I’ve noted more than once how The Maltese Falcon was my paternal grandfather’s favorite film. It’s essentially the prototypical film noir, a genre involving a lot of shifty people and often involving a murder investigation. Indeed, Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade is having an affair with his partner’s wife, but he likewise is constantly trying to avoid that woman. That he is investigating his partner’s murder is another thing, but it is likewise a little uncertain if Sam even liked his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). Sure, there’s a reason for it in the end, but as I always try to do, when I am writing up a film for the second or third time, I want to find something new to say. I said a lot about how this is a work of noir when I covered it for the AFI Countdown back in 2018.
So, here’s a question: how exactly did the title object get involved in a film noir murder mystery?
Let’s set aside the obvious first: the Maltese Falcon is an object of desire for a group of shifty weirdos who are all looking for this supposedly legendary artifact that, if real, would be worth more wealth than any of them can imagine. It’s a McGuffin, a plot device where it doesn’t really matter what it is or what it does. Everyone just wants it for some reason, and that desire drives the plot. Many films use McGuffins, and there’s even an argument to be made that R2-D2 in the original Star Wars is a MccGuffin, albeit one that is if not self-aware, than at least not some inert object waiting for someone to pick it up. But here, there’s this bird statue, allegedly made of all kinds of valuable jewels underneath a cover that was designed to hide its true value, and in the end, it’s actually worthless. If there is a real Maltese Falcon out there, no one in this film is going to find it.
But the more I think about it, the more than the Maltese Falcon itself just seems kinda weird to include in a detective story. I know Sam Spade was originally created by writer Dashiell Hammett for a novel of the same name, a novel that was originally serialized in a magazine. Something like that suggests to me that Hammett’s work was considered “pulp” back in the day, and while the detective story was certainly considered “pulp,” it was also (I think) a lot more grounded as a subject. Leave the lost artifacts to the archeologist adventurer or the horror story. Private eyes deal in the hear and now. Why would Sam Spade be involved in the hunt for a bird statue that was somewhat based on actual history, though from what I can see, the real world Maltese Falcon was an annual tribute of a live bird from an order of knights to some European monarchy. I could be wrong there, and I don’t much feel like investigating that any further. For one thing, I don’t need to. For another, it doesn’t matter.
Essentially, the Maltese Falcon doesn’t need to be anything more than a very valuable something-or-other that would drive eccentric people with more money than morality to go looking for it, and maybe they commit an act of homicide along the way. Sam Spade is many things, but I think it’s safe to say he isn’t greedy. Sure, he plays along when it comes to asking for money, but he also has an honor code. The woman eventually revealed to be Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) hires him at one rate, and when the incredibly suspicious-looking Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) shows up with an offer for more money, Spade essentially turns it down because he’s already got a client. True, he knows full well his client is a liar many times over, but that is beside the point. Brigid hired him, so Joel Cairo will not be able to simply buy Sam off.
And for me, that is what sets Sam apart from Brigid, Joel Cairo, or the fat man Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). Sam is not a moral paragon, but this is noir, so chances are good nobody is. The closest you come to those types are minor characters given very little personality, most notably Sam’s secretary Effie (Lee Patrick), a woman whose sole purpose seems to be to help Sam in any way he asks of her. Cairo is shifty and the only thing that doesn’t make him dangerous is Sam is clearly smarter and tougher than he is, Gutman is a man behind the curtain but he’s more than willing to toss an associate under the bus to save his own skin, and while Sam may be in love with Brigid, he knows full well he can’t trust her, especially as she is the killer he’s spent the whole film actually looking for. Sam doesn’t care about the Falcon. It’s not even clear if he believes the story Gutman says is true. He never really expresses desire to obtain the thing, and the only reason he even has it is pure happenstance when a dying sea captain stumbles into his office and hands it over.
Yeah, Sam doesn’t really find it. Then again, since it is a fake, no one does.
Instead, the Falcon is, as Sam says in the end “the stuff that dreams are made of.” Look at the people searching for this thing. Gutman at least appears to already be a very wealthy man, and if these people are globetrotting all over to try and find this valuable statue that may or may not exist, then none of them must be hurting too much for money. This statue is something that they want and must have. It could be any object, being it is a McGuffin and all, but it just so happened to take the form of a medieval bird statue. What the Falcon was is less important than what it drives people to do, namely murder people. Sure, the story behind it makes it stick out a bit, but that’s all.
And then in comes Sam Spade, described by Hammett in his novel as looking like a “blonde Satan,” and while that description doesn’t sound at all like Humphrey Bogart, it sure does perhaps fit Sam’s role in the story. Less in that he himself is tempting people, but more like he is there to catch some sinners and see to it they get punished. He certainly does that. But most importantly, Sam lays it out for Brigid in the end that he essentially has a professional code. Much of it was implied by his dealings with Cairo, pathetic gunman Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr), and Gutman. But there’s the other part, how a man in his line of work can’t let the murder of his partner go unsolved because, quite frankly, it’s bad for business. Whether he likes Miles or not, Sam needs to find the murderer himself if he wants to maintain his business reputation.
And if his primary goal during this whole mess was to solve a murder to keep his business afloat, I think that says everything I need to know about whether or not Sam was counting on those riches coming through.
NEXT: Maybe Sam Spade’s right and there’s more to life than just having more. That may be the lesson CC Baxter needs to learn in the next installment of this series, 1960’s The Apartment.
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