The Maltese Falcon

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.

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.

As everyone knows by now (at least if they're on this IMDb page!), this was the original film version of "The Maltese Falcon". And, of course, it (being pre-code) is a lot sexier than the Bogart version, which is to say, comparable to a racy 1970s TV movie. We see Miss Wonderley sleeping in Spade's bed, and actually see her naked in the bathtub (from the shoulders up) at one point.

As in "Satan Met a Lady", the detective is made out to be a sleazy ladies' man in this movie. When we first see him, he's kissing a woman goodbye; we never actually see her face, but we see her adjusting her stocking, and when Sam returns to his office, the pillows from his couch are in disarray. He seems to be getting some from Effie as well (and I must point out that Una Merkel, as Effie, is hot, hot, hot in this movie; quite a contrast to the matronly Lee Patrick in the 1941 version).

Overall, though, this movie is still somewhat unsatisfying. I suppose if we had never seen the Bogart/Huston version, this would stand as an acceptable adaptation of Hammett's novel (by the standards of the time). It follows the novel fairly closely, but skimps on the plot somewhat. The subplot where Wonderley disappears, and then reappears (as O'Shaughnessy) because she realizes Gutman is in town is missing, as is all the great interplay between Spade and Wilmer ("Just keep riding me, buster", "This'll put you in solid with your boss", etc.) that was such a treat in the later version. True, this movie is a little more explicit about the relationship between Gutman and Wilmer, but Wilmer is such a minor character (with literally only a few minutes of screen time) that their relationship still seems more fully-developed in the 1941 movie. There's also a very odd change at the end (just before the prison scene) that seems like something of a cop-out.

And, finally, it must be pointed out that Ricardo Cortez really stinks in this movie. He spends most of the movie with a smirk plastered on his face, and his performance in general is extremely stiff. I suppose that's to be expected in such an early talkie, but, combined with the general aura of sleaziness that his character exudes, it makes it impossible to really care what happens to him. In the end, this is an enjoyable movie, but mainly for reasons of historical curiosity, and it never comes anywhere near the "classic" status that the later remake has achieved.

This is a fascinating version of the story definitively filmed ten years later by John Huston, because of the ways in which it comes close to capturing the Hammett novel-- and the ways in which it doesn't. As a pre-Code film it's often more explicit than the Huston version-- especially about the fact that Spade was having an affair with his partner's wife, and about the homosexuality of the male crooks (this movie's Gutman is plainly depicted as a seedy john rather than as the refined aesthete Sydney Greenstreet would play). But hardboiled attitude is what really matters, and Ricardo Cortez (a good early talkie actor who always tried hard) just isn't playing Hammett's hardboiled, unsentimental Spade-- he's playing the more typical suave gentleman detective of the period, like Philo Vance. As a result, it's the love affair with Ms. Wonderly that takes over, and the shocking bite of Hammett's ending is lost. It was capturing the Hammett worldview that was John Huston's great accomplishment, and that made his Falcon so influential over the films noir to follow.

All the same Huston, who was working at Warner Bros. when this was made, must have liked something about this movie-- the scene where Spade first meets Joel Cairo (Otto Mattiesen, doing an excellent Peter Lorre imitation years before the fact) is repeated almost shot for shot and inflection for inflection in the Huston version, the only such case of direct inspiration I spotted here. Mattiesen, a familiar silent era character actor, sadly died not long after the film came out; had he lived he certainly could have had as interesting a talkie career as Lorre eventually did.

Before Humphrey Bogart, Ricardo Cortez, as Sam Spade, was looking for that big black bird in 1931's "The Maltese Falcon," also starring Bebe Daniels, Una Merkel, and Thelma Todd. Since it's 1931 and therefore pre-code, the emphasis is on sex and Sam's libidinous nature. In the first scene, a woman leaves his office straightening the seams in her stockings. Bebe Daniels as Ms. Wonderly takes a bath in Sam's tub, strips in the kitchen - you name it. Thelma Todd is on hand as the wife of Spade's partner, Miles Archer who, if you know the story, gets it in the first reel. Sam's had a thing with her too. He keeps them all on the hook.

I found this version slow going, mainly because it's an early talkie - the dialogue pacing isn't quite right. You can drive a truck through the pauses. The only one with a more modern feel for the dialogue is the handsome, smiling Cortez, and he's absolutely marvelous as Spade. His Spade is more relaxed than Bogie's, less sardonic, more delightfully crooked - in short, he has a lot more fun. He fits just as well into this version as world-weary Bogie does into the 1941 version.

Bebe Daniels is attractive and alluring as the greedy and totally ruthless Miss Wonderly. The gay subplot between Greenstreet and Lorre everyone assumes isn't as apparent in this film between Wilmer (Dwight Frye) and Caspar Guttman (Dudley Digges).

I found the comments in the first post on the actors' approaches to their roles very interesting; I'm not sure I totally agree, but for sure, Cortez spoke louder and Daniels did underplay (which she did not do in "42nd Street" - at all). However, as far as the pace, I still Cortez did better in keeping the dialogue going than anyone else.

This is a fascinating film - so different from the 1941 version, which I hope to see this evening - it's definitely worth catching.