Satan Met a Lady

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.

Not even Bette Davis could save a lousy script. Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon might seem a surefire property, as its first version in 1931 (sometimes called Dangerous Female) and the canonical 1941 John Huston movie testify. But Satan Met A Lady misfires badly.

The problem with the script isn't so much that it's mediocre as that it's misconceived. The thinking behind it stays fairly transparent, however: The Thin Man, based on another Hammett novel, proved a big hit over at MGM. Warner Brothers hoped to work the same magic by subjecting Falcon to a blithe, tongue-in-cheek treatment. It didn't take.

The cosmetic changes applied to disguise the original story remain, at least to movie buffs, faintly amusing. Private eyes Spade and Archer become Shayne and Ames, while the falcon becomes a medieval ram's horn supposedly stuffed with gems that turn out to be sand. Involved in its pursuit are Warren Williams as Shayne, less the debonair lady-killer he presumably aimed for than a foolish old roué, and Davis as the femme fatale.

The trio of mercenary cutthroats, on their own broad terms, surprisingly remains the most memorable aspect of the movie. The Joel Cairo character becomes Prince-Charles-lookalike Arthur Treacher (whose career would later encompass playing second banana to Merv Griffin and selling his name to a string of fish-‘n'-chips franchises). The gunsel is pudgy and petulant Maynard Holmes, who went uncredited in just about every film he ever appeared in, including this one. Best of all is crusty Alison Skipworth, pinch-hitting as the Fat Man. And as Williams' dumb-blonde secretary Murgatroyd, Marie Wilson starts out irksome but ends up winsome.

But the racy comedy that was piled on falls flat (particularly as projected by Williams and Davis); there was enough irony in Hammett's prose to begin with, and it emerges in the two filmings of the book made five years earlier and five years later. This version even dispenses with the indispensable locale, for The Maltese Falcon was, and is, the quintessential San Francisco story. As a vehicle for Hammett's imagination, the best thing that can be said about Satan Met A Lady is that it's slightly more respectable than the 1979 made-for-television abomination The Dain Curse.

I can practically recite "The Maltese Falcon" by heart, so I was intrigued by this alternate filming. I put the tape in and immediately went "What the. . . ." Then I picked up the box and saw the word "comedy." so I sat down and watched it on its own terms. It's a hoot. the trick is to never really think about the great Bogart version and just think of it as a send-up of the genre. It is much better this way. I especially the ditsy blonde secretary, and the bumbling gunsel.

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.