Thanks go out to my friend Larissa who provided me with the opportunity to watch The Maltese Falcon – a movie I’ve known only by reputation and not by… anything else you could know a movie by. I only had a basic understanding of what the movie was about, and after watching it, I know just as much now as I did before.
The Maltese Falcon is incredibly dialog heavy. I’m guessing that, due to more stringent content restrictions at the time (or perhaps technical limitations), they couldn’t actually SHOW much of the gritty content that would have made this plot of intrigue, betrayal, and greed more coherent. As it was, they had to rely on a lot of dialog that both Larissa and I found difficult to follow.
I’m sure that difficult was due ENTIRELY to the complexity of the plot and had nothing at ALL to do with the fact that we were both sugar-crashing after eating a huge ice cream sundae.
Objects in camera are tastier than they appear.
I saw Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca and actually kinda hated him there – he’s too wooden to be a convincing romantic lead. However, as unethical detective Sam Spade, Bogart shows that he has a lot more range as an actor that I gave him credit for. He KILLS the part.
(Just for fun, if you want to play The Maltese Falcon drinking game, simply down a shot every time Sam Spade makes a phone call. You’ll be smashed before intermission.)
Also, Peter Lorre is in the film, and Peter Lorre makes EVERYTHING better. He’s so good at these sniveling, conniving characters that you just love to hate him… or hate to love him. Either way, you feel dirty and never want to be clean again.
I feel about The Maltese Falcon the same way I felt after watching Ghajini – I don’t quite know what I saw, and I’m not even sure I liked it, but I’m pretty sure I want more of it. I’m drawn to the old-school, hard-boiled detective model, and I saw a lot in The Maltese Falcon to like. Character motivations are complex, and, sometimes, I kinda dig a story where NO ONE is likeable, which is certainly the case here. Moral ambiguity in fiction is like cheesecake – delicious, sinfully rich and probably really bad for you.
2 comments:
Ha - I like how you pointed out that the "obectS" in the photo are tastier than they appear - feeling pretty good about yourself, eh? ;-)
You about summed up my feelings on this movie too, except that I don't want more - I think the thing we felt differently about that makes this differing feeling is the characters. You appreciated the ambiguity. I felt, "I don't care at all about these characters - they've given me no reason at all to care." Thus, I don't care to go back for more to truly understand what is going on.
I'm glad I saw the movie, though and I do see why it was so great for the time. And I do think that spending most of my energy fighting off the sugar coma may have been part of my comprehension problem...At least I had some cheese fries to absorb the sugar though, right?
Okay, now this is the second time I've seen that picture of you eating ice cream.
I giggled out loud BOTH times.
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