The Maltese Falcon

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.

Despite the silent-to-talkie transition style, I liked this one better than the Bogart one. In fact, I think it exposes Bogart's counterfeit toughness (among other things, he was too short). Ricardo Cortez was a great choice. Perhaps George Raft might have been a better Sam Spade in the 1941 version. The similarity in dialogue between the two movies begs the issue of insufficient originality in the later version.

Comparing 1931 v 1941 characters, I think only Sydney Greenstreet provides a more interesting product. As the same (or similar) character, Alison Skipworth, as Madame Barabbas in Satan Met a Lady 1936, finishes second. From that same movie, Marie Wilson finishes second to Una Merkel as Effie, with 1941's Lee Patrick a distant third.

I like them all. I like the structure of the mystery. It reminds me (it's just me) a little of John Le Carre mysteries where, as in Tinker Tailor, the investigator knows the answer from the beginning.

DWIGHT FRYE plays Wilmer Cook in this version! Imagine my amazement at finding this out. Don't get me wrong, Elisha Cook Jnr. was extremely good in the later version and Dwight's role is considerably smaller but if you asked me to pick which one was the deffinitive Wilmer I would have a very hard time. The role does not call for subtlety; Wilmer is a psychotic who enjoys his work a little too much. Both men do an admirable job playing a role that is more complex than appears on the surface. The audiences first impression is to laugh at the baby faced kid waving his big .45 automatics around and talking tough but as soon as we find out that not only is he not shy about using his weapons he is darn good with them too he becomes a frightening image because his young, fresh faced looks hide a true monster beneath the surface. Well done, Dwight. I have a new respect for this hard-to-find early version of the famous novel now and it's all thanks to you.

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.

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.