The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Directed by John Huston. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and others.

This film is about a Private Investigator (Bogart) in San Francisco who gets wrapped up in a mysterious adventure with the aim of finding an ancient jeweled falcon statue. This film is generally regarded as the first in the film noir genre and is thus regarded as one of the all-time greats.

I watched this film on my own, but with my mind on my film education. There is a Film Noir class being taught this semester, but I wasn't able to take it. Still, I figured I should know what The Maltese Falcon is all about.

This film certainly exhibits many of the traits associated with film noir -- low-key lighting (think: shadowy), a femme fatale character, and it also has many unusual camera angles. It is thus similar in some ways to Citizen Kane. Note that this film is also from the same year as Kane -- (Kane was released in the spring, while The Maltese Falcon came out in the fall) -- and I find this interesting.

Something I find interesting in regards to this film and also Kane is the idea of a MacGuffin, a part of the plot that "catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot.... The major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is" (from that Wikipedia page). This idea is most commonly associated with Alfred Hitchcock. Both "Rosebud" in Kane and the falcon statuette in The Maltese Falcon can be considered MacGuffins.

While this may be an ingenious plot device, in this particular film (and, to some extent Kane... so perhaps this is the case in every film with a MacGuffin), I tend to find it a little disorienting or even unsatisfying. As someone who has a great love for adventure/quest stories, to have the object of the quest really not be meaningful at all, but instead just something to move the plot along, gives very little satisfaction at the end of a film.

Overall, I found The Maltese Falcon slightly hard-to-follow... and I think it was because the MacGuffin was TOO misleading. I was so focused on the seemingly most important plot point... that when it turned out that the falcon statuette wasn't actually key, I was confused. And I don't just think this was due to the fact that there are certainly a lot of flip-flops in the plot, since it usually takes a lot to befuddle me. Despite this aspect of the film, which didn't fully "click" with me, I did appreciate some of the artistic qualities of the film and am glad I've now seen it. I would call it a "must-see" only if you're a film buff or if you are a fan of the film noir genre.