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SPOILER ALERT!
The Maltese Falcon (1941) is based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett, published in 1930 after having been serialized in Black Mask magazine in 1929. Because the movie follows it rather closely, references to the novel from time to time can give us a better understanding of the story.
The Provenance of the Maltese Falcon
A lot happens regarding the title statuette before the movie begins, bits and pieces of which are revealed at various points, all of which can be a little hard to follow. Let us take advantage of hindsight and put it all together at once.
At the beginning of the movie, there is a prologue, telling us about the origin of the Maltese Falcon, made of gold and encrusted with jewels, sent as a tribute to Charles V in 1539 by the Knight Templars of Malta, but seized by pirates before it could arrive. What happened to it after that, according to the prologue, is a mystery.
Later in the movie, Casper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) reveals additional history of the bird in the centuries since, until he became aware of where it was seventeen years ago. However, it was stolen before he could get his hands on it. Somewhat recently, he discovered that it was in the possession of a Russian general named Kemidov, living in a suburb of Istanbul. Because the bird had been painted in black enamel to conceal its worth at some point during its history, Gutman surmised that Kemidov didn’t know its true value. However, he refused to sell it. Gutman hired some agents to steal it, but they kept it instead of bringing it to him.
The novel makes it clear that those agents were Bridgid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), Floyd Thursby, and Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre). When Brigid and Thursby found out Cairo meant to double-cross them as well as Gutman, keeping the falcon for himself, they turned the tables on him and took off with the falcon after Thursby managed to steal it from Kemidov.
Brigid and Thursby went to Hong Kong, where Brigid hired Captain Jacobi, Master of the La Paloma, to bring the Maltese Falcon to her when his ship arrived in San Francisco. Somehow, Gutman got wind of the fact that Brigid and Thursby had the bird and where they were headed. He followed them there, along with his gunsel Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.).
At one point in the novel, Cairo claims not to know who Wilmer is, but that is unlikely, since he knew Gutman, and because he shows Wilmer affection later on, rubbing his hand, putting his arm around him. Brigid suggests that Cairo had sex with Wilmer, and Cairo says she tried to have sex with Wilmer too, for some nefarious purpose, no doubt, but with no success, probably because Wilmer was not interested in women.
Toward the end of the novel, Cairo becomes upset when Wilmer is beaten up. After Wilmer is knocked out, he is laid on the sofa:
Joel Cairo sat beside the boy, bending over him, rubbing his cheeks and wrists, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, whispering to him, and peering anxiously down at his white still face.
As for Gutman, he says he loves Wilmer like a son, but I think we know what that means.
Brigid suspects that Thursby will double-cross her, so she decides to do him in first. To that end, she shows up at the office of a private detective agency called Spade and Archer, under the name of Miss Wonderly. It is at this point that the movie begins.
Miss Wonderly
Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is in his office when Effie Perine (Lee Patrick), his secretary, steps inside from the outer office to tell him there is a Miss Wonderly to see him. It is rather startling to see how sexualized the relationship between Sam and Effie is, even though it is otherwise merely professional. Sam addresses Effie as “sweetheart” and “darling.” Later in the movie, he calls her “precious.” When Sam asks her if Miss Wonderly is a customer, Effie says she thinks so, adding, “You’ll want to see her anyway. She’s a knockout.”
This “Miss Wonderly” begins telling her phony story about how her sister has run off with Floyd Thursby, and she wants help in getting her back home. She says Thursby has agreed to meet her that night. While she is talking, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) joins them. He says he will be nearby when she and Thursby meet. She puts two hundred-dollar bills on the table.
Because she knows Thursby is a violent man, her plan is that a confrontation will occur, and either Archer will kill Thursby, or Thursby will kill Archer. If the latter, then she can tell the police about the murder, getting Thursby arrested, and then have the Maltese Falcon all to herself when Jacobi brings it to her. When she is unable to get the confrontation that she had hoped for, she takes one of Thursby’s pistols and shoots Archer herself, leaving the unusual revolver behind so that Thursby will be incriminated.
We don’t actually see who it is that shoots Archer. All we see is a revolver pointed at Archer and fired. That Brigid shot him is not revealed until the end of the movie. In the meantime, Brigid doesn’t have to frame Thursby for Archer’s murder as she planned because he is shot four times in the back by Wilmer. Later on, Wilmer also kills Captain Jacobi.
Wilmer
Wilmer is played by Elisha Cook Jr., who was 5 feet, 5 inches tall. He often played the role of a small, thin-skinned man who is trying to compensate for his diminutive stature by acting tough, only to end up being humiliated. Most memorable is when Jack Palance shoots him in Shane (1953), Cook’s body flying back into the mud. He is usually nothing but feckless bluster, but on those rare occasions where he does manage to kill someone, he is almost always killed himself, as in The Killing (1956) or One-Eyed Jacks (1961).
In the latter movie, there was no need for him to die as far as the plot was concerned. Rather, it was necessitated by his screen persona. When Ben Johnson tries to rob a bank, Cook, as the bank teller, could have shot him dead with no harm coming to himself, and that would have worked just as well, logically speaking. But to have a pipsqueak like Elisha Cook Jr. kill a big strapping man like Ben Johnson and then be triumphant, standing over Johnson’s body with a smoking gun in his hand, that would have been a grave injustice, aesthetically speaking, that is. So, he just had to catch a bullet himself.
The Maltese Falcon is the only movie I am aware of in which Elisha Cook Jr. plays a character who kills someone, two in this movie, and yet is not killed himself. At one point, he even kicks Spade in the face. However, Spade does humiliate him, taking his two .45s away from him on two different occasions. Wilmer is arrested at the end of the movie, but even that is diminished by the fact that we only hear about it. I suspect that the reason he was able to kill two men in this movie without having to be killed himself was that there are no scenes depicting these murders. Had we witnessed Wilmer gunning these men down with his two .45s, it would have been necessary to film a scene where he was shot full of bullets himself.
Spade and Archer
From the beginning, we see that Spade does not like his partner Archer. Although Spade was the one to start interviewing Miss Wonderly, when he tells her that they will have a man near the place where she is supposed to meet Thursby, Archer butts in and says, “I’ll look after it myself.” Spade gives him a look of mild annoyance. After she leaves, Archer says, “Maybe you saw her first, Sam, but I spoke first.”
With barely concealed sarcasm, Spade replies, “You’ve got brains. Yes, you have.”
Just after two in the morning, Spade gets a call from Detective Tom Polhouse (Ward Bond), telling him that Archer was found dead near the corner of Bush and Stockton. Spade says he’ll be there in fifteen minutes. When he gets there, he and Tom discuss what happened. Finally, Tom says, “Miles had his faults like any of us, but he must’ve had some good points too.”
Spade replies, “I guess so,” as if to say he can’t think of any at the moment. We accept his indifference to Miles’ death because we are informed that Miles had no children. If a man in a movie has young children, we are supposed to like him.
During the opening scene in which Miss Wonderly told her story about the sister she supposedly had, we are made aware of two windows in the office, both with “Spade and Archer” written on them in big, bold letters. One window is on the wall to Spade’s right, where Archer’s desk is. The large window is behind Spade’s desk. The sun is shining through it and, as a result, we see “Spade and Archer” projected onto the wall just to Sam’s left. After Miss Wonderly leaves, we see “Spade and Archer” projected onto the floor, apparently through a third window, this one on that same wall, the one to Spade’s left, which means the sun has moved around so it can shine in through that window now. And in what kind of building could an office of ordinary size have windows on three of its walls?
This impossible repositioning on the part of the sun so it can shine through an unlikely window was probably motivated by a desire on the part of the director, John Huston, to emphasize the way “Spade and Archer” dominates the room. The day after Archer’s death, Spade is so glad to be rid of Archer that, unwilling to allow for a decent interval of even a few days to show some respect for his dead partner, he tells Effie to have “Spade and Archer” removed from the windows and replaced with “Samuel Spade.”
Near the end of the novel, after Spade has figured out that Brigid killed Archer, he explains why he doesn’t care about that:
“Miles,” Spade said hoarsely, “was a son of a bitch. I found that out the first week we were in business together, and I meant to kick him out as soon as the year was up. You didn’t do me a damned bit of harm by killing him.”
His saying that he “meant to kick him out” tells us that us that the year in question came and went without Spade getting rid of Archer.
Iva
Spade doesn’t say why he didn’t kick him out, but I think we can guess. Before that year was up, he started having an affair with Archer’s wife Iva (Gladys George). It would have been awkward for Sam to break off the partnership while he was still having sex with her. Then, after Sam tired of Iva and wanted to break off his affair with her, he found it awkward to do so while he was still partners with her husband. As a result, he was stuck with Miles on account of Iva, and he was stuck with Iva on account of Miles.
The night Tom calls Spade to tell him that Miles is dead, Spade says he will be there in fifteen minutes. But first things first. He calls Effie, giving her the news, and telling her she will have to be the one to tell Iva, saying, “I’d fry first.” Although he is still having sex with Iva, he can’t stand her anymore. He tells Effie to keep Iva away from him. Of course, Iva thinks Sam is in love with her, and now that Miles is dead, she figures they can finally get married. Although Sam is glad to get rid of Miles as a partner, he figured he was safe from Iva as long as she was already married, but now that protection is gone.
It’s bad enough when you’re having an affair with a married woman, thinking it’s just a little on the side, when she calls you on the phone and says, “I told Clarence all about us. I’m leaving him. Now we can get married.” I suppose if you’re a tough guy like Sam Spade, you could say, “Listen sweetheart, I never said anything about marriage.” But even he cannot bring himself to say that to a woman who has just become a widow.
The morning after Miles was killed, Iva is waiting for Sam at his office. He is irritated that Effie didn’t keep her away from him as he told her to, but as Effie points out, he didn’t tell her how. Once inside his office, Sam and Iva do a little kissing. She asks if he killed Miles so they could get married, which from his point of view is preposterous. In the novel, after denying her suggestion, they do some more kissing. Finally, he sends her away, saying it’s not good for her to be there, promising to see her again as soon as he can.
After Iva leaves, Effie asks him if he is going to marry her. In the novel, he says, “Don’t be silly.”
“She doesn’t think it’s silly,” Effie replies. “Why should she, the way you’ve played around with her?” When Sam says he wishes he’d never seen her, Effie continues: “Maybe you do now…, but there was a time.”
Effie sizes him up correctly when she tells him, “You think you know what you’re doing, but you’re too slick for your own good. Someday you’re going to find it out.” As far as his being stuck with Iva is concerned, I think he already has.
Later in the novel, Iva says something about Sam “pretending to love” her. Like a lot of people, Iva probably believes that if it’s true love, it will last forever, forgetting that she no longer loved Miles the way she did once. So, when she begins to suspect that Sam doesn’t want her around anymore, she figures he never really loved her in the first place and that he was only pretending. The reality is that people can fall in love genuinely and sincerely, only to have it die with the passage of time. Sam probably did love Iva in the beginning, and he wasn’t pretending at all.
Effie
Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a femme fatale. As such, we expect her to be somewhat successful in deceiving men. What is unusual, however, is the way Brigid is able to deceive Effie. Unlike Spade, who is skeptical of Brigid and is only partly deceived by her, Effie is completely sold.
When Brigid confesses that she lied about having a sister, Spade replies, “We didn’t exactly believe your story. We believed your $200.” The conversation proceeds from there with Spade seeing right through her new story and her performance. That is consistent with what we normally expect of a private eye in a movie. But when he asks her if she had anything to do with the death of Archer, she denies it, and he believes her, saying sincerely, “That’s good.”
In the novel, Brigid spends the night with Sam at his place. He wakes up before she does, takes her key, goes to her apartment, and searches it thoroughly. Then he makes it appear as though someone broke into her apartment. When she discovers that her apartment had supposedly been broken into, Sam says she needs a new place to stay. You would think that since Sam and Brigid spent the night together at his place, he would have the decency to let her continue sleeping with him over there, but he doesn’t. In the movie, there is only the suggestion that they had sex, when there is a fadeout while they are kissing in his apartment, and there is no indication that Sam was the one who searched her place.
In either case, Sam turns to Effie to see if she is agreeable to letting Brigid stay with her, asking her, “What’s your woman’s intuition say about her?”
“She’s all right,” Effie replies. “Maybe it’s her own fault for the trouble, but she’s all right.” As a result, Effie agrees to let Brigid stay with her.
In the novel, Effie is even more emphatic in the faith she has in Brigid:
“She’s got too many names,” Spade mused, “Wonderly, Leblanc, and she says the right one’s O’Shaughnessy.”
“I don't care if she’s got all the names in the phonebook. That girl is all right, and you know it.”
“I wonder.” Spade blinked sleepily at Effie Perine. He chuckled. “Anyway, she’s given up seven hundred smacks in two days, and that’s all right.”
Effie Perine sat up straight and said: “Sam, if that girl’s in trouble and you let her down, or take advantage of it to bleed her, I’ll never forgive you, never have any respect for you, as long as I live.”
Spade asks her on another occasion about her woman’s intuition.
“Does your woman’s intuition still tell you that she’s a Madonna or something?”
She looked sharply up at him. “I still believe that no matter what kind of trouble she’s gotten into, she’s all right, if that’s what you mean.”
With all this emphasis on a woman’s intuition, especially that of a woman like Effie, who seems to be a nice person herself, we are supposed to accept her judgment of Brigid. Maybe that is the reason Hammett put this in the novel, as a way of letting us be seduced into trusting Brigid too. That is why it comes as a shock at the end of the movie when we find out that Brigid killed Miles Archer in an act of coldblooded, premeditated murder.
The movie ends with the police arresting Brigid and taking her away. But the novel continues long enough to rub Effie’s nose in it. The next morning, Spade goes to his office, where Effie is reading all about it in the newspaper. She asks if the story in the paper is correct. Spade assures her that it is.
The girl’s brown eyes were peculiarly enlarged and there was a queer twist to her mouth. She stood beside him, staring down at him. He raised his head, grinned, and said mockingly: “So much for your woman’s intuition.”
Her voice was queer as the expression on her face. “You did that, Sam, to her?”
He nodded. “Your Sam’s a detective.” He looked sharply at her. He put his arm around her waist, his hand on her hip. “She did kill Miles, angel,” he said gently, “offhand, like that.” He snapped the fingers of his other hand.
She escaped from his arm as if it had hurt her. “Don’t, please, don’t touch me,” she said brokenly. “I know—I know you’re right. You’re right. But don’t touch me now—not now.”
Boy, Effie’s got it bad! Could it be that she fell in love with Brigid? Maybe that would explain how her woman’s intuition could be so wrong. She was as susceptible to the lure of a femme fatale just as any man would be.
The Fall-Guy
Before Captain Jacobi died from the bullet wounds inflicted on him by Wilmer, he showed up at Spade’s office with the Maltese Falcon, since that was the address Brigid had given him. Spade arranges to have the falcon delivered to his apartment the next morning. And so it is that near the end of the movie, Sam Spade, Casper Gutman, Wilmer Cook, Joel Cairo, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy are all in Spade’s apartment waiting for the arrival of the black bird.
Spade says they can share the loot the Maltese Falcon will provide, but he needs a fall-guy, and he suggests Wilmer. Wilmer doesn’t like it, so Spade humiliates him again by taking his two .45s away from him. Gutman points out that if they turn Wilmer over to the police, he will incriminate the lot of them. Spade says that he knows District Attorney Bryan (John Hamilton), saying that he’ll be satisfied to have one man to convict. He won’t want to confuse the case by trying to convict several. So, Wilmer can talk all he wants, and it won’t make any difference. Even if he talks about the Maltese Falcon, Spade says, Bryan won’t care as long as he has Wilmer to prosecute. Gutman eventually agrees, but Wilmer manages to slip away later on.
When the black bird arrives, Gutman decides to scrape some of the black enamel off it. It is then he discovers that it is fake, made of lead, presumably by General Kemidov, to mislead anyone who might try to steal the real one. Gutman and Cairo decide to go to Istanbul and see if they can get the real Maltese Falcon from Kemidov. After they leave, Spade calls Tom and tells him about these characters so they can be arrested, which they are.
Spade had thought for a long time that Thursby killed Archer, but by this point in the story, he has figured out that Brigid killed him. He tells her that he now knows the truth, and he’s going to have her arrested for it.
However, Sam has no evidence that Brigid killed Miles. In fact, the reason he was so worried about finding a fall-guy was that the police think he killed Miles so he could marry Iva. As he says to Brigid in the novel, “You’re taking the fall. One of us has got to take it, after the talking those birds will do [referring to Gutman, Cairo, and Wilmer]. They’d hang me sure. You’re likely to get a better break.”
Later in their conversation in the novel, when she asks him to let her go, he refuses, saying, “I’m sunk if I haven’t got you to hand over to the police when they come. That’s the only thing that can keep me from going down with the others.”
Apparently, Sam thinks all he has to do is say, “She did it,” and that will be all the evidence needed for a conviction. While we are on the subject of evidence, I’m not sure what the police would have to arrest Gutman and Cairo on. Wilmer can be arrested for murder, sure enough, given that Spade has the two .45s Wilmer killed Thursby and Jacobi with, but what evidence is there that Gutman and Cairo are guilty of anything?
In any event, all this contradicts what Spade said earlier. When trying to get Gutman agree to let Wilmer be the fall-guy, he said that as long as District Attorney Bryan has one man to convict, he will be satisfied with that. After Gutman and Cairo leave, Spade called Tom so they could all be arrested. But that means that Bryan will have Wilmer to put on trial and not bother with the rest. Wilmer will end up being the fall-guy, just as Spade wanted originally. And that means that Bryan won’t bother with anyone else, including Spade and Brigid.
In the novel, Wilmer also kills Gutman. So, as far as Bryan will be concerned, Floyd Thursby killed Miles Archer, and then Wilmer killed Thursby, Captain Jacobi, and Casper Gutman.
In short, Spade does not need Brigid to take the fall, since Wilmer will be serving that function.
True Love
Now, it is easy enough to overlook the inconsistency regarding the need for Brigid to be a superfluous fall-guy when District Attorney Bryan will already have Wilmer, but when it comes to the idea that Sam and Brigid truly love each other, that is another thing altogether. The first several times I saw this movie, I did not give that serious countenance. I heard Sam saying something about love, but I figured it was all just so much hardboiled patter. Upon subsequent viewing, however, I have been forced to reach the conclusion that Sam and Brigid are sincere when they proclaim their love for each other. Only by examining the matter in some detail was I able to convince myself that it is supposed to be true love.
First of all, let’s ask what would have happened if Brigid did not love Sam. After Gutman and Cairo head back to the Alexandria hotel, something like the following dialogue might have taken place:
Brigid: Well, I think I just might book passage to Istanbul myself.
Sam: Hold on, sweetheart. I just realized that you killed Miles.
Brigid: That’s an interesting theory you have there. We’ll have to talk about it some time.
And with that, she walks out the door and closes it behind her.
But that is not what happens. Instead, Brigid confesses that she murdered Miles. Why would she do that? The only thing that would make sense is that she is in love with Sam and is hoping for his forgiveness.
She tells Sam that it was love at first sight: “From the very first instant I saw you, I knew.” When I heard her say that the first few times I watched this movie, I asked myself, how can she possibly expect Sam to believe that? But now I see that it makes sense. People who believe in true love, the kind that will last forever, often believe that marriages are made in Heaven, that there is just one person you were made for, and when you meet that person, you know it right away.
Sam replies, “Well, if you get a good break, you’ll be out of Tehachapi in twenty years, and you can come back to me then.”
Sounds as though he’s just being a smart-ass, right? By itself, we could believe it was a wisecrack. But when he repeats it, we have to believe he is serious. “If you’re a good girl,” he says a few minutes later, “you’ll be out in twenty years. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Then Sam goes into this lengthy explanation as to why he’s turning her in to the police. Essentially, it comes down to three reasons. The first is a point of professional duty. In the private-detective business, when your partner is killed, even if you didn’t like him, you’re supposed to do something about it.
The second is a matter of self-respect. Twice in the movie he says he won’t “play the sap” for her. In the novel, he makes seven references to playing the sap for her. He has to turn her in to preserve his manhood.
The third is that he wouldn’t be able to trust her. “Since I’ve got something on you,” he says to her, referring to the fact that he knows she murdered Miles, “I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t put a hole in me someday.”
The thing is, if Sam didn’t love her, he wouldn’t bother giving her all these reasons why he’s turning her in. He’d simply say, “You killed Miles in cold blood, and you’re not going to get away with it.”
Then Sam and Brigid get to the subject of love itself. “All we got is that maybe you love me, and maybe I love you,” Sam tells her.
“You know whether you love me or not,” Brigid replies.
“Maybe I do,” he replies. “I’ll have some rotten nights after I’ve sent you over, but that’ll pass.”
As noted above, I was never able to take any of this seriously at first. But now, for the reasons just given, I am convinced that Sam and Brigid truly loved each other, and that he really meant it when he said (twice!) that he would be waiting for her when she gets out in twenty years.
You see, if he has her sent to prison, he will be fulfilling his obligation to do something about the murder of his partner. Second, he will still have his dignity, knowing that he never played the sap for her. And finally, after she gets out of prison, he won’t have anything on her anymore, since she has already done her time, so there will be no danger of her shooting him. That means when she gets out in twenty years, they can get married and live happily ever after.
Yeah, right.
As mentioned previously, the novel ends back in Spade’s office. After Effie lets Sam know how hurt she is that he had Brigid arrested, she hears the corridor doorknob rattle. She goes into the outer office. When she returns, she says, “Iva is here.”
These are the last lines of the novel: “Spade, looking down at his desk, nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Yes,’ he said, and shivered. ‘Well, send her in.’”
Since he doesn’t know how to break it off with Iva, at least he can have sex with her while waiting for Brigid to get out of prison.