O Falcão Maltês

I got such a kick out of this filmed version of Dashiell Hammett's detective novel that I think I was grinning from ear to ear throughout the movie. Because it was a pre-code film it was much more open to the sexiness of the original novel, for instance here we have Miss Wonderly (Bebe Daniels in the role played by Mary Astor in the 1941 version) actually undressing in the kitchen scene. In another scene, when she claims someone is following her and she is frightened to be alone, Sam Spade (Ricardo Cortez, who is much more handsome than Bogart) offers her his bedroom for the night. "You can have my bed, I'll sleep out here." She turns to him coyly from the sofa and says "Aw, don't let me keep you out." I burst out laughing. Couldn't imagine this repartee between Bogie and Astor!

Una Merkel was superb as the devoted secretary of Sam Spade. She constantly gives off the aura that she has had a physical relationship with him in the past and that some of it still hangs around even though it is essentially over (note their sitting real closely on a chair in one scene, lingeringly holding hands). Thelma Todd plays Archer's wife, who has also had an affair with Sam in the past, and she adds some more spice to the film which is already loaded with it compared to the 1941 version, which was made under the control of the Hollywood Production Code.

The other cast members are wonderful, including Dudley Digges as Casper Gutman, Otto Matieson as Joel Cairo, and Dwight Frye as the psychotic Wilma Cook. They completely hold your attention and are just as interesting, perhaps even more so, than the 1941 version actors.

I am a Bogie fan, but Ricardo Cortez steals the picture with this performance. He is a much more selfish, less noble character than Bogie's Sam Spade, and that makes him more interesting to watch on screen. For instance, in the 1941 version, Bogie's Sam Spade reluctantly gives over the girl to the police because "when your partner is murdered, you are supposed to do something about it." In the 1931 version Ricardo's Sam Spade hands her over simply because he himself doesn't want to be charged with murder. He's saving his own neck, not acting out of some false loyalty to a partner he didn't even like. In fact in this version Ricardo as Sam states firmly, "I couldn't shed a tear for Archer, dead OR alive." This is a lot more honest and realistic.

Don't miss your chance to see this early talkie gem. It is fascinating to watch on its own merits, and also to compare with the later, more famous, Bogart version.

This is a fascinating version of the story definitively filmed ten years later by John Huston, because of the ways in which it comes close to capturing the Hammett novel-- and the ways in which it doesn't. As a pre-Code film it's often more explicit than the Huston version-- especially about the fact that Spade was having an affair with his partner's wife, and about the homosexuality of the male crooks (this movie's Gutman is plainly depicted as a seedy john rather than as the refined aesthete Sydney Greenstreet would play). But hardboiled attitude is what really matters, and Ricardo Cortez (a good early talkie actor who always tried hard) just isn't playing Hammett's hardboiled, unsentimental Spade-- he's playing the more typical suave gentleman detective of the period, like Philo Vance. As a result, it's the love affair with Ms. Wonderly that takes over, and the shocking bite of Hammett's ending is lost. It was capturing the Hammett worldview that was John Huston's great accomplishment, and that made his Falcon so influential over the films noir to follow.

All the same Huston, who was working at Warner Bros. when this was made, must have liked something about this movie-- the scene where Spade first meets Joel Cairo (Otto Mattiesen, doing an excellent Peter Lorre imitation years before the fact) is repeated almost shot for shot and inflection for inflection in the Huston version, the only such case of direct inspiration I spotted here. Mattiesen, a familiar silent era character actor, sadly died not long after the film came out; had he lived he certainly could have had as interesting a talkie career as Lorre eventually did.

The 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart was actually the second remake of The Maltese Falcon. The first remake was Satan Met A Lady, (1936) starring Bette Davis. This film (The Maltese Falcon - 1931) was the original. It doesn't have the pizazz of the Humphrey Bogart version, and it is not a film noir version, but it is extremely faithful to the story, and much more explicit about the various adulterous affairs, out of wedlock sex, and homosexuality. Ricardo Cortez was a big star at the time.

Contrary to the many comments in user reviews, it is not a pre-code movie. The Movie Production Code (aka Hays Code) was instituted in 1930, but largely ignored by the studios. It wasn't enforced until 1934 when Joseph Breen took over as head of the Motion Picture Code. The story of the years 1930 - 1933 films which contained much more explicit material than was technically permitted by the code is well told in the TCM documentary "Forbidden Film".

Of the three versions of The Maltese Falcon, this is, in my opinion, the second best, with Bogart's version being the best. But this version is a close second, with much to recommend it. It is not more faithful to the novel than the 1941 version, but it is much clearer, especially concerning the sexual sub-plots of the film. It was an A movie in it's time, with top stars including Thelma Todd, Una Merkel, and Dwight Frye. If you like the Bogart version you will probably enjoy this antecedent. Film aficionados and lovers of film history should take special note of this gem.

Before Humphrey Bogart, Ricardo Cortez, as Sam Spade, was looking for that big black bird in 1931's "The Maltese Falcon," also starring Bebe Daniels, Una Merkel, and Thelma Todd. Since it's 1931 and therefore pre-code, the emphasis is on sex and Sam's libidinous nature. In the first scene, a woman leaves his office straightening the seams in her stockings. Bebe Daniels as Ms. Wonderly takes a bath in Sam's tub, strips in the kitchen - you name it. Thelma Todd is on hand as the wife of Spade's partner, Miles Archer who, if you know the story, gets it in the first reel. Sam's had a thing with her too. He keeps them all on the hook.

I found this version slow going, mainly because it's an early talkie - the dialogue pacing isn't quite right. You can drive a truck through the pauses. The only one with a more modern feel for the dialogue is the handsome, smiling Cortez, and he's absolutely marvelous as Spade. His Spade is more relaxed than Bogie's, less sardonic, more delightfully crooked - in short, he has a lot more fun. He fits just as well into this version as world-weary Bogie does into the 1941 version.

Bebe Daniels is attractive and alluring as the greedy and totally ruthless Miss Wonderly. The gay subplot between Greenstreet and Lorre everyone assumes isn't as apparent in this film between Wilmer (Dwight Frye) and Caspar Guttman (Dudley Digges).

I found the comments in the first post on the actors' approaches to their roles very interesting; I'm not sure I totally agree, but for sure, Cortez spoke louder and Daniels did underplay (which she did not do in "42nd Street" - at all). However, as far as the pace, I still Cortez did better in keeping the dialogue going than anyone else.

This is a fascinating film - so different from the 1941 version, which I hope to see this evening - it's definitely worth catching.

Over the years, the version of The Maltese Falcon released in 1941 has accrued an enviable reputation: As an opening salvo in the film noir cycle, as Humphrey Bogart's first big starring vehicle and John Huston's directorial debut, and as a favorite example of the pleasures to be found in `old' black-and-white movies. But it was the third crack that Warner Brothers took at Dashiell Hammett's breakthrough novel. Probably best forgotten is the 1936 Satan Met A Lady, where a bejewelled ram's horn subbed for the black bird; even Bette Davis couldn't salvage the movie. But this first filming (later retitled Dangerous Female), made the year after the novel's release – in the technical infancy of the sound era – retains enough punch and flavor to give the formidable forties version a run for its money.

Starring as Sam Spade and Miss Wonderly (who never becomes Brigid O'Shaughnessey) are Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels, the talkies' first immortal guy/gal team. And joining them is the familiar ensemble of grotesques: As `Dr.' Joel Cairo, Otto Mathiessen; as Casper Gutman, Dudley Digges (who, lacking Sidney Greenstreet's girth, is never called The Fat Man); and as Wilmer the gunsel, gimlet-eyed Dwight Frye, familiar from the Dracula and Frankenstein franchises. And while Huston's cast in each instance has the edge, it's not by much – these pioneering hams have a field day.

Huston trusted Hammett enough to preserve more of his astringent dialogue intact, but Dangerous Woman shows surprising fidelity to the book. The subplot about Spade's affair with his slain partner's wife Iva Archer stays prominent, and the merry widow is played by Thelma Todd (herself later to fall victim in one of Hollywood's most notorious unsolved murders). Owing to less prudish times, before the Hayes Office tried to make sex un-American, the scene is kept where Spade, in his quest for a palmed $1000 bill, makes Wonderly strip naked (though left largely off-screen). And in calling Wilmer Gutman's `boyfriend,' Spade makes a mite more explicit their old-queen/rough-trade dynamic.

Roy del Ruth, who directed, was an old newspaper man who came to Hollywood in the silent era, racking up a workmanlike list of credits (in 1949, he would return to San Francisco locales for the unusual noir Red Light). He adds some deft touches, as when, after Spade departs with her bankroll, Wonderly blithely extracts a fat wad of bills from her stocking. Much of what he might be credited for, however, may be inadvertent. Since the novel was published and the movie made on that critical cusp between the Roaring Twenties and Old Man Depression, an authentic period tang asserts itself – Daniels' marcelled hair, for instance (not to mention the Vienna-born Cortez' being palmed off as a Latin lover).

The movie deviates from the novel in ending with a scene in the women's house of detention that manages to be simultaneously sassy and poignant. Dangerous Female offers an instructive lesson in how the various versions, with their differing tones and emphases, shed their own light and shadow on a classic American crime novel.