Best Villain in "The Maltese Falcon"

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.