Der Satan und die Lady

Dash Hammett wasn't a very good writer, but he was something of a genius in creating characters that sell. Films with his characters were only successful when heavily filtered through the inventive context of a filmmaker.

Hammett hated it, this messing with his tone. But the original "Falcon" was something of a disaster. Someone had the idea (possibly Van Dyke) of making the Thin Man as a comedy. It was a huge success and has in retrospect been one of the most influential films of the era. So it only made sense for us to see this similar reworking of "Falcon" shortly after the Thin Man's success.

But Van Dyke had a sense of timing and the ability to integrate that rhythm into the whole long form. This poor fellow has no such sense, so the humor is all over the place, each character driving their own bus.

So when you watch it, you have to decide which character to align your perspective with. Though I cannot recommend the picture, if you do see it, I do recommend you become the ditsy blond secretary (who cannot even spell her own name).

She's every bit capable of carrying this movie, where the detective cannot.

I don't suppose she invented the ditz, but it was this girl, here a nineteen year old Marie Wilson who combined a Betty Boop "whoop" to become the sexually available, innocent but hungry, absolutely sweet but terminally dumb blond. Its great fun watching her mouth, a great mouth, one of the era's great mouths managed by an unappreciated master.

The end of the movie is supposed to be something of a tragedy as the Bette Davis character is lost. But because our detective (something of a breezy dolt) has this ready girl to fall back on, the effect is lost.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

It had never previously occurred to me that the convoluted plot of 'The Maltese Falcon' was verging on that of a farce; but in fact this reinterpretation fits with surprising success throughout most of the action of the film...

The gulf between this version of the story and the darker wartime 'Falcon' of 1941 is a jolting one, but when it is compared to the film of which it is actually a remake -- Warner Brothers' 1931 'Maltese Falcon' -- the relationship between the earlier two becomes obvious. Warren William's Ted Shane, with his womanising touch and his insolent grin, has far more in common with Ricardo Cortez' silent-style Sam Spade than with Bogart's noir version (and, to be honest, with the 'blond Satan' of Hammett's original novel).

William is well cast here as the amoral private eye playing all sides off against one another: in this film, he comes across as being in control of the situation all along, tricking information out of the gentleman crook Travers, disarming the impotent but vindictive Kenneth and driving a hard bargain with Madame Barabbas for a treasure he knows to be without value. When he induces Valerie to confess her guilt in the railway carriage, I was all but expecting him to produce a concealed police officer at the appropriate moment to bear witness! Despite the fact that everyone from his former lover to his own secretary seems to take it for granted, despite his assurances, that it was he who murdered his partner, Ted Shane -- as befits the hero of a light-hearted farce -- never leaves us in any doubt that he is destined to come out on top.

Bette Davis, despite her top billing, has relatively little to do here and demonstrates an all too apparent lack of interest. Bebe Daniels, in the equivalent 1931 part, is both more alluring and more obviously faking it; her scenes with Sam Spade often have more comedy, as her character rolls out her full seductive armoury against a complacent male target, than Davis' scenes underplayed here in what is intended to be a farce. I found the minor role of the scatty little secretary Murgatroyd -- who, in this version ends up with the hero for the requisite happy ending! -- to be the more memorable one.

But I'm afraid the ending was my main difficulty with the reinterpretation of this plot in comic vein. The mix-ups, multiple women and seemingly pointless events of the start are almost intrinsically amusing, and indeed are already played as such in the 1931 'Maltese Falcon'. The final scenes, however, with their betrayals, dirty dealing and killings for a fortune that never was, have a much more nihilistic tone, and the 'siege' sequence of the earlier version, where all the characters are locked in a room together by mutual suspicion until the morning comes, holds an edge of explosive threat. Staging the equivalent sequence on the docks under a fire-hose downpour, with Shane brandishing the valuables literally just above the villains' noses and getting paid for his trouble rather than coshed for the loot, doesn't serve to raise a laugh... but does rob the scene of most of its effectiveness.

Likewise, Valerie's admission of murder and her railing at Shane after he hands her over to the police are not only not funny -- although at least in the latter case, they're clearly intended that way -- but they have no emotional impact either. The result was an unsatisfactory resolution without any resonance to speak of; and Valerie's parting shot, while being dragged off to pay the penalty for murder, where she predicts for Shane the dire fate of... marriage, falls flat as almost embarrassingly inappropriate.

'Satan Met a Lady' actually starts off by looking quite promising and at the outset is genuinely funny: but a lacklustre part for the leading lady, plus a growing incongruity between the hard-boiled subject matter and its delivery, serve to undermine this favourable first impression. I enjoyed Warren William's performance, but in the end I felt the film didn't really work.

Boy, once Warner Brothers bought a property, they did everything but serve it for dinner. 1936's "Satan Met a Lady" is yet another version of "The Maltese Falcon," which was finally given the classic touch by John Huston in 1941. This particular version is out of control but manages to be a lot of fun at the same time.

This time Sam Spade is named Shane, and he's played by '30s star Warren William. William was a tall, handsome man with sharp features and a refined speaking voice - by this time, he was the Warners version of William Powell, though he had started his career as an unsympathetic, precode villain. A more extroverted performer, he excelled at the William Powell-type vehicles. He even took over for Powell as Philo Vance. William was the movie Perry Mason, and if you think this is a wild "Maltese Falcon," you should see what was done to Perry before the TV series. Put it this way - Della Street wore diamonds.

In this version, the falcon is the Horn of Roland, a trumpet stuffed with jewels, and it's being sought by a young, pretty Bette Davis in the Bebe Daniels-Astor role, and now the Sydney Greenstreet character has had a sex change in the form of Madame Barrabas (Alison Skipworth). Though there's no doubt Barrabas a ruthless character. and the usual people have been murdered by the usual people, this version is pretty much played for laughs. It moves faster than the Cortez version, and while Cortez played Spade as a delightful rogue, William has a ball, laughing at the whole thing as he collects money from everyone. In the Cortez version, Spade had some feeling for Ms. Wonderly (Bebe Daniels); here, William clearly enjoys playing the field and never takes the Davis character seriously. Shane's secretary in "Satan Met a Lady" is played by Marie Wilson, whose part is quite large. She's very funny. Davis is okay, but her sincerity isn't believable - at this point in her career, she's still a little stagey.

The very tongue-in-cheek William runs this show, which is done in the style of "The Thin Man." Though it was a bomb when it was released, today it's of interest for Davis, its handling of the material, and also as a chance to see William, who died in 1948, in top form. After this film, he went into character roles.

Recommended.

The second version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon came in the wake of the big success of a cinematic adaptation of another of the author's novels, The Thin Man. So here we get a comic version starring a wise-cracking gentleman, Warren William (who had played Julius Caesar in DeMille's Cleopatra). The comedy is sometimes desperate. It's played WAY over the top. If they had toned in down a tad, and maybe got William Powell instead of Warren William, it would have been a great film. Which would have been terrible because then, if it had been a success, Warner Brothers wouldn't have deigned to remake it five years later. We wouldn't have the 1941 masterpiece, John Huston's career might have went an entirely different way, and film noir wouldn't have developed as we know it. Film history might look damn different just because of this goofy little adaptation! It's generally considered the worst of the three adaptations, but I really liked it. It's a heck of a lot better than the stale '31 version, and it stands as a nice little companion piece to the '41 version. A couple of the actors I really liked, notably Alison Skipworth in the Gutman role (all character names have been changed, by the way, but I'll keep to the originals), Arthur Treacher as Cairo, and Maynard Holmes as Wilmer (shockingly uncredited where several less important characters were!). The best of the best, though: Marie Wilson in the Effie role. Oh. You thought I was going to say Bette Davis. Nah. She's probably the least of the three Brigids. The secretary role is expanded a bit, and she's almost made Spade's love interest. Wilson gives a very cute comic performance. Well worth checking out.

Satan Met a Lady is a fascinating adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon into an unusual mixture of mystery and comedy and actually has several funny moments but veers so far from the source material that its effect is dissipated. In comparison to some recent comedy thrillers the film could be seen as ahead of its time. If John Huston had never made the quintessential Film Noir adaption of Hammet's novel The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart in the lead, Satan Met a Lady may have gained an entirely different stature.

The film does have some funny moments as when Valerie Purvis catches Shayne searching her room and pulls a gun on him with the line "Do you mind very much, Mr. Shayne, taking off your hat in the presence of a lady with a gun?" There is also some very funny stuff with Warren William playing against Arthur Treacher's British character Anthony Travers. When Travers says he'll give Shayne 500 dollars for information and hands him a bill, the detective walks over to a lamp inspects the bill and summarily tears it up, getting a gentlemanly response from the Brit in an "Sorry" as he hands him another bill which the private dick inspects and pockets- it's a bit of visual business that is perfectly timed by the actors.