![]() ![]() John Huston would return to the theme of man’s greed throughout his career.īogart took on literature’s other great private dick, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946) five years later. Lauded upon publication for its lean prose and how it captured the sex and violence of urban America, The Maltese Falcon has soared to greater critical heights with each passing decade. Shot to exaggerate the shadows, the film’s seedy nocturnal world was typical of the new cycle of urban crime thrillers that became known as film noir. In The Maltese Falcon, Hammett took the detective out of the drawing room, dumped him in a dark alley and created an American classic in the process. He is matched by colourful turns from Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, playing the avaricious figures who cross Spade’s path in the hunt for a priceless gold statuette. After playing low-life gangsters for a decade, Humphrey Bogart slipped into the shoes of anti-hero Samuel Spade and firmly established the screen archetype of the wise-talking private detective. Hollywood had already made two lukewarm attempts to film Dashiell Hammett’s story, but in 1941 everything fell into place and a film classic was produced. James Naremore, Literature/Film Quarterly, 1973 What appealed to Huston in The Maltese Falcon was the complex predicament of its protagonist, detective Sam Spade. “Huston made from Falcon one of the classics of dark cinema, a film adaptation that is not only ‘faithful’ but also constitutive of his own signature.” ![]()
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