Best Villain in "The Maltese Falcon"

i woulda voted Greenstreet to tie this up btw

Not sure Bogart shouldn't be in here as an option.

― k¸ (darraghmac), Monday, August 30, 2010 11:44 AM (5 years ago)

i agree w/ this. basically every character in this movie is a villain, except for spade's secretary and his murdered partner.

"well, if you lose a son, it's always possible to get another..."

ok, i need to see it again - it's been too long. didn't i see something about a theatrical re-issue?

― Fizzles, Thursday, February 25, 2016 12:35 PM (6 hours ago)

yeah it's been rereleased for the 75th anniversary, i saw it the other night. perfect, except that the theater played the sound way too low (unfortunately typical for old movie showings in my experience) so it was harder to ignore the morons in front of me who kept snickering at what they obviously considered "lame old movie stuff" (while not laughing at the actual funny bits).

came in here to post bogart challop

The only minor flaw in it is Mary Astor's wardrobe...

and her hair

P Kael was right that the music is a bit oppressive at the climax

Astor was a big star, she was not gonna look slummy

i woulda voted Greenstreet to tie this up btw

― ulysses, Thursday, February 25, 2016 1:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too! so greenstreet wins.

re: dialogue and chess-move manipulation - - - is this a noir thing generally? i don't know the genre very well but it seems to fit this universe of hard-boiled and cynical characters trading beats and on some level appreciating the wit and tone even of the people they're trying to beat... even setting aside that they are all going to be liars as part of the plot. there's something similarly arch about a lot of the big sleep for example, i think.

The only minor flaw in it is Mary Astor's wardrobe, which is a shade too elegant and tasteful when it ought to a shade more brazen and alluring.

for me the point of Brigid is that she pretends to be classy ("This isn't the spot for the school girl act!").

this is pre- or proto-noir. No noir proper til '45/46 (officially). Plenty of hardboiled crime lit in '20s-WW2, obviously, including Hammett.

Lorre did a repeated gag on the set where he would duck into Astor's empty dressing room when there were visitors, and emerge zipping up his pants.

btw Astor said she got the Supporting Actress that year "really" for the Falcon, not entertaining soaper The Great Lie.

the big sleep has "hard-boiled" dialogue that does things w subtext that make you laugh (horses etc), and marlowe is cool and ironic, but he is also a kind of saint, or sacrifice, a contrast to the rest of his shadowy world, which is why he's summoned more than once (including lebowski + inherent vice here as well as long goodbye) to be incompatible all over again with the wicked values of other times. spade is an asshole.

I like the closeup of a horrified Effie when Spade squeezes her arm tightly after opening the package ("We got it, angel, we got it!").

like, it finally dawns on her that her would-be tough line earlier in the movie ("Look at me. You worry me.") was true.

main argument aside from era vs the film being a noir is ~90-95% is people talking in rooms. Cinematography is as good as it has to be, no baroque stuff.

Huston didnt shoot last chapter of book, where Effie completely realizes Sam is an asshole.

she pretends to be classy

Exactly! She's an adventuress who tries to be classy. The difficulty is that she dresses and acts the part far too primly and perfectly.

The problem here is that her too-perfectly upper class role playing makes her a bad adventuress, because she is too self-contained and a bit of a cold fish, whereas an adventuress needs to attract and hold her male targets and the bait for that is sexuality, not propriety.

hmmm, Astor had a pretty sexy reputation....

spoiler alert here

rewatching the film i couldn't help but wonder when spade figured out that brigid was a murderer. did he figure it out right away and was he just stringing her along, or does he really just figure it out while talking out loud at the end of the movie?

He realizes it as she establishes a pattern of lies and he realizes the Black Bird isn't another.

didn't Astor write in her memoir that she and John Barrymore splacked all day?

considering his waterlogged reputation it's a wonder he was awake through it.

xp Much of the suspense comes from the question of how much of a crook Spade will turn out to be. That ambiguity gets tidied up in the movie ("Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be"). At the end of the novel, Effie's reaction shows that he's not a good guy pretending to be bad, but a bad guy cautious and calculating enough to stay within the law.

and Huston builds suspense by fooling the audience into thinking Spade will keep the money Gutman gave him.

I love it when Kaspar decides to sell out Wilmer down the river and gives him that callous line about how although he is like a son to him, you can always get another son.

Yeah that's the coldest,much more illustrative, believable and affecting that bogeys big heart wrench act at the end for me

i just assumed that the sex w/ Brigid was really great

there's a good story in the new VF about all the various claims on the "original" Falcon statuette/s

“You're not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?”

You posted the exact same quote upthread nine years ago.

Not that I can throw stones at glass keys.

You will take, say, one hundred dollars?

I won’t play the sap for you.

Ages ago, when I was new to teaching, another teacher and I would send this one kid in grade 3, Andrel Wisdom, back and forth between our two classrooms to recite movie lines we liked. One of them was "I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." There'd be a knock on my door, Andrel would come in and announce "I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." We were probably being a little irresponsible, but Andrel seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

Mary Astor is pretty great in most roles with any juice to 'em

I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.

The problem here is that her too-perfectly upper class role playing makes her a bad adventuress, because she is too self-contained and a bit of a cold fish, whereas an adventuress needs to attract and hold her male targets and the bait for that is sexuality, not propriety.

See Bebe Daniels in the 1931 The Maltese Falcon (and for good measure, Bette Davis in 1936's Satan Met a Lady). I've seen Mary Astor bring the heat on other occasions, but as Brigid she seems a little too much like a schoolmarm trying to play a bad girl, rather than the other way around.

The problem here is that her too-perfectly upper class role playing makes her a bad adventuress, because she is too self-contained and a bit of a cold fish, whereas an adventuress needs to attract and hold her male targets and the bait for that is sexuality, not propriety.

this is a weird take because Astor and Huston emphasize her piss-elegance: the corsage, the stoles, etc. And the point is that Spade falls for neither her sexuality nor her propriety; he isn't fooled for an instant, unlike, say, poor dead Miles.

My students disliked it, I think.

That's on them

Did you tell them what gunsel means?

Explaining who was gay and why genuinely surprised them.

Oh bless

Just tell them they'll take it and like it

Timely revival; the "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it" line was in my head earlier this a.m.