The Maltese Falcon is a classic film credited with being a pioneer of the film noir genre. The movie came out in 1941 and was exceptionally done considering the technological advancements of the time. Interestingly enough, whenever I was discussing the movie with my family, my mom told me that my grandmother, who was born in 1923, saw the movie during its original run in theaters when she was eighteen. This added a bit of context for me as to the time period in which the movie was set, as my grandmother always told me stories about growing up in the thirties and what the world was like at the time.
The movie is centered around a simple mystery which grows and grows until it becomes an international affair with criminals, hitmen, and lies. It centers around detective Sam Spade whose life gets turned upside-down by a femme fatale that walks into his life with the simple mystery of her missing sister. When Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, goes to investigate, he is shot in an alleyway, with his suspected murderer also found dead soon after. Soon, Spade gets pulled into the even larger mystery of the Maltese falcon, a relic worth millions of dollars that hasn’t been seen in centuries.
This movie makes good use of the color palette it was granted, making the blacks and whites contrast each other strongly instead of muddling together into a big gray blob like many old TV series’ and movies tend to do. I noticed that when characters like Cairo and Gutman were shown on the screen, the image seemed more shadow-filled and dark, whereas when the women were shown in more intimate scenes, brightness and highlights took over the frame. This was done as an excellent way of subverting unconscious expectations, as in the end it is revealed one of these bright women is guilty and not the shadow-covered men.
Additionally, I noticed the director made excellent use of camera angles to demonstrate power and position. Again, when women were shown on the screen the camera normally looked down at them and made them look small, whereas when the big mean crime boss Gutman was shown, the camera was incredibly low, even showing the ceiling at times. The main character, Spade, was typically shown around eye-level to the camera, so perhaps the lens was trying to show how he, specifically, felt about the other characters in the movie. the lens also seemed to follow his gaze around with pans and tilts as he walked or noticed something new.
Another pattern and visual trick I noticed was the way the scenes in the movie were set up. The movie seemed to follow a pretty concrete pattern of long-scene, short-scene, then back again. This started from the very beginning, where the first scene of the movie lasts nearly five minutes, and the scene directly following it of Miles being shot in the alleyway was hardly fifteen seconds. The narrative of this movie moved incredibly quickly, with not a lot of time for side plots of ‘fluff’, which both made things exciting but also could make them a little confusing to a viewer that wasn’t watching with a very careful eye.
One more thing I noticed was the use of stripes on the main female character, Brigid O’Shaughnessy. She is often seen wearing striped patterns or standing places where the shadows seem to make stripes across her. This is used symbolically to show her character as the criminal of the film, as stripes are what prisoners wore at the time. This would typically be hard to notice on the first watch as she is not revealed to be the murderer until the last scene of the film, though I suspected her from the beginning so I was trying my hardest to pick up on clues about her.
All of these patterns and visual devices do a lot to help viewers understand what is going on without explicitly stating it. You can tell Gutman is a powerful man because of the way the camera frames him. You can see that the women are underestimated and looked down upon. You can even tell that Spade is considered neutral and level-headed and the center of the story as the camera tends to show things from his point-of-view before anyone else’s. If you’re a very keen viewer, you may even be able to tell from the start that Brigid is a criminal due to the striped patterns that are always around her. (If you don’t notice on first watch, you likely would on subsequent watching’s since you know the plot twist.)
All-in-all, I think the cinematography is what makes this movie so classic. While the plot in it of itself is a little bland with nothing too memorable – the Maltese Falcon is even a bit of a MacGuffin, since the item itself is of little importance but the character’s motivations by it are of great importance – the shot composition is what draws the viewer in and makes them relate to Spade without a single word being said. If you asked me to quote a line from the movie, I likely couldn’t remember one word-for-word, though I can remember very clearly the shots of Gutman telling Spade the story of the Falcon as Spade is slowly being drugged. (One of these shots even looked horribly out of place until I realized what was going on – it was unbelievably blurred, and I thought it was a mistake until I saw Spade fall.)
While I still think the plot was lacking in places – and maybe that is just my 21st century movie ideals shining through – I thought overall this movie was really well done. I remember each of the characters and some basic characteristics of each one, I identified with Spade as he talked with each of the suspects, and I was eager to see how all the loose ends tied together in the end. The cinematography inspired a decade of movies, and even some of the tricks are still used to this day in major blockbusters. I admire the director and the cinematographer for their breakthroughs in making the audience identify with the viewer, and I am glad to be learning about some of these tricks so that I can watch a movie like this and find some of the rich details an untrained eye might struggle to see.
Amanda Roach 