One Paragraph Movie Review: The Maltese Falcon

Three hundred and forty-fourth film: The Maltese Falcon, the 1941 crime thriller that is as noir as noir gets, as Bogey as Bogart gets, and as MacGuffin — the thing where everyone in a film wants a thing but the thing has no other purpose but to drive the plot — as MacGuffin gets. This movie is absolutely not about the titular object, but is absolutely about the lies, double-crosses, alliances and treachery that have the object as their object. The falcon — rumoured to be a gold bird encrusted with jewels and encased in black enamel, is just the stakes, and the rest is threads, shade, twists, and tea. Mary Astor’s femme fatale is matronly on purpose to show us what a good liar she is, Sydney Greenstreet is the most affable and fancy big crime boss ever, and Peter Lorre is as broad-eyed and spooky-voiced as he can be, getting slapped a lot and, despite instruction from Bogart’s Sam Spade, neither taking it nor liking it A lot of Bogart movies and noir crime movies can feel pretty samey, but I can acknowledge that this one did it first-ish and best-ish. Three and a half extremely reliable receptionists out of five.