Out In The Film Noir Night- Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon

Films In Brief

The Maltese Falcon, written Dashiell Hammett, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet

In literature and film there have been no lack of private detective-types depicted from the urbane Nick Charles (also a Hammett creation) to Mickey Spillane’s rough and tumble Mike Hammer but the classic model for all modern ones is Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade (the Humphrey Bogart role in the film) in The Maltese Falcon. Some may argue Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe and may have a point but as for film adaptation Spade wins hands down. Compare, if you will, Bogart’s performance in The Maltese Falcon with The Big Sleep. Get my point. But enough of that. What make’s Spade the classic is his intrepidness, his orneriness, his dauntless dedication to the task at hand, his sense of irony, his incorruptibility, his willingness to take an inordinate amount of bumps and bruises for paltry fees and his off-hand manner with the ladies and a gun. And in The Maltese Falcon he needs all of these qualities and then some.