'Maltese Falcon' flies again on local big screens
It's the best movie ever made about a paperweight that just sits there and does nothing.
It's the best movie ever made about a paperweight that just sits there and does nothing.
The Maltese Falcon turns 75 this year. This 1941 Warner Bros. film was (amazingly) John Huston's first directing turn; he wrote the script, too, largely from the hard-boiled dialogue in Dashiell Hammett's 1929 smash-hit novel.
Now you can see it on the big screen - and you really should. The Maltese Falcon will fly Sunday and Wednesday on more than 650 big-screen theaters across the land.
Local venues include the UA Riverside Plaza, the University 6, the Ritz 16 in Voorhees, Movies 16 in Somerdale, the King of Prussia 16, the Neshaminy 24. For theaters, times, and ticket prices, visit here.
It's part of the year-long Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies Big Screen Classics series. They've already done Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and next month, from on high, The Ten Commandments.
The film is like a myth: A fabulous gold-and-jewel-encrusted falcon statuette travels hand to hand throughout Europe for four centuries, triggering murder, theft, and betrayal until it falls - not flies - into the gritty life of San Francisco private detective Sam Spade.
A black-and-white symphony, a gripping, surreal exploration of deception, decay, and, maybe, a kind of love, Falcon more or less established the detective picture. And what a cast. It stars (and made the career of) Humphrey Bogart. See Peter Lorre at his creepiest, Sydney Greenstreet at his most expansive, and Mary Astor at her most twisted. It plays great on a TV, but in a theater, the brilliant expressionist camerawork of Arthur Edeson sings a smoky, slant-shadowed, 100-minute Freudian aria.
Go if only to see Bogart's hinky, tetchy Spade, his pained squint amid the lies, plotting, and bloodshed. Uneasy in his skin, skeptical of everything, he's a lonely adherent to a code that coexists with an apparently corrupt exterior.
Go for the great lines. It's one of the wisest-talking pictures ever. Spade watches a woman lie, flatter, and seduce: "You're good. You're very good." To a man as he belts him: "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it." To his faithful, tough secretary, Effie: "You're a good man, sister."
Through all the death, double-talk, and chaos, Spade holds on and ends up . . . well, emotionally destroyed. Watch for a two-second shot of him right at the end, gazing at elevator doors closing. You'll see the cost.
It's regularly on the all-time top-films list. On a big screen, you'll see even more clearly why. The Maltese Falcon is, like the statuette itself, heavy, and it hurts, but it's good. It's very good.
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