Screenshot for a Fortnight: "THE MALTESE FALCON" (1941) (28 December 2020-10 January 2021)

 

Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

When Dashiell (dash-EEL) Hammett sat down to write what would become the ur-detective novel, The Maltese Falcon, he only intended to write a longer version of the pulp magazine detective stories he had been writing and publishing for years.  In fact, many elements of the novel were reworkings of stories he published in Black Mask in 1925.  The Maltese Falcon was serialized in Black Mask in 1929 and published in hardcover in 1930.  Through his stories and ultimately through The Maltese Falcon, Hammett created not only the mold for the hardboiled detective in Sam Spade but helped create and then popularize an entire genre of fiction.

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Cinematographer Arthur Edeson had been a founding member of the American Society of Cinematographers in 1919.  By the time he began work on The Maltese Falcon he had filmed 116 movies, including such classics as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); The Big Trail (1930), the first widescreen movie ever made; Frankenstein (1931); Waterloo Bridge (1931); The Invisible Man (1933); and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).  In stark contrast, the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon was screenwriter John Huston's directorial debut.

Ordinarily, a cinematographer of Edeson's stature should have been given broad discretion to set up shots and otherwise give wise counsel to the neophyte.  But Huston arrived on the first day of filming with storyboards for the entire film, including well-thought-out camera positions and angles.  Edeson, I am sure, did give wise counsel to the neophyte.  But Huston was his own uncredited Director of Photography.

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What do Jezebel (1938), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Juarez (1939), Sergeant York (1941), High Sierra (1941), and Three Strangers (1946) have in common?  John Huston wrote their screenplays but didn't direct.  Movies he both wrote and directed include The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), and The African Queen (1951).

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And who can forget John Huston's chilling performance as Noah Cross in Chinatown (1974)?

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Like his character Rick Blaine in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart was a man not easily impressed.  But John Huston impressed the hell out of him.  He considered Huston a genius.  (He was not alone in his assessment.)  He thought Huston's script and finished film of The Maltese Falcon were masterpieces.  Bogart would have gone, and did go, anywhere anytime to make a movie with Huston.

Sometimes movie breakouts come piecemeal in two or more roles.  That was certainly the case with Humphrey Bogart.  His breakout happened over the course of four roles—Duke Mantee in the film adaptation of Robert Sherwood's play, The Petrified Forest (1936); the complicated gangster "Mad Dog" Roy Earle in High Sierra (1941); Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon; and Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942).

But Bogart was particularly proud of The Maltese Falcon.  (Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and Sidney Greenstreet reprised their roles in a radio play of The Maltese Falcon in 1943 for the Screen Guild Theatre.) And he never quite got over the wonder and exhilaration that had happened in the making of it.  For the next (and last) fifteen years of his life, he was on the lookout for some project on which he might work with Huston that would recapture that magic in a bottle.  He never found it.

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Peter Lorre was an international star by the time John Huston chose him to play Joel Cairo.  Lorre had earned high praise for his performance as the child-killer Hans Beckert in Fritz Lang's M (1931) and for the role that introduced him to English-speaking audiences, the henchman Abbott in Alfred Hitchcock's original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).

Bogart had the utmost respect for Lorre as an actor.  And the two hit it off right away.  In fact Bogart, Huston, and Lorre all became fast friends.  Huston and Lorre met Bogie's two chief qualifications for his pals—they drank hard and they weren't boring.

C: Arthur Edeson  D: John Huston