shows up and gets him involved with a scheme to retrieve a
valuable statue -- the Maltese Falcon. Sam's wise blood is quick to
recognize Brigid's phobia of the truth. Also on the trail of the Falcon
are Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) and
Gutman's henchman, Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.).
The large key to the treasure of the mother land is Brigid, who plays
the lovesick African queen one minute and, the very next, a wily
geisha who tries to seduce Spade, hoping to get her tentacles on the
falcon by making him feel like the man who would be king. It seems
everyone he meets in this storm of deceit wants to shake Sam down.
Lorre shows up, looking, as always, like a "Planet of the Apes"
battle survivor. Then comes another visitor, Greenstreet, who's so fat,
he could stop a lava flow head on if he stood under the volcano.
As is typical of his performances, Bogart displays all the emotion of a
eunich in the Moulin Rouge. After death drives through his partner,
Miles Archer, Spade has Iva (Gladys George) paint over Archer's name
before rigor mortis even has time to set in. When Archer's wife shows up,
it's actually surprising they don't run off to Chinatown to play a little
game of "the amazing Dr. Clitterhouse." But Spade has already grown
bored with cardinal sin and he's happy to spend his nights beating the
old iguana.
In a film full of misdemeanors, crimes and misrepresentation, the
worst of them is committed by Huston himself for simply getting so
carried away.
