Book and Movie Review: The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

[inverarity]

One-line summary: The classic hard-boiled detective tale: Sam Spade works the streets of San Francisco on a hunt for a priceless artifact and the murderer who killed his partner.

Comments

[ardys_the_ghoul]

Hey, I've actually read this book!

I took a class a year or two ago on the "Hard-Boiled Detective"--and, funnily enough, the professor who ran the class, an expert on the genre, absolutely hates this book. Evidently, he was forced to put it on the reading list by the head of the English department.

I don't know if it's his opinion rubbing off on me, but while I enjoyed this book to a certain extent, I definitely prefer Chandler's The Long Goodbye--I think it's just better written.

It's hard for me to get past the fact that the Falcon itself, the very thing the book is named for, is really just an overwrought MacGuffin, and in the end it isn't even real. (My reaction: "Okay, so, what was the point of this exercise?")

Although, I have to say, I certainly didn't hate this book. I still have a copy of it somewhere. And looking at it simply as a "classic," I'm glad I read it.

[fpb]

It's been a long time since I read them, but I remember admiring Hamnett's novels on a literary level: they were more profound, in my view, and better written, than any other detective stories I'd ever read - and I am a detective story fan from my teens. To me they seemed like literature, rather than genre literature - like the difference between Joseph Conrad and the Hornblower books, or between Stevenson and any kind of ordinary adventure yarn. I thought however that the best was The Glass Key, and I recommend that. As for the movie, I thought that the really vital element of it was what Mary Astor - who, as a heartless and abusive seducer, was playing herself - and Humphrey Bogart brought to it. I thought and still think that Bogart's admission that he may well be in love with her, but still has to send her to the chair for any amount of good reasons, was one of the most awesome pieces of acting I ever saw: you could see the man dying on screen in front of you. And where Hammett - and not only Hammett, but that whole

[anonymous]

"Hard-Boiled is the granddaddy of Grimdark"

In the Hard Boiled-ness of 1930's America, there is only...double-crosses?

I've actually managed to avoid pop-cultural osmosis spoilers for this one, so I guess I'll have to check it out.

-TealTerror

[anonymous]

Ah, the Maltese Falcon. Recommended, but then I have an obvious weakness for "femme fatales and scheming and double-crosses and cool one-liners". :)

I personally think Chandler is the better writer, (The Big Sleep is basically *the* noir story, even though my favourite of him is the bitter and vicious The Long Goodbye, followed by the reckoning with Hollywood that is The Little Sister), but the Maltese Falcon has its place too, definitely.

The reason this still is worth reading, even if you've read and seen other works of the Noir genre, is IMO the Flitcraft parable. It's in one short scene the entire genre summarised, basically the heart of this and any noir story, and offers the key to Spade's character (and in other ways to Brigid's, because she fails to understand what Spade is telling her). It's a quite remarkable piece on its own, beyond the murder/mystery aspect of the story.

- Sesc