The Maltese Falcon (1931)

A private detective becomes caught up with a shady group scheming to steal a jewel encrusted falcon statuette worth millions.

It is hard not to compare this film with the 1941 masterpiece, especially since the major beats of the story are the same. The tone, however, is quite different. Also, the story makes sense. While John Huston wrapped every character’s motivation in mystery, director Roy Del Ruth was more respectful to his short attention span audience.

Ricardo Cortez’ Sam Spade is a smarmy womanizer in fancy suits compared to Bogart’s world-weary detective. While Bogart seldom cracked a smile, the smirk on Cortez’ face did not disappear for more than a moment. Spade approached every woman with an uncomfortably handsy eagerness. The relationship with Archer’s wife is an ongoing affair rather than a regrettable past indiscretion. And then there is how he behaved towards his secretary.

Lost in the mix is how the film features three big female stars of the era: Bebe Daniels as our femme fatale, Una Merkle as Sam’s secretary, and Thelma Todd as the bitter Mrs. Archer. While these names may not be familiar to the casual film fan, they were pretty big names in their day.

Daniels was a bona-fide leading lady in her day, taking top billing here, but did very little post 1940. Merkle, quite charming in her small role, had a long film and TV career but never seemed to graduate to leading lady. And Todd was a successful comedian, appeared in two Marx Brothers films, and teamed with Patsy Kelly for many successful shorts. Murdered by criminal elements before her 30th birthday, the LAPD did a thorough “nothing to see here” investigation and ruled it a suicide.

Hey, look, it’s Dwight Frye as Wilmer. You remember, Renfield. None of the other male actors had noteworthy careers.

The Maltese Falcon started out pretty rough. Early talkies have a shouty quality and the dialog was pretty stilted, but I quickly got used to it. I did find it annoying that our three ladies looked too much alike. I was sometimes unsure which pretty petite blonde I was looking at. In the final analysis, I cannot overstate how superior the remake is over this. Just about every aspect of film making is markedly better. But that’s not to say the original isn’t interesting in its own right. Fans of the latter should see it. For everyone else, AMRU 3.