Latest / All The Right Movies / The Maltese Falcon (1941) | Ep. 72 - Part 1

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The Maltese Falcon (1941) | Ep. 72 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

• 0:06
  Who killed Thursday? I don't know.
• 0:08
  Perhaps you don't. But you can make an excellent
• 0:10
  guess. My guess might be excellent, or
• 0:12
  it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children
• 0:15
  dippy enough to make guesses in front of a District Attorney and
• 0:17
  an assistant District Attorney and a stenographer.
• 0:19
  Why shouldn't you if you have nothing to conceal?
• 0:21
  Everybody has something to conceal.
• 0:23
  I'm a sworn officer of the law 24 hours a day, and neither
• 0:27
  formality nor informality justifies you withholding
• 0:30
  evidence of crime for me, except of course, on constitutional
• 0:33
  grounds. Now both you and the police have
• 0:35
  as much as accused me of being mixed up in the other night's
• 0:37
  murderers. Well, I've had trouble with both
• 0:39
  of you before, and as far as I can see, my best chance of
• 0:42
  clearing myself or the trouble you're trying to make for me is
• 0:44
  by bringing in the murderers all tied up, and the only chance
• 0:47
  I've got of catching them and tying them up and bringing them
• 0:49
  in. Is by staying as far away as
• 0:51
  possible from you and the police because you'd only gum up the
• 0:53
  works? You're getting this all right,
• 0:54
  son. Or am I going too fast for you?
• 0:57
  When his partner is murdered, San Francisco Private Eye Sam
• 1:00
  Spade finds himself drawn or a deadly hunt for a priceless dual
• 1:04
  encrusted statue. Double crosses, dames and
• 1:07
  desperate men conspire against him as he navigates a labyrinth
• 1:10
  of lies where everyone has an angle and no one can be trusted.
• 1:13
  John Houston's The Maltese Falcon rewrote the rules of
• 1:16
  cinema in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart delivering one of the
• 1:19
  most iconic performances in movie history.
• 1:22
  This hard boiled masterpiece practically invented film noir
• 1:25
  and launched a legend. My name is Luke and the two
• 1:28
  fellows with me who don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble are
• 1:31
  Westy. What?
• 1:32
  Do you want me to do learn to stutter?
• 1:34
  And Matt, when you're slapped, you'll take it and like it.
• 1:37
  All right, movies haven't lived a good life.
• 1:39
  We've been bad. Worse than you could know.
• 2:00
  Hi everyone, welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast on
• 2:03
  classic and hit films that dreams are made of.
• 2:06
  We're telling the story of Hollywood one film at a time,
• 2:09
  and we're dust enough our fedoras for this one.
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  It's 1941. It's the granddaddy of film
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  noir, bogey John Houston, and one very big bundle.
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  It's The Maltese Falcon. I'm glad it's the Maltese Falcon
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  and not 1941. That's come in two weeks time,
• 2:28
  yes. It is geared up for that one.
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  Right, well, this was my choice, so I think I'd better explain
• 2:33
  myself. Why do we want to talk about
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  Maltese Falcon? Something needs explaining here.
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  Yes it does. A lot of explanations are
• 2:40
  needed. Yes, we don't need any excuse to
• 2:43
  talk about this film. I have been a lover of the Nua
• 2:47
  genre for a long time. I think I was in love with the
• 2:49
  idea of it first without having much to do with it.
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  Because it just sounds sexy, doesn't it?
• 2:54
  It does. Well, it is.
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  It is shadows and shadowy figures, dams and damsels in
• 2:59
  distress, heroes as crooked as the villains.
• 3:02
  I saw a few in the genre before I got round to this one, I think
• 3:05
  in my mid 20s, because it just seems so larger than life.
• 3:09
  It just seemed too much to tackle.
• 3:11
  Yeah, exactly. But it is larger than life.
• 3:13
  I mean, this film speaks for itself and it's placed in
• 3:16
  history. It's been cemented for decades
• 3:18
  and decades. Yeah, it has.
• 3:20
  Yeah, for me, I'm spellbound by Bogey's performance.
• 3:23
  There's a reason he's such a legend and I can't believe it's
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  John Houston's debut as well as a director.
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  Ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
• 3:30
  Stupid. And I absolutely love love love
• 3:33
  Peter Lorre as Cairo. Yeah, he's hilarious.
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  Yeah. He's obvious it's all compacted
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  in this tight 100 minutes and for around 95 of those I'm
• 3:43
  always playing catch up with the plot.
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  I don't know what's happening. No.
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  Incredible performances, incredible dialogue, incredible
• 3:50
  film. Wesley, what's your history with
• 3:53
  Sam Spade and the Blackbird? It's a complicated one and it's
• 3:56
  a complicated film. This is one that I was like when
• 4:00
  it was on the radar. I've got a student loan when I
• 4:02
  was in uni and I was like, I'm getting the classics.
• 4:04
  You know, when you go in and it was like you're going to
• 4:06
  Waterstones and you're like, I'm going to buy like Pride and
• 4:08
  Prejudice and I'm going to read it.
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  I'm in that kind of mood. I'm going to get the classics.
• 4:11
  I'm getting Frankenstein, fuck it.
• 4:13
  And it was like, I'm getting the classic.
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  There was this, there was Casablanca, the Treasure, Sierra
• 4:18
  Madre and Universal Soldier, obviously.
• 4:20
  So I've got all them on DVD of course.
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  Keep it real, Westy. Exactly and this just sat on me
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  shelf for what must have been about a year and a half still
• 4:31
  had the cellophane on it and like you look, it was just too
• 4:34
  big of a deal Like what if I don't like it because it's so
• 4:38
  big? And what if I don't get it?
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  What if I don't understand it? So it was just like on the shelf
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  is almost like the Falcon itself is just like a state assemble,
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  much like your bookshelf, Luke, which is unread.
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  It's true. It's.
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  Very true. So it had that kind of state,
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  the symbol, and then I watched it and I fell asleep, and then I
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  watched it again and I got half an hour in and I couldn't
• 5:00
  connect, I couldn't clang onto it.
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  I just couldn't clip onto it at all.
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  It took ages and ages of really trying because I'd read so much
• 5:08
  about it. I was just so into film at that
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  point. I was halfway through uni
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  studying film, wanting to know everything about it, and it was
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  just overwhelming because I couldn't keep up with it.
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  And it was just one of them films that took a long time and
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  a lot of patience. And only now, kind of recently,
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  I would say the last five years, literally just getting a hold of
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  it and going right. I can do this now.
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  I trust myself that I know enough about this now that I can
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  do it. You know, it's such a deep film,
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  it's so linear, it's so fast. It's just a ridiculous amount of
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  confidence flying all the way through this and a ridiculous
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  amount of of masculine energy overflowing out of all of it.
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  And all of the female characters look the same.
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  They've all been kind of made-up the same of the same outfits on.
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  And I'm like, who's who? What's what?
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  She's got 3 fucking names. Who's this guy over here?
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  What's going on over there? So I was like, right, we're just
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  getting it. We've locked it down.
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  I've got me notes. We're going to make perfect
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  sense of the Maltese Falcon for anyone who is confused.
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  I think this is a one stop shop. Let's get into it.
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  Let's iron out all these creases and let's get this done.
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  Let's make no promises though, Westie.
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  Well, it is for me. It's as.
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  It's as clear as it can be for. Me.
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  Up to now. Love it.
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  This might confuse things, I don't know.
• 6:20
  OK, but do you like to talk or are you a close mouth man?
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  I'm also a close mouth man, you know me.
• 6:26
  Yes, I do. Get yourself into trouble.
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  Otherwise, no, this one, I mean, I'm always happy to go further
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  and further back with these episodes.
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  And you come back to this film and you go, is this where all
• 6:36
  this started? Fast Talk and private detectives
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  and trilbies where it was women pretending to be victims in the
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  North. And it's not because obviously
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  there's an adaptation in the 30s.
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  There's others before they said half some of these elements.
• 6:48
  We'll talk about that. Yeah.
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  But this is the one that finesses all those elements and
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  into a finished product unlike anything else that had been seen
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  up to that point. But I think the best thing about
• 6:57
  this is it doesn't feel like it's a history lesson.
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  It's not a film you watch that's kind of behind glass.
• 7:03
  It's got a Pierce to it that's very contemporary.
• 7:05
  It's got an edge to it that's very contemporary.
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  And then you add in those performances of Beauregard and
• 7:10
  Green Street and Laurie, and you've got something that is
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  just internally iconic and something we really just need to
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  cover and try to explain somehow.
• 7:18
  Try to keep. Try yeah.
• 7:20
  Yeah. Written and directed by John
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  Houston and based on the 1930 novel of the same name by
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  Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falkland was produced by Henry
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  Blank and Hal B Wallace for Warner Brothers and released in
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  New York on the 3rd of October 1941.
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  Shot exclusively at Burbank Studios in LA, it stars Humphrey
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  Bogart as Sam spade, Mary Astor as Bridget O'Shaughnessy, Sydney
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  Green St. as Casper Gutman with Peter lorre, Alicia cook,
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  Junior, Gladys George and Lee Patrick in supporting roles.
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  We're headed to the City by the Bay for the opening scene of The
• 7:51
  Maltese Falcon. Let's go the beginning.
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  The opening of the film gives us a back story to the fabled
• 8:02
  Blackbird of the title, and then we're catapulted to modern times
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  and the office of private detective Sam Spade and Miles
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  Archer. Matt, you're starting us off.
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  I mean, it doesn't mess about, does it?
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  I mean this like, take a breath, here we go.
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  You know, it doesn't take it's time to get you that you're
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  straight in. This is Sam's world.
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  This is where he fits in, and he fits in so easily.
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  He's just Lord and master of everything here.
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  Just rolling that cigarette, so unflappable.
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  Whenever he says the woman waiting from is a knockout,
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  she's so excited by it. But he's just so casual.
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  Sure in every darling, sure in that's all he does.
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  Doesn't get over excited. No particular emotion about this
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  huge story that she starts to lay out in front of him and it's
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  just this huge cynical streak that he has which will rear its
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  head throughout the film when she sees Thirsty has a wife and
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  three children in England. He usually do.
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  They're not always in England. Great dialogue.
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  So straight away you know where you are with Sam.
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  But that cool that he has, that is in complete contrast to
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  Miles. I mean, he's like a dog in heat
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  Dog, isn't. He is.
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  You. Know his eyes, like, bulging out
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  of his head, like pulling faces behind, leaning over the desk to
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  water straight in there, telling that he'll look after this case
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  himself. You don't have to look for me.
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  I'll see you. All right, You just say, all
• 9:18
  right, calm down. Like, don't make it that
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  obvious. Play cool.
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  Yeah. So I think everything this film
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  is and really everything this genre is really the torn, the
• 9:28
  setup of the narrative. It's all in here.
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  It's amazing. I mean, it's just like opening
• 9:32
  scene in Mystery Double Cross. Immediately the backdrop.
• 9:37
  That's a map painting of the Golden Gate Bridge.
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  I mean, it's seamless. It looks like it was shot on
• 9:41
  location. It does, yeah.
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  How's that fight? It does, yeah.
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  It's going back to the beginning for a moment.
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  The opening crawl about the Knights Templars was entirely
• 9:50
  fictional. It was included late in the day
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  at the insistence of studio head Jack Warner.
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  He wanted the historical narrative to start things off,
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  to make the plot less confusing. That's ridiculous.
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  I think it makes It even makes. It more confusing.
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  Isn't, Yeah. Because you've got one eye on
• 10:04
  Malta, Charles the 5th of Spin. What?
• 10:07
  Yeah. When's Charles the 5th going to
• 10:10
  turn up? Yeah, exactly.
• 10:13
  Yeah, very confusing. But I mean, an incredible
• 10:16
  opening scene in that Archer comes across hot and heavy, like
• 10:19
  you were seeing Matt laying it on real thick about Wandley.
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  And I think it's one of the most shock and rogue poles that I've
• 10:25
  ever seen because it happened so fast.
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  Not 3 minutes after his introduction, Miles Archer is
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  out of the picture, plugged in the goodbye and unknown
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  assailant. Now frame is just dark enough to
• 10:38
  hide the fact that it was probably shot in a garden lot in
• 10:40
  Burbank somewhere. Just rolls down the hill.
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  And it just throws everything in the turmoil immediately, not
• 10:51
  least because at this point, I'm thinking, was that the fella
• 10:54
  from the last scene? Was that.
• 10:55
  Yeah, Partner. I'm not too sure, Yeah.
• 10:58
  You had 45 seconds to get a good look and then that he's dead.
• 11:02
  In black and white as well. And a wide, wide lens from the
• 11:05
  back of the room. In the move, which would become
• 11:09
  a hallmark of the genre, almost every scene features the
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  protagonist Sam Spade, and the only scene waiters and feature
• 11:14
  is this one where Miles get shot in.
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  The studio insisted the scene was included for clarity, but
• 11:19
  Houston thought that it didn't work aesthetically.
• 11:21
  Yeah, I suppose it's kind of like a visual representation of
• 11:24
  what the film is ultimately about.
• 11:27
  We don't know who killed Miles until the very end.
• 11:29
  And I think like from the studio's point of view, we need
• 11:32
  to see that. We need to have that in our head
• 11:34
  as we go through the film. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:36
  I love how we're 5 minutes in the film in the studios notes
• 11:38
  are already. This is too confusing.
• 11:41
  You just made it clear you're only 5 minutes in.
• 11:43
  Yeah. Opening credits?
• 11:45
  That's too confusing. But Sam couldn't be more laid
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  back when he gets the news over the telephone.
• 11:50
  Miles Archer did. Where?
• 11:52
  That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:55
  Nothing in the way of emotion. Has he got anything to hide
• 11:57
  here? Of course he bloody does.
• 11:59
  But then he calls up Effie, his secretary, to give her the news.
• 12:02
  Now don't get excited. Yes, and break the news to IVA
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  Archer's wife and instructs her. Keep her away from me.
• 12:08
  Great dialogue. Things are just much more
• 12:11
  complicated than we first thought.
• 12:13
  And this is what, 6 minutes in? Before that, I mean, from that
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  sequence, I just love the way that shot, the way it holds off
• 12:21
  the character and just holds on the phone.
• 12:23
  And that hadn't been done before.
• 12:25
  It was kind of like, well, you're just hearing the
• 12:27
  dialogue. It's not on him, like, what's
• 12:29
  going on? And I think that just really
• 12:30
  adds to the mystery of the film and further into the mystery.
• 12:34
  I mean, Sam then turns up in a taxi to a crime scene and then
• 12:37
  goes straight to the cup. The cups.
• 12:38
  I didn't know who you were there for a second.
• 12:40
  Yeah. Go straight through with Sam
• 12:41
  Spades. You know, he's got a little bit
• 12:43
  of punch and this scene we're introduced to Ward Bond, who's
• 12:46
  absolutely amazing in everything.
• 12:48
  I mean, when I was Burt and It's a Wonderful Life and Captain
• 12:50
  Reverend Samuel Johnson dating in The Searchers.
• 12:53
  Absolutely. Brilliant.
• 12:55
  But he's great in this. I love how it's just straight to
• 12:57
  the point. The use of depth in these frames
• 13:00
  is unbelievable. And 137 ratio, which is kind of
• 13:03
  like a four 3. So it's pretty just on square as
• 13:05
  it used to be then. But there's so much going on in
• 13:08
  that where it's just Sam in the foreground, that broken fence,
• 13:11
  Miles dead and then a little bit of rubble and then a full
• 13:14
  cityscape in the background. It just shows this real level of
• 13:17
  kind of yeah, it's it's like the the equivalent of widescreen,
• 13:20
  but just turning it the other way and pushing it back in the
• 13:22
  frame. So it's it's really exciting to
• 13:25
  watch that type of thing. But then the dialogue comes in
• 13:27
  and it's just 100 mile an hour. It's just really it's going on.
• 13:30
  It's a Webley force 45 automatic eight shots.
• 13:32
  Don't make them anymore. How many got other?
• 13:33
  What? What are you talking about?
• 13:38
  And there's so much going on here.
• 13:39
  I mean, he sussed it out just by kicking the fence.
• 13:41
  He goes, he was standing here and he shot him there and he
• 13:43
  fell over there. Yeah.
• 13:44
  When he's coat was buttoned and he didn't have his gun out of
• 13:45
  his holster. And it's not until the last 7
• 13:48
  minutes of the film that this dialogue comes back and you go,
• 13:51
  oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why in his head all
• 13:53
  the time, he's just this human computer.
• 13:56
  He's just a lie detector. He's just the perfect detective
• 13:59
  and doesn't let anyone get close to him.
• 14:00
  I think he's the loneliest man in the history of cinema.
• 14:03
  And this whole sequence just really shows that because it
• 14:06
  hits home when it's just obviously doesn't.
• 14:08
  Like Miles. He never did.
• 14:10
  He must have some good in him. He's like, yeah, he must have.
• 14:12
  And then just walks away and he's like, don't grab me, Tom.
• 14:14
  Don't have me, Tom. Just talking to him like calm
• 14:18
  down some. He's just this kind of boiling
• 14:20
  pot of just aggression and needs to get everything solved, even
• 14:23
  when there's nothing that he necessarily wants to solve.
• 14:26
  So under that great introduction to the character and a great
• 14:28
  introduction I think, to the the environment that we're going to
• 14:31
  be in, the darkness, the mystery, and it just rolls from
• 14:34
  here. It certainly does, yes.
• 14:36
  And as we're at this point in the film right at the start, I
• 14:38
  think it's fitting that we break and have our first question from
• 14:42
  an ATRM patron. Right.
• 14:43
  Yeah. Nice okie dokie.
• 14:45
  And that's one of the benefits of signing up to be an ATRM
• 14:47
  patron. You ask us questions for the
• 14:49
  film that we're talking about. Our first one comes from Michael
• 14:52
  Smith. Hi, Michael.
• 14:54
  Hi, Michael. He says hi guys.
• 14:56
  I'm ashamed to say that I didn't watch this until you announced
• 14:59
  it on your pod, but it is magnificent.
• 15:01
  It certainly is that, Michael. Yeah, fair enough.
• 15:03
  Said in the Maltese folk. And Miles Archer is bumped off
• 15:06
  so early we barely have time to check his ID.
• 15:08
  While his death is the engine of the plot, it makes him one of
• 15:11
  the most thankless characters in noir.
• 15:13
  This got me thinking about the Archer effect.
• 15:15
  He's coined a new turn here, which is wonderful.
• 15:18
  OK, it's Michael, he says. Which movie character was killed
• 15:21
  off far too early, leaving you want to see more of them.
• 15:23
  Are there any other films where the sacrificial lamb was
• 15:26
  actually more interesting than the survivors?
• 15:27
  He says Drew Barrymore in Scream comes to mind for him.
• 15:30
  That's. A.
• 15:31
  Good one. That is a good one.
• 15:33
  Yes, Matt, have you knew the good ones?
• 15:36
  I've got 2, I think Blake in 1979, the source was set off for
• 15:41
  George Mackay because it's his brother who they're trying to
• 15:43
  get in contact with. So you think, oh, he's going to
• 15:45
  survive because he's going to meet up his brother.
• 15:47
  He doesn't. He gets killed pretty early in a
• 15:48
  really shocking manner as well. You don't see that coming.
• 15:51
  And then the other one fully enough.
• 15:52
  We're going to be talking about this film pretty soon.
• 15:55
  Julianne Moore in Children of Men, you think, well that's
• 15:57
  true, she's obviously going to be huge in this film when she
• 16:00
  gets wiped out, and that you do not see that coming whatsoever.
• 16:03
  Not at all. Excellent.
• 16:04
  Yeah. What about you, Westie?
• 16:06
  Any goodness? 4, of course.
• 16:09
  Double it up. Double it up.
• 16:10
  Yeah, it's good. To how many you got?
• 16:12
  6, I will come back with 12, I think.
• 16:16
  The character of Luke, played by Ryan Gosling and Place Beyond
• 16:18
  the Pines, I think. That is a surprise, yes.
• 16:22
  I lost a little bit of interest once he was out there, to be
• 16:24
  honest. Yes, it was really necessary for
• 16:26
  the narrative, but I just think I need to see more of him.
• 16:28
  He's. Just so good in every
• 16:29
  conventional isn't. It yeah, Drexel Spivey in True
• 16:33
  Romance. Oh yes.
• 16:34
  He dies far too early. I can see him.
• 16:36
  I met him in that final scene that would have been.
• 16:39
  Amazing was. Incredible talking about going
• 16:41
  on the body bag and then Drexel loving that film would have been
• 16:43
  amazing. Yeah.
• 16:45
  Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh and Psycho of.
• 16:47
  Course. Huge, but you know, it's
• 16:50
  obviously needs to be done. But again, I thought she was
• 16:52
  wonderful and I've always got a kick in the gut when Lowell must
• 16:56
  dies in No Country for Old Men. Right at the end.
• 16:59
  Yeah, but I do I think we'll need to see more of.
• 17:01
  I wasn't expecting it. It gets wiped out a lot sooner
• 17:05
  than we think. A lot sooner than than I was
• 17:07
  hoping he would, to be honest. So yeah, that one always sits
• 17:09
  with me as well. Even though it's the end of the
• 17:11
  film, it doesn't feel like he's managed to progress any further.
• 17:14
  Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, great.
• 17:16
  For me, the one that sprung to mind First off with John Hurt an
• 17:18
  alien. Yeah.
• 17:20
  Because I guess at the time everybody might have assumed
• 17:22
  that he would have been like the hero or Leafs made it somewhere
• 17:26
  near the end. Well, you live longer than Tom
• 17:28
  Skerritt at the point. But he becomes something much
• 17:34
  more shock and obviously one of the most iconic scenes in movie
• 17:38
  history. So, you know, it's not all bad.
• 17:40
  Definitely not. I'm going to throw a curveball
• 17:42
  in there, Steven Seagal, an executive decision.
• 17:45
  Wow, right. There's only just jumps out the
• 17:47
  stealth bomber and disappears. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:51
  That's the guy. I'm not advocating for Cigar,
• 17:54
  because by all accounts he's a terrible person.
• 17:56
  But I was a fan in the early 90s and him teaming up with Kurt
• 17:59
  Russell in this, I thought, well all my Christmases have come at
• 18:01
  once. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:03
  So imagine my surprise when it gets wiped out in the first act.
• 18:07
  I've really watched that film recently, it's pretty sweet.
• 18:09
  Stand up does it? It's.
• 18:12
  All right, now you mentioned it, that reminds me of Michael Bean
• 18:15
  in The Rock. It's exactly the same, yes.
• 18:17
  Yeah, that's a good. Show great and considering our
• 18:19
  latest double feature episode on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice
• 18:21
  Guys, I've got to mention Margaret Quality and The Nice
• 18:23
  Guys. Yes.
• 18:25
  She used the Maltese Falcon on that film.
• 18:28
  All we hear is Amelia, Amelia, Amelia.
• 18:30
  She's only glimpsed for a few times before she joins the
• 18:32
  narrative for real, and then she gets bumped off not long after.
• 18:35
  Yeah, true. Yeah, good one.
• 18:37
  So, I mean, if you want to hear more about that double feature
• 18:40
  patron, you know what to do. Yeah.
• 18:42
  Yeah, and a great question. Thank you very much for it,
• 18:45
  Michael. Yes, Thank you, Michael.
• 18:46
  So murder and intrigue in the opening 10 minutes of The
• 18:49
  Maltese Falcon. The tone is set for the rest of
• 18:51
  the film for certain. After the terrible fate of his
• 18:57
  partner, Sam Spade finds out to his surprise that Miss Wonderly
• 19:01
  is checked out of her hotel. He heads back to his place where
• 19:04
  he gets a visit from the police. Over to you, Matt.
• 19:07
  I mean, there's just such an ease with Sam as a character,
• 19:11
  isn't it? He doesn't let ego get in the
• 19:13
  way because two cops arriving at his place to question him.
• 19:16
  He could be so aggressive here, make it a big macho thing, but
• 19:19
  he doesn't. He's too smart to do that.
• 19:21
  Yes, because he also knows he has them over a barrel when
• 19:23
  they're asking about does he have any guns.
• 19:25
  Turn the dope upside down. I won't squawk if you've got a
• 19:28
  search warrant. Like he knows where he has them
• 19:30
  and he knows how to play them. Remain and calm in front of all
• 19:32
  of, like, Dundee's provocations and questions.
• 19:35
  And he just comes back with, what's your boyfriend getting
• 19:37
  at, Tom? And I think, like, for 1941,
• 19:40
  that's really near the knuckle in terms of insulting a man
• 19:43
  really gets under the skin, but so funny.
• 19:46
  And the reason he's remaining calm is because the more in
• 19:48
  control he stays, the most silent he remains, the more they
• 19:51
  are going to talk instead about what they want from him, which
• 19:54
  in turn tells somewhat they know and what they think.
• 19:57
  It's it's like what he says. His mind is always wearing and
• 20:01
  putting pieces together and storing information.
• 20:03
  It's just this constant super smart strategy he has if playing
• 20:07
  people along to find out what to think.
• 20:08
  And it's very funny when they're talking about Thirsty being dead
• 20:11
  and Sam says, how do I kill him? I forget.
• 20:13
  So he's taking the piss out of them at the same time because he
• 20:15
  knows they've got nothing on them.
• 20:17
  They think they're in control, but Sam just sends them on the
• 20:19
  way with no aggression and a couple of drinks down them
• 20:21
  instead, and they just leave that scene.
• 20:23
  Go on. We were supposed to be in charge
• 20:25
  of that. What?
• 20:26
  Happened. Great.
• 20:27
  Get your paws off me. Sorry, I got on my hind legs
• 20:32
  boys. That's great.
• 20:35
  So after that we're in the office and we've got meet with
• 20:38
  Ivor and then later on with Effie as well.
• 20:40
  So we'll see how he is with both of these female characters,
• 20:43
  which is wonderful. Darling, sweetheart, all of
• 20:45
  that. Yeah, Angel, darling,
• 20:47
  sweetheart. I mean, it's, it's a little bit.
• 20:49
  I mean, you've got to kind of take with a pinch of soul.
• 20:51
  I mean, I know it's 1941, but it's very, very condescending, a
• 20:54
  lot of it. You know, he could straight in
• 20:57
  there kissing her straight away. Husbands just died.
• 20:59
  You're like Autumn. But who is this guy?
• 21:00
  What a bastard. What a piece of work.
• 21:03
  And then just straight in there. Did you kill him, Sam?
• 21:05
  Oh, hold on a second. And then he's like, you killed
• 21:08
  my husband, Sam, be kind to me. Laughing in her face.
• 21:12
  It's just absolutely preposterous.
• 21:14
  His whole persona is just ridiculous.
• 21:16
  And then he knows that he's kind of offender a little bit.
• 21:19
  And he's like, I'll be there as soon as I can.
• 21:20
  Goodbye, ever. And then ushers are out.
• 21:22
  She's gone. So you think, right, Well,
• 21:24
  there's something else going on here.
• 21:26
  We'll move across. There's miles empty desk, right?
• 21:28
  There's a little bit, 30 seconds, maybe 5 seconds of
• 21:32
  remorse 30. That was too far, wasn't it?
• 21:35
  5 seconds. And then if he comes through and
• 21:37
  she just cuts through all of the bullshit, she just like starts
• 21:40
  like saying I did it. She made us wait.
• 21:43
  She got changed really quickly. And that, that top of those was
• 21:46
  still warm. Yeah.
• 21:47
  He said you're a detective, but she didn't do it.
• 21:49
  It's like, oh, you're kind of notice.
• 21:50
  She's never going to be good enough to be of his standard
• 21:53
  because she's a woman basically. She's never going to be
• 21:55
  intelligent. Know your place.
• 21:57
  You're a detective, sweetheart, but you're not that good.
• 21:59
  You're not Sam Spade, you know what I mean?
• 22:01
  Which I think is absolutely brilliant.
• 22:02
  But then you've got that phone call, he's got somewhere else to
• 22:05
  go, something else to do and he's just decided at that
• 22:07
  moment, get rid of Miles desk, take his name off the window,
• 22:10
  take his name off the door. Just put Sam Spade up there.
• 22:13
  All right, sweetheart, all right, Angel, everything's going
• 22:15
  to be fine. And then he just burns the note,
• 22:18
  which is excellent that pushing. It's just the way the camera
• 22:21
  just explores the room like in every scene and there's so much
• 22:24
  going on here. This would be like the end of a
• 22:27
  massive act one. Or he was cheating with his
• 22:30
  partner's wife and Efly's on there and she's.
• 22:34
  Intelligent boy isn't. It and all of a sudden it's just
• 22:36
  bang. That's about 10% of what's
• 22:39
  important in this film. Move on straight out of there,
• 22:42
  right Next scene, burn that ceiling.
• 22:44
  Yeah, see you later. Come on, move on.
• 22:46
  Yeah, I print it. Yeah, be kind to me, Sam.
• 22:49
  Slow down a second. You killed my husband, Sam.
• 22:53
  Be kind to me. Kind to me.
• 22:55
  Laughing in her face. Just that laughing, just that
• 22:58
  Clapper, he's like, yeah, how dare you try and win me over
• 23:02
  with some kind of emotional blackmail.
• 23:04
  Never going to work. It's magnificent and I think
• 23:07
  like the prop work in this film is amazing.
• 23:09
  Obviously the Maltese folk on itself, it's become a thing of
• 23:13
  legend. But the desk lighter that he
• 23:16
  uses all the time, yeah, that's amazing.
• 23:20
  It was a, it's called a Ronson Touch Tip Lighter and it's got a
• 23:23
  built in clock that was commonplace obviously back in
• 23:26
  the day, so they needed to have something as common as a clock
• 23:28
  on. It would have set you back about
• 23:31
  $16.00 back in the day. It's absolutely incredible
• 23:35
  stuff. Yeah, great.
• 23:36
  So I have to get in the phone call.
• 23:37
  Sam goes over to Miss Leblanc's apartment and with all different
• 23:41
  names flying around Wonderly, Versbe Archer.
• 23:44
  I don't even know who it is that he's going to see here, but it
• 23:51
  turns out to be the woman who set this whole thing in motion,
• 23:53
  Bridget O'Shaughnessy, formerly Miss Wonderly.
• 23:55
  She's playing the innocent, but Sam just isn't having any of it
• 23:59
  and he was on her tail all along.
• 24:01
  We didn't exactly believe your story, Miss O'Shaughnessy.
• 24:04
  We believed you're $200 though. As an audience, we're completely
• 24:07
  behind everyone here. We just catch up all the way.
• 24:10
  And Bridget's continuing the little Girl Lost Act, asking Sam
• 24:14
  to protect her from the police and the assistant District
• 24:16
  Attorney. Unbelievable, considering she
• 24:18
  just won't let on anything about this whole affair.
• 24:20
  They've just met and she's lied from the get go.
• 24:23
  Yeah, but she's laying it on so thick and, you know, watching
• 24:27
  it, I'm convinced it's a good performance.
• 24:28
  But Sam isn't. He says you won't need much of
• 24:31
  anyone's help. You're good.
• 24:32
  Chiefly your eyes and that throb you get in your voice when you
• 24:35
  say things like. Be generous, Mr. Spade.
• 24:38
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:39
  So much sarcasm, so much cynicism.
• 24:41
  Yeah, it's cynicism is the word, Yeah.
• 24:43
  But I do really love the story that Bridget spins about
• 24:45
  Thursday. She tells the tale of this man
• 24:47
  who carried guns like there's no tomorrow, who never went to bed
• 24:50
  without covering the floor with newspapers so evocative it
• 24:53
  really paints a picture. When she's asked if it was
• 24:56
  Thursby or her enemies that killed, Miles is laid on a bit
• 24:59
  too thick. So I don't know, I can't say.
• 25:03
  But Bogey's response is brilliant.
• 25:05
  He snaps up. This is hopeless.
• 25:12
  And then he's able to shake her down for all of the money that
• 25:15
  she has on my $500. She'll have to Hock her furs and
• 25:18
  jewelry to live to live on. Absolutely uncompromising
• 25:22
  behavior. Give it me.
• 25:27
  So things aren't getting any clearer as Sam starts his
• 25:29
  investigation, Ivory is playing the grieving widow and Bridget
• 25:32
  is slippery as an eel. But things are about to get even
• 25:35
  more complicated. God.
• 25:36
  Yes, they are. The cheaper the crook, the gaudy
• 25:45
  of the patter. Never a truest statement made
• 25:47
  about all the right movies. And if you like our gaudy
• 25:49
  patter, you'll no doubt love to become a patron of all the right
• 25:53
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• 25:55
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• 25:58
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• 26:00
  Huge deep dives into the biggest films and the most recent 20
• 26:03
  episodes are available on all platforms.
• 26:05
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• 26:09
  There's bound to be a load of films that you like in there.
• 26:12
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• 26:18
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• 26:20
  can listen to two brand new podcasts that we create every
• 26:23
  month. That's the Watch List, where we
• 26:25
  review new release movies and Double Feature where we talk
• 26:28
  about films that we wouldn't necessarily get to on the show
• 26:31
  just yet. Not just yet.
• 26:33
  Not just yet. There are hundreds of episodes
• 26:35
  and by God Sir, you are a character if you listen to them
• 26:38
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• 26:39
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• 26:42
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• 26:45
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• 26:48
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• 26:53
  glorious golden Falcon encrusted from head to feet with the
• 26:56
  finest jewels. Indeed.
• 26:58
  Thank you everyone. Thank you so much guys.
• 27:04
  The director. A Hollywood screenwriter making
• 27:09
  his directorial debut. Unbelievably.
• 27:12
  John Houston's first outing for ATRM.
• 27:14
  Matt, your thoughts on him as director of The Maltese Falcon?
• 27:18
  Houston, we do not have a problem.
• 27:21
  Not with this one. Very good.
• 27:23
  We do have a problem. Slow.
• 27:25
  Down. I mean, it's not bad for a
• 27:28
  debut, is it? Really Pretty good.
• 27:31
  The definitive Private Eye film at the first attempt.
• 27:34
  I think what he brings with thought is such a sharpness in
• 27:37
  the pace. I mean, at least 95%.
• 27:39
  This film is driven by the dialogue.
• 27:41
  Like we've been seeing very little action to speak of in
• 27:44
  here, but it does feel like you're watching an action film
• 27:46
  at times with how fast it moves. I mean, characters are
• 27:49
  constantly bursting through doors or the leaving rooms
• 27:52
  urgently to do something because they've got a fresh clue or
• 27:55
  there's a fresh revelation of what's going on and we've got to
• 27:58
  follow it up somewhere else. And as well as that, I think he
• 28:00
  does challenge the audience and then some to keep up with them.
• 28:03
  And like, until you get to that final scene, he does not slow
• 28:06
  this film down to explain anything at all.
• 28:09
  He wants to put you in some shoes and say, can you make the
• 28:11
  connections in the way that he can try?
• 28:14
  That's how he cares about. And that's a brave thing to do
• 28:16
  when when you get to the end, which obviously we'll talk about
• 28:18
  like your head is just spinning from the sheer amount of
• 28:21
  information in conversations that's been laid out.
• 28:24
  And he's only going to explain it right at the end.
• 28:26
  And it's a strange way to describe it, maybe, considering
• 28:29
  how kind of stagey it is in the sense evidence interior.
• 28:32
  But it is quite an exhilarating experience watching this because
• 28:35
  it's trying to keep up with it and it's who's new setting the
• 28:37
  pace. The thing that strikes me most
• 28:39
  about Houston's work here was just how assured it is it's his
• 28:42
  directorial. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:44
  And it feels like he's been in the chair for years.
• 28:47
  There's no tentativeness, no hedge in his bets.
• 28:49
  If anything, he makes it difficult for himself
• 28:51
  considering the material. This isn't like a cutesy, easy
• 28:53
  romance. This has got real style and
• 28:56
  flair, but always in service of the material.
• 28:59
  He knows exactly what he wants, and what makes that even more
• 29:01
  impressive is that he's not just making a great film, he's
• 29:04
  essentially inventing a brand new genre of movies that will be
• 29:09
  revealed for decades to come. Everything we associate with
• 29:13
  film noir crystallizes in the Maltese folk, and obviously
• 29:16
  there are elements of it in previous films, but never like
• 29:20
  this. The cynical detective, the femme
• 29:21
  fatale, the morally ambiguous world where everybody's got an
• 29:24
  angle, Sharp dialogue delivered in shadow drench rooms.
• 29:28
  It's all here. It all starts here and and then
• 29:30
  goes from here. There were crime films before
• 29:33
  this, of course, but Houston established the template that
• 29:36
  everything else would follow. When you watch a New World film
• 29:38
  made in the decades after this, you're watching film makers
• 29:41
  respond to what Houston did in 1941.
• 29:44
  Yeah. And he does it with such economy
• 29:46
  as well. There's no fat on this film.
• 29:47
  It's 100 minutes, and it moves like a train.
• 29:49
  He trusts time as dialogue. He trusts his cast, and he gets
• 29:53
  out of the way. I think he gives them room to
• 29:55
  breathe. And that restraint and that
• 29:56
  understanding that the material is strong enough to carry
• 29:58
  itself, I think that's a mark of a director who probably would
• 30:02
  have about 20 films under his belt at that point.
• 30:05
  He had it straight away. The most assured directorial
• 30:08
  debut may be incredible stuff. Westie, what about you?
• 30:12
  There's just no doubt there's no element of no.
• 30:14
  There's. Any frame of this film and any
• 30:16
  delivery of any character of any line, of any plot point of
• 30:20
  anything, there's no doubt, like the camera, even if it's just a
• 30:23
  dialogue sequence, needs to push in or pull back or move around.
• 30:27
  And what I get from Houston is that he's just an act as
• 30:29
  director. He's a writer who's actually
• 30:32
  putting the words and the narrative individuals.
• 30:35
  And to me, I'm always going to say that this is hand in hand
• 30:38
  with Arthur Edison, who is a cinematographer on this.
• 30:41
  I think he's just as important as Houston because Houston is
• 30:44
  just 100% on the content. If this was nowadays, Houston
• 30:49
  will be shooting this on a fucking iPhone with his best
• 30:52
  mates just to get it made, just to do it quickly.
• 30:54
  He doesn't care where the camera is, and a lot of it is takes me
• 30:58
  out technically because he crosses the line loads of times.
• 31:01
  You know, the camera's going one way, it's going another way, you
• 31:03
  don't quite know what's happening.
• 31:04
  It's very disjointed. It's very technically, it's
• 31:07
  quite sloppy in places, but it's revolutionary in others because
• 31:10
  he just doesn't care. He cares about what the actors
• 31:13
  are putting across. He cares about the story.
• 31:15
  He is so confident in this script and this adaptation of
• 31:18
  this book. He doesn't really care if you
• 31:20
  don't like it, and I really love that.
• 31:22
  I've said that about a lot of directors and a lot of films,
• 31:24
  and that's to me, what makes a director really, really special
• 31:26
  is that it feels like he's making this for himself.
• 31:30
  The skeleton of this film is really, really exciting.
• 31:34
  So to have a little bit of fat on it with the visuals as well
• 31:36
  makes it just, it just puts it to another level.
• 31:38
  And Houston knew that and Edison knew that, and Bogart knew that.
• 31:41
  Everybody knew it. He was involved in this.
• 31:43
  That's why they all became lifelong friends after it.
• 31:45
  They all just climbed together and went on this roller coaster.
• 31:48
  And that absolutely delivered, especially Houston.
• 31:52
  Incredible stuff. The film is based on the 1930
• 31:55
  Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name.
• 31:56
  More on that later. One has quickly bought the
• 31:59
  rights to the novel and produced a movie version in 1931.
• 32:02
  Roy Dell Roots The Maltese Falcon was released pre Hears
• 32:06
  Chord and featured a few riskier scenes including a strip search
• 32:09
  of Miss Wonderly and some gear subtext involving Gutmann, Cairo
• 32:13
  and Wilma. Because of these, at the time,
• 32:16
  controversial elements, the film was pulled and not screened in
• 32:19
  its entirety until the 60s. Right.
• 32:21
  Yeah, and this wasn't the only adaptation of the material. 1936
• 32:25
  As Satan Met a Lady was adapted from Hammett's work and saw
• 32:28
  Betty Davis, who was more of a comedy than a hard boiled
• 32:31
  thriller. And reviews were not kind.
• 32:33
  Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it a cynical farce
• 32:36
  of elaborate and sustained cheapness.
• 32:39
  Wow, yes, I haven't seen all of it.
• 32:41
  The same bits of it compared to this?
• 32:42
  No good, no. Obviously, Yeah, yeah.
• 32:47
  And John Houston was the son of Oscar winning actor Walter
• 32:49
  Houston. He had made his play in
• 32:51
  Hollywood as a screenwriter and was Oscar nominated for Doctor
• 32:53
  Ehrlich Magic Bullet in 1940 in Sergeant York.
• 32:57
  In 1941, he was contracted at Warner's and one at the break
• 33:00
  into directing. Yes, yes.
• 33:02
  Break at a direct, smash the window and dive in.
• 33:06
  Come on in, John. Yeah, One has agreed to give him
• 33:09
  his shot, but only if his next screenplay was a hit.
• 33:12
  The film in question was High Sierra, directed by Raul Walsh,
• 33:15
  also starring Bogey. He had earned 1.5 million at the
• 33:19
  box office, and so the door was open for Houston to make his
• 33:21
  directorial debut. Yeah, allegedly.
• 33:24
  Howard Hawk suggested that Houston redo The Maltese Falcon,
• 33:27
  but recommended that he filmed the book as he put it.
• 33:30
  Houston loved the source material and disliked the
• 33:32
  previous two cinematic adaptations beforehand.
• 33:35
  Before he went on holiday, he asked the secretary to type the
• 33:37
  novel up into screenplay format, and this version was then sent a
• 33:40
  studio head Jack one by accident.
• 33:43
  But he loved it, and Green, at the film for Houston, had even
• 33:45
  had a chance to read it. Wow, yeah, Houston just said
• 33:49
  turn that into a screenplay, just basically reprint it in
• 33:53
  screenplay format, and then that's exactly what she did.
• 33:56
  Did she get right in credit for that?
• 33:58
  Amazing. You did a good job there Angel.
• 34:02
  Get fucked. Before production started,
• 34:08
  Warner's put in some stipulations using that.
• 34:10
  Only six weeks to shoot the film with a strict 400,000 budget.
• 34:14
  If this wasn't adhered to, Houston would be looking for a
• 34:16
  job elsewhere. I think that might explain the
• 34:19
  pace a little bit. Only six weeks.
• 34:20
  Yes, yeah, very quick. Yeah.
• 34:23
  And despite the novel being called, obviously the Maltese
• 34:25
  folk and Warner's wanted to change the title to A Gent from
• 34:28
  Frisco to distance itself from the other two films that they
• 34:31
  previously produced. Okay, I get that argument, but.
• 34:35
  Houston persuaded them otherwise.
• 34:37
  The gent first goes ridiculous. Yeah.
• 34:40
  Who's the gent? Yeah.
• 34:41
  Yeah, there's no, nobody understands.
• 34:45
  And during filming it was agreed by Morse involved that they were
• 34:48
  making something quite special, and as such they try to deter
• 34:51
  unwanted visitors from the set. Randomly a group of priests were
• 34:54
  brought on set by one as publicists.
• 34:56
  Don't know why, but push it off when Mary asked to declared.
• 34:59
  Hold it a minute, I've got a goddamn run in my stocking.
• 35:03
  Devil Mary Astor. Chestnut.
• 35:07
  This descended into a highly rehearsed set of practical jokes
• 35:10
  orchestrated by Houston, designed to shock the tourists
• 35:13
  and get everybody off set. The set pieces were numbered.
• 35:17
  For example, the number 5 involved Bogey shouting at Green
• 35:20
  St., calling him a fat old fool for trying to upstage him during
• 35:23
  his scenes, at which point Houston would jump in,
• 35:26
  restraining Bogey from sucking Sydney right in the mush.
• 35:29
  Nice, all the way to the number 10.
• 35:33
  So Peter Lorre coming out of Mary Astor's dressing room,
• 35:36
  zipping up his fly and shouting. See you later, Mary.
• 35:42
  How wonderful. Brilliant.
• 35:44
  I'd love to see him do that. That's great.
• 35:47
  But Houston wasn't just about Jolly James on set.
• 35:49
  He was the consumer professional, knowing that this
• 35:52
  was his big chance and the restrictions placed on him by
• 35:54
  Warren as he left nothing to chance and prepared each scene
• 35:57
  to within an inch of its life. Yeah.
• 35:59
  Yeah, because producer Henry Blank gave Houston what he
• 36:03
  called the single greatest piece of advice he would ever receive
• 36:06
  as a director, which is shoot each scene as if it was the most
• 36:10
  important scene in the film. Yeah, you certainly, Yeah.
• 36:12
  You get that feeling, Yeah. And he shot the film
• 36:15
  sequentially. Largely, he said, it's best to
• 36:17
  shoot chronologically. In this way you can benefit by
• 36:19
  accident and you don't paint yourself into corners.
• 36:22
  Yeah, detailed storyboards were drawn up for every scene, and
• 36:26
  every stitch of dialogue we hear was in the shooting script, as
• 36:29
  were specific instructions for each shot set up.
• 36:32
  As such, production finished two days ahead of schedule and under
• 36:35
  budget. Consumer professional.
• 36:37
  Brilliant. Houston did have a tussle with
• 36:39
  the sensors over a few different areas.
• 36:42
  Any references to sex were required to be cut, as was the
• 36:45
  consumption of alcohol that was deemed excessive.
• 36:47
  He fought back hard on this one because he wanted to remain
• 36:50
  faithful to the novel, which depicted Sam Spade as a renowned
• 36:53
  boozer. Yeah, Yeah.
• 36:54
  This is how Houston was able to get away with that scene at
• 36:56
  Gutman's place when he's putting back the brown stuff like
• 36:59
  there's no tomorrow. Yeah, that's great.
• 37:01
  As well as massive violence. Yeah.
• 37:02
  Yeah, great. People who say when?
• 37:05
  That's great, yeah. And it is generally regarded as
• 37:08
  the first film noir, as we've been saying start in the genre.
• 37:11
  Some people do argue the case for 1940s Strange on the 3rd
• 37:15
  floor which also start Peter Laurie and some say that's the
• 37:18
  original film noir and others also put up The Drive by Night,
• 37:22
  also 1940 starring George Rafton Borg himself and said that's the
• 37:27
  first one. Yes, as we've been saying, the
• 37:29
  Maldives Falcon distilled all the hallmarks into our and into
• 37:32
  one perfect 100 minutes. Yeah, so groundbreaking doesn't
• 37:36
  even come into it when we talk about John Houston, the Maltese
• 37:38
  Falcon, one of the great touchstones in cinematic
• 37:41
  history. And no, I don't think it's
• 37:42
  groundbreak, and I think he invented new ground.
• 37:44
  Yes, it is. Yeah, the.
• 37:48
  Cast. A great cast on the Maltese
• 37:53
  Falcon each provide nuance and intrigue to proceedings, and
• 37:57
  we're starting off with the main man, the big cheese, the head
• 37:59
  honcho, as fast on the draw as he is in the drawing room,
• 38:03
  according to the trailer mat, Sam Spade.
• 38:06
  Just the absolute man, isn't he? I mean, you talk about cinematic
• 38:10
  cool and Bogart in most things, but especially this.
• 38:13
  He's going to be so far off that list, if not top not and all due
• 38:17
  respect him. You wouldn't think necessarily
• 38:19
  looking at him. This guy is going to be a huge
• 38:20
  movie star. He's got that kind of raspy
• 38:22
  voice, you know, he's got, you know, Scar on his lip from his
• 38:25
  youth. He's he's got a very kind of
• 38:27
  weather beaten look to him. We're not talking about the dash
• 38:29
  and good looks of Clark Gable, of instant likeability of James
• 38:32
  Stewart. But he's just got such a
• 38:35
  compelling screen presence, which works so well for the
• 38:38
  character. And the brilliant thing is he
• 38:40
  makes you think Sam is in complete control of this
• 38:42
  situation from beginning to end when often he's not.
• 38:46
  Like so many scenes, he is reason to keep up with what lies
• 38:49
  Brigidus tell them and trying to work out.
• 38:51
  Is that bullshit or is that one the truth?
• 38:52
  Once he's trying to work out what Goodman is telling, who's
• 38:55
  this guy who's telling him what's his business?
• 38:57
  Why is he after me? But he's so unflustered by all
• 39:00
  of it. Or if he is, he keeps it hidden
• 39:01
  below the surface because he has to him in this profession.
• 39:05
  Yeah. So he's got presents.
• 39:06
  He's got incredible line delivery.
• 39:08
  I think his performance sets the pace that Houston wants this
• 39:11
  film to go out. It's brilliant.
• 39:13
  When he's been hauled in for question by the DEA and he just
• 39:16
  has that huge run at him, and then without taking a breath, he
• 39:19
  just turns to this stenography. You're getting this all right,
• 39:22
  So I've gone too fast for you. Just brilliant.
• 39:25
  And. This I'll get it all right to
• 39:27
  good work, yeah. Good work.
• 39:29
  Yeah. And then he's just straight back
• 39:30
  in and he's just got this wonderful streak of cynicism
• 39:33
  towards Anthem. When he says to Bridget, I'll
• 39:35
  have some rotten nights have to send you over, but that'll pass.
• 39:38
  Like all these months you think he's such a bastard.
• 39:41
  But Bogart just makes us so likable and so compelling.
• 39:44
  And obviously he'd made films before this, lots of them.
• 39:47
  But this is the one where you see him come to life as the star
• 39:50
  and the icon he was going to be. Yeah, I think about this
• 39:53
  performance is that he's just so silently right and he never says
• 39:56
  anything until he knows for 100% that he's right.
• 39:59
  So he never, never takes a chance on anything.
• 40:01
  He always just shuts the fuck up until he knows exactly he's got
• 40:04
  all the facts and said, then he lets it go.
• 40:06
  Brilliant. I think it's just the perfect
• 40:07
  performance, the revelation if there's anybody put off by a
• 40:11
  kind of like all black and white movies thinking there might be
• 40:13
  stuffy bogey puts pair to that from the gecko.
• 40:17
  His delivery, Yeah, this is like movie star and top actor all in
• 40:22
  one with countless Shades of Grey.
• 40:23
  He's just mesmerizing on screen. The control that Warner's had on
• 40:27
  production extended the casting. They insisted that George Raft
• 40:30
  was the man to take the role of Sam Spade.
• 40:33
  He'd made a name for himself in Scarface in 1932 and starred in
• 40:36
  countless movies in the 30s. Yeah, Wrath added in his
• 40:39
  contract law that he could decline a role if it wasn't
• 40:42
  worthy of his name. Right.
• 40:44
  In a memo sent to Jack Warner, he said, I must remind you
• 40:47
  again, you promised me that you would not require me to perform
• 40:49
  in anything but important pictures.
• 40:52
  Didn't he turn down every film that Bogart was then in?
• 40:55
  Allegedly, he turned down Casablanca.
• 40:56
  Yeah. Casablanca.
• 40:58
  Wow. Also, it was understood that he
• 41:00
  didn't want to work with a rookie director, so he passed on
• 41:02
  Falcon. Fair enough.
• 41:04
  And Edward G Robinson of Little Caesar fame was briefly
• 41:07
  considered, but then Beauregard, who was actually on suspension
• 41:09
  from wonders at the time because he'd refused to saw in the
• 41:12
  western Batman of Missouri. He was given a reprieve after
• 41:15
  the success of High Sierra, which he did star in.
• 41:18
  Oh yes. Yeah, this was music to
• 41:20
  Houston's ears, because he'd always wanted Bogey in the lead,
• 41:23
  despite the novel's description of Sam Spade being a man who
• 41:26
  looks rather pleasantly like a blonde Satan.
• 41:30
  Great description. Bogey had been a job and actor
• 41:33
  of stage and screen since the early 20s.
• 41:35
  His star began to shine brighter when he appeared on Broadway and
• 41:38
  crime tale The Petrified Forest and it's 1936 movie adaptation.
• 41:42
  Supporting roles on the likes of Dead End, The Angels With Dirty
• 41:45
  Faces, The Oklahoma Kid in the Roaring 20s dominated the late
• 41:48
  30s before he's starring. Rolling High Sierra brought him
• 41:52
  a much greater exposure. And he was famously dismissive
• 41:55
  of the Hollywood system. But he did love working on this
• 41:58
  film. He later said it was practically
• 42:00
  A masterpiece. I don't have many things I'm
• 42:02
  proud of, but that's one. Brilliant, and the cast became
• 42:05
  so tight knit that they would often be found with Houston at
• 42:08
  the Lakeside Country Club for drinks and wisecracks.
• 42:11
  No doubt Bogey considered Laurie and Houston very close friends,
• 42:15
  allegedly because they weren't boring and could drink like a
• 42:18
  fish. And that's why they weren't
• 42:22
  boring. And that doesn't it.
• 42:25
  And this was the beginning of one of the great screen
• 42:27
  collaborations. Houston would go on to direct
• 42:29
  Boogie on 6 films, not including High Sierra, which Houston
• 42:33
  wrote. So yes, 6 directed films, yeah,
• 42:35
  I think that sometimes gets lost when we talk about star and
• 42:38
  director. We do, yeah.
• 42:40
  Yeah, these two definitely should be fair.
• 42:42
  So as we're talking about the big man, we've got our second
• 42:44
  period on question and this one is from Dominic Bramley.
• 42:47
  Hi, Dominic. Hi, Dominic.
• 42:49
  Hello, Dominic. Dominic says be in 1941.
• 42:52
  There is obviously plenty of smoking going on, but boy Humph
• 42:55
  sure makes it look cool. He certainly does, yeah, Dominic
• 42:58
  also says, thinking I might start again.
• 43:02
  Well, I mean, don't do that. Don't do that.
• 43:03
  No, don't advocate that. So his question is, who are the
• 43:06
  coolest smokers on film? We hope you've resisted the
• 43:10
  temptation, Dominic, but certainly feel that pain.
• 43:12
  I'm sure Wester you feel the same.
• 43:13
  Yes, yes, absolutely. But yeah, I mean, bogey gold
• 43:17
  standard smoking is just part of the package with him.
• 43:19
  You want Bogart, you get smoking is as natural as that hat.
• 43:23
  Yeah, I mean rolling a cigarette as he's thought process isn't.
• 43:25
  It. Yeah, it really is.
• 43:26
  Yeah. He's thinking about something.
• 43:28
  He's. It's part of it, yeah.
• 43:29
  With that in mind, I've got De Niro and Goodfellas seen at the
• 43:34
  bar when he's deciding whether to whack Mori out or not.
• 43:36
  Yeah, some cigarette in hand. Sunshine your love.
• 43:39
  Wonderful. Great.
• 43:41
  Mentioned it before, but Mitchum in one of the great smoking
• 43:43
  movies. Classic noir out of the past.
• 43:46
  Oh, the best. Yeah, Amazing.
• 43:47
  Mentioned that before. It's an amazing film and it's
• 43:49
  just billows of smoke coming out of every.
• 43:52
  Yeah, I've mentioned that before.
• 43:53
  Yeah, that was close for you. Start again, wasn't it?
• 43:55
  Yeah, it really was. Yeah, that's why I haven't
• 43:58
  watched it for years. Leave that one.
• 44:02
  I'll throw in Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.
• 44:04
  Nice. OK, yeah.
• 44:05
  On every piece of promotional art for the film.
• 44:08
  She's smoking, but she makes it look so cool.
• 44:10
  The Jack rabbit Slims. Yes, and keeping in the noir
• 44:13
  genre, Elliot Gould and Altman's The Long Goodbye, I think he
• 44:17
  lights up in pretty much every scene.
• 44:19
  Yeah, Altman honoring the genre, but Gently poker funded it as
• 44:23
  well, I think. Yeah.
• 44:24
  Brad Pitt and Fight Club brilliant.
• 44:27
  The reason I started back in the day, Gibson and Lethal Weapon
• 44:32
  was another reason I've Scott De Niro and also I'll go for casino
• 44:37
  if you've pulled gold for Goodfellas.
• 44:39
  Brilliant morning because just walking around them casino
• 44:41
  floors just cigarette and it's absolutely fantastic and Mickey
• 44:45
  Rourke and Sin City. Oh yes, yeah, it's a lot to do
• 44:48
  with the cinematography as well as oh.
• 44:50
  Absolutely, yeah. When it's backlit it just looks
• 44:52
  10 times. It's incredible.
• 44:53
  Yeah. Matt, over to you.
• 44:55
  I mean, if you're talking Bog or you've got to then talk about
• 44:57
  Lauren Bacall, haven't you? His famous on screen and life
• 45:00
  partner particularly to have and have not.
• 45:02
  She's like not constantly in that really looks cool.
• 45:05
  I think Scarlett Johansson in Match Point, the Woody Allen
• 45:08
  film, she's very much a kind of femme for talent.
• 45:12
  That and then also Jean Paul Belmondo and breathless.
• 45:16
  It was that gallop tool permanently very good.
• 45:18
  Got cigarette dangling from his lips.
• 45:20
  Yeah, brilliant. And throw Dan Aykroyd in that
• 45:23
  Biltmore hotel scene in Ghostbusters.
• 45:25
  As well. Yeah, that's a great dangle.
• 45:27
  Yeah. Brilliant.
• 45:27
  Yeah. Bank man.
• 45:30
  Bank man who might be a morally questionable subject, but some
• 45:35
  great examples there. Yeah, and on the subject of
• 45:38
  smoke. And anybody with eyes would
• 45:39
  notice it in this film. Obviously a sign of the times.
• 45:42
  But it did result in an argument between Jack Warner and and John
• 45:45
  Houston. Warner asked him to tone down
• 45:47
  the smoke and because he didn't want to encourage cinema goers
• 45:50
  to nip outside for a sneaky cigarette mid film.
• 45:53
  Yeah, Bogey and Laurie caught wind of this and recruited Astor
• 45:56
  and Green St. to smoke as much as possible during the film.
• 45:59
  When Warner saw the rushes of the final scene, with all four
• 46:02
  actors smoking like chimneys, he hit the roof.
• 46:05
  He even threatened Houston with the sack if the cast didn't
• 46:07
  knock it off. Bogey and Lorry held back from
• 46:10
  then on. Amazing.
• 46:11
  That's amazing, isn't it? But I mean, it's the final scene
• 46:13
  and he shot a chronologically. What else are they going to?
• 46:16
  Do right at the end. Yeah, fuck you, Jack.
• 46:19
  So Bo got a true screen legend and probably his most revered
• 46:23
  role. I'd say one of the great movie
• 46:26
  performances. Oh.
• 46:27
  Absolutely, Absolutely. Next, it's Mary Astor, who takes
• 46:32
  on a number of pseudonyms in the film.
• 46:35
  A movie star since the silent era.
• 46:37
  Our thoughts on her as Bridget O'Shaughnessy slash Miss
• 46:40
  Wonderly slash Miss LeBlanc. Yeah, yes.
• 46:43
  What makes Astor so perfect for this role for me is that she
• 46:46
  doesn't look like a femme fatale or what you would think a femme
• 46:49
  fatale might look like. She's prim.
• 46:51
  She's proper. She's got these big do eyes and
• 46:53
  this air of vulnerability about her.
• 46:56
  When she walks into Spade's office, spinning her story about
• 46:58
  needing help, you're completely bought into that act.
• 47:01
  She looks like she needs to be saved, yeah, and that's exactly
• 47:04
  what makes her so dangerous. You want to believe her even
• 47:07
  when every instinct should be telling you otherwise.
• 47:09
  Because she just flat out says that she's a liar at certain
• 47:12
  point. Yeah.
• 47:14
  This should place the the damsel in distress really well.
• 47:16
  Very well. Yeah.
• 47:18
  The brilliance of that performance is, I think, in the
• 47:20
  transitions she can jump from sweet and innocent to cold and
• 47:22
  calculating on a dime. One moment she's trembling and
• 47:25
  pleading for Spades help and then next there's this flicker
• 47:28
  behind her eyes that tell you everything that she just said is
• 47:31
  a lie. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:32
  It's all performance within performance.
• 47:34
  Bridget is constantly acting, constantly adjusting her mask
• 47:38
  depending on who she's talking to and what she needs from them.
• 47:41
  Mary Astor layers that on really well.
• 47:43
  You're never quite sure which version of Bridget is real, if
• 47:46
  any of them are. Now, there are moments where I
• 47:48
  think her performance tips slightly into melodrama, that
• 47:51
  quivering lip, the breathlessness, desperation, but
• 47:54
  actually think that's intentional.
• 47:55
  I think that's Bridget trying to play the innocent and not quite
• 47:58
  pulling it off. Yeah, she's laying it on a big
• 48:01
  thick because she's not as good a liar as maybe she thinks she
• 48:04
  is. Spade sees through it.
• 48:06
  So do we. Probably a bit too late.
• 48:08
  Like, you know, 95th minute, 97th minute, something like
• 48:10
  that. That's the other bit of door
• 48:12
  show. She's being taken away in
• 48:14
  handcuffs. All right, Yeah.
• 48:16
  It's a performance of a performance, and those moments
• 48:19
  of overreach a part of what makes that character work for
• 48:21
  me. I think she walks a fine line
• 48:23
  here, and she does it brilliantly.
• 48:25
  She's got to be sympathetic enough that we understand why
• 48:28
  Spade might be tempted by her, might fall in love with her, but
• 48:30
  duplicitously enough that we're not surprised when the truth
• 48:33
  comes out. Yeah.
• 48:34
  It's a great performance. I think it's an underrated
• 48:36
  performance. It is for the part of Bridge or
• 48:39
  Shaughnessy. Warner's turned to Geraldine
• 48:40
  Fitzgerald. She was new on the scene and had
• 48:43
  turned heads in Wuthering Heights and Dark Victory, both
• 48:45
  from 1939. But she declined because
• 48:48
  production would have interrupted the plan.
• 48:49
  She had to travel to the East Coast.
• 48:52
  Yeah, and nothing can get in the way of that.
• 48:54
  Priorities in the 40s? Yeah, East Coast.
• 48:56
  Not the English East Coast, Obviously not.
• 48:59
  Sure. There are also claims that she
• 49:01
  didn't want anything to do with a novice director and a being
• 49:04
  movie actor, so read here with Olivia de Havilland and Ingrid
• 49:08
  Bergman were all considered before Mary asked to show a bit
• 49:10
  of interest. Allegedly, her lower salary was
• 49:12
  also attractive to Warner's execs.
• 49:15
  Yeah, imagine Bergman was wanting more.
• 49:17
  Yeah, too much ego would have been attached and wouldn't have
• 49:19
  been able to play it as well as this.
• 49:21
  You've got to play it a bit stupid, haven't you?
• 49:23
  Yeah, well, those three names, they're too big too.
• 49:26
  Big and AS To was no stranger to controversy.
• 49:29
  She'd been involved in a number of scandals over the years, some
• 49:32
  of which became tabloid news when her diary, which detailed
• 49:35
  her adulterous behavior, was leaked to the press.
• 49:37
  Yes, she'd battled addiction of drink and drugs for years.
• 49:40
  Her first husband died in a plane crash and her numerous
• 49:43
  affairs also extended to become an involved with John Houston,
• 49:46
  allegedly during production of the film as well.
• 49:48
  Yeah, Houston, a boogie pair asked her a visit.
• 49:51
  She was charmed by the pair, and she liked the script, which she
• 49:53
  called a humdinger. Absolutely correct.
• 49:56
  In her memoir, she said of the part.
• 49:58
  Bridget was attractive, charming, appealingly feminine
• 50:01
  and helpless, and a complete liar and murderous.
• 50:05
  Brilliant, covered all your bases.
• 50:07
  She also described Bridget as a bitch's cauldron, which is
• 50:13
  great. Before each scene, Aster made
• 50:15
  herself hyperventilated to give her a sense of disorientation,
• 50:18
  she said. So there wasn't a single scene
• 50:20
  in the picture where I wasn't even close to what I was
• 50:23
  thinking. That's like proper method stuff
• 50:25
  before Lee Strasberg or Brando or anything like that Before 7,
• 50:29
  yeah. Miles before.
• 50:30
  Yeah, yeah. And as to actually won the Best
• 50:33
  Supporting Actress Oscar that year, but it was for her part in
• 50:36
  The Great Lie opposite Betty Davis.
• 50:38
  But she later wrote in the memoirs she would have preferred
• 50:40
  the Oscar fur part in The Maltese Falcon instead.
• 50:42
  Wow, yeah. Excellent.
• 50:44
  Yeah. Held in a lot of high regard.
• 50:46
  Yeah. So Mary Esther, just the iconic
• 50:49
  and a role that would become synonymous with the new genre,
• 50:51
  the classic femme fatale. Yeah.
• 50:53
  Yeah, finally a shady character known as the Fat Man or simply
• 50:59
  Mr. G It's Sydney Green St. as Casper Gutman over the USDI.
• 51:04
  Mean what a performance this is. If he wasn't £300, he would have
• 51:09
  run away with the film. He turns up at the perfect
• 51:16
  moment because you're kind of just getting a little bit sick
• 51:19
  of Sam being on top of everybody, sussing everybody
• 51:22
  out, shopping guns away left, right and center, karate shot
• 51:25
  people in the face. Get out.
• 51:27
  He's slapping people around. And I watched this, like I say,
• 51:30
  it's it was a late one for me, but it was like, this is where
• 51:33
  Auric Goldfinger came from. He's like a classic Bond buddy.
• 51:38
  All of them are. And here he is like the the
• 51:40
  actual man involved and everything, the guy who's
• 51:42
  orchestrating this whole plot and he's just greedy and
• 51:46
  brilliantly shot because he looks massive, doesn't he?
• 51:49
  The way that where that camera is placed, he's so gluttonous in
• 51:54
  his performance, but also on the screen, just fills the screen
• 51:56
  with this horrible. Kind of.
• 51:58
  Sweaty need for this Falcon for no other reason than he just
• 52:02
  wants it. Phil.
• 52:03
  He's done with food now. He's had all of the food in the
• 52:06
  world and now he just wants the Falcon because he just got that
• 52:09
  kind of personality and he when he shows up, he's like bang,
• 52:12
  halfway into the film, he just shows up perfect and he's
• 52:15
  fantastic. He's just camp enough to take
• 52:18
  seriously, yes, but also you can see how he's got his hooks in
• 52:22
  these people and how we can manipulate people and how we can
• 52:25
  spin these characters around. And I mean, when I get to the
• 52:28
  end of the film, he finds out it's a fake and he just does
• 52:30
  these two. There's a wide shot on him and
• 52:32
  he just does all of this like, is he going to pass out?
• 52:34
  Is he going to, is he hyperventilating?
• 52:37
  What's going on? And then he just snaps out of it
• 52:39
  and then he's like, right, well, one more year, this is where
• 52:41
  we're going. It's just great how he just,
• 52:43
  he's never, ever put down. It's a great character, it's
• 52:46
  great writing, but it's just such a great performance from
• 52:50
  Sydney Green Street. I mean, he's so good.
• 52:53
  I kind of want him to get away with it.
• 52:55
  Yeah, I watched it again and I kind of, I wanted to be like, he
• 52:58
  scratched it a bit more and it's real.
• 52:59
  And he says it's real. And then then Sam Spare comes
• 53:02
  out to the bottom and he snatches it off and he's like, I
• 53:04
  finally got one over on Sam Spare and then disappears with
• 53:07
  the Vulcan spot. Like, I just kind of want him to
• 53:09
  win a little bit because he does get away with it.
• 53:10
  That's. Fine.
• 53:11
  Casper Gutman. What a great name.
• 53:14
  Brilliant. Brilliantly done.
• 53:15
  And if you hear like Gutman's in town, Gutman's here and then you
• 53:18
  see him and you go, that makes perfect sense.
• 53:20
  It's just so well written, so well played, so well directed,
• 53:24
  absolutely fantastic. For me, if this guy's not in the
• 53:27
  film, we don't have a film. Yeah, I agree.
• 53:30
  Yeah, yeah. He's such a such a presence and
• 53:32
  not just his size. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:35
  He matches it. He matches his size just in his
• 53:37
  his aura. Yeah, and he's Aura.
• 53:39
  Yeah, that's right. Not an influence on the 2005
• 53:42
  Elijah Wood football hooligan film Green Street.
• 53:44
  I don't. Think.
• 53:46
  Unfortunately. Sadly not.
• 53:47
  It's a common misconception. There's a common misconception,
• 53:50
  I thought. I'll just put that one to bed.
• 53:52
  Great. Thanks.
• 53:53
  Thanks for mythbusting there. That's what I'm here for.
• 53:56
  That's what I'm here for, kids. And this is actually Sydney
• 53:59
  Green Street's movie debut on Falcon, despite over 30 years
• 54:02
  experience on the stage and he made 25 movies in total all of
• 54:06
  the 1940s before passing away in 1954.
• 54:09
  Incredible debut at 51 years old as well, yeah.
• 54:12
  Houston had seen him on the stage at the Bit More Theatre in
• 54:15
  LA and a play called There Shall Be No Knight and thought he was
• 54:19
  perfect for the part. Absolutely correct.
• 54:21
  One has allowed the casting after struggling to find an
• 54:23
  actor large enough. He brings a lot more than that.
• 54:27
  I love that though. He brings a lot more than that.
• 54:29
  Oh, he does. It's not just his size.
• 54:31
  Definitely not. There are conflicting reports of
• 54:33
  of his considerable size, ranging from 285 lbs to 357 lbs.
• 54:39
  Right, I'll put 300 because because you know, Pokey does say
• 54:42
  in the film he must be 300 lbs. Yeah, yeah, of course.
• 54:45
  That's right in the middle. Yeah, he went on to become worn
• 54:48
  as go to larger actor, which is why he was in 25 films in the
• 54:52
  40s. Because of his size, production
• 54:55
  had to make certain accommodations, shall we say.
• 54:57
  Green Street's wardrobe had to be specifically made from
• 55:00
  scratch, as did the cherry sits in.
• 55:02
  In his first couple of scenes, standard chairs weren't wide
• 55:05
  enough or sturdy enough to take his weight.
• 55:08
  Conversely, Bogey provided his own costumes for the roles
• 55:11
  because he thought the costume options were cheap.
• 55:16
  Great. In Houston later said of Green
• 55:18
  St. he was perfect from the word Gore, the fat man inside out.
• 55:22
  But Green St. was actually terribly nervous because it was
• 55:24
  his debut and Mary Asser said that before his first scene, he
• 55:27
  Cedra, Mary, do you hold my hand?
• 55:29
  Tell me I won't make an ass of myself.
• 55:32
  Certainly didn't. No, definitely.
• 55:35
  I mean this fact is outrageous. The bombs dropped by the US on
• 55:38
  Nagasaki in Hiroshima in 1945 during World War Two were called
• 55:42
  Fat Man and Little Boy. The Nagasaki Fat Man bomb was
• 55:45
  named after Green St. in the Maltese Falcon.
• 55:48
  Wow, wow. Ridiculous.
• 55:50
  That's a compliment. I don't.
• 55:51
  Think it is no. So an outstanding cast adding so
• 55:55
  much color to a black and white film.
• 55:57
  And special mention should also go to Gladys, George, Lee,
• 55:59
  Patrick and of course, Peter Laurie, who we'll be talking
• 56:02
  about very, very. Yes.
• 56:04
  Yes, we will. All right, movies, we'll be
• 56:12
  right back. Thank you for supporting us by a
• 56:14
  listener to the sponsors for this episode.
• 56:17
  Thank you for listening to our sponsors.
• 56:19
  And now it's back to the show. The middle.
• 56:27
  Sam's up to his neck in vice and the plot is about to thicken as
• 56:30
  he gets paid a visit from a rather cosmopolitan gentleman.
• 56:35
  Here we go. Yeah.
• 56:37
  I mean, we've been hidden that did this laureate performance.
• 56:40
  But when Joel Cairo turns up, I mean.
• 56:43
  I was going to say, Matt is a very cosmopolitan gentleman.
• 56:46
  That's well known. That's that's.
• 56:48
  What I meant of. Course.
• 56:49
  Yeah, of course it is. Yeah.
• 56:50
  I also smell of gardenias. I don't doubt it.
• 56:56
  But he's so creepy and it's like he's got this permanent, like
• 57:00
  Shane of sweat on him. Like he's permanently sweating
• 57:03
  and there's something just a bit slimy about him.
• 57:05
  But what's in this noise? Obviously, because this is 1941,
• 57:08
  there's certain things that are off limits that the film can't
• 57:11
  see outright. And we've kind of alluded to it
• 57:13
  in the previous version. So the fact that his card smells
• 57:16
  of flowers, Gardenius that business race, fondling and like
• 57:19
  practically like licking his cane.
• 57:21
  Yes, it's outrageous really. But that's the films we have
• 57:24
  hidden at Cairo's homosexuality. And you know, through modern
• 57:28
  night, it is quite uncomfortable.
• 57:30
  It's kind of equating that with Cairo not being trustworthy or
• 57:33
  making them creep at the same time.
• 57:34
  I think that's one where you could go.
• 57:36
  That hasn't aged. It doesn't hit well.
• 57:38
  That's just the era we're dealing with and it's
• 57:40
  unfortunate, but what saves it is just how good Peter Laurie is
• 57:44
  here. I mean, the voice, the presence,
• 57:46
  he has the eyes, he's just great.
• 57:49
  And it's just another example of the film saying, are you still
• 57:52
  keeping up? Because here comes a massive
• 57:53
  twist that we've given you no indication about whatsoever.
• 57:56
  See, because this is when he starts talking about the
• 57:58
  statuette and he holds some of me like, hang on.
• 58:01
  Well, I was just about on top of this.
• 58:03
  It was about Thursday's murder. What on earth is going on now?
• 58:07
  I mean, it spins you for complete loop.
• 58:09
  But even at gunpoint, Sam is still in control.
• 58:11
  I mean, that low angle shot where he's looming over Cairo,
• 58:15
  so he's probably going to get out of this.
• 58:16
  And I just love how he gives him two shots to the chin and then
• 58:19
  he just holds on to him by the tie and just pushes him across
• 58:22
  the room without layer in his face.
• 58:24
  Like, I'm really enjoying this. Like, who do you think you are
• 58:28
  coming into my office to hold me up?
• 58:30
  And then he just gives one last slug to knock him out.
• 58:33
  Yeah. Just a great introduction to
• 58:35
  Cairo. What a scene.
• 58:36
  It is the introduction to the score as well, isn't it?
• 58:39
  Yeah. That little undertone effect
• 58:41
  about the character. Yeah.
• 58:44
  The way he winds up that third shot before he clumps him on the
• 58:47
  chin, yeah, absolutely Glee in his face.
• 58:50
  Yeah, I'm going to enjoy this. Yeah, and Peter Laurie was a
• 58:53
  Hungarian native and made a name for himself starring in Fritz
• 58:56
  Lang's Stonewall classic M from 1931 and in Hitchcock's The Man
• 59:00
  Who Knew Too Much from 1934. He played a child murderer in
• 59:04
  the former and a child kidnapper in the latter, and he's really
• 59:07
  creepy in both. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, him in
• 59:10
  particular, yeah. He's quite creepy in this to be
• 59:12
  honest. Yes, yeah, he is.
• 59:14
  And his star had been We're going to fade in the movie
• 59:16
  business, but this film put them back on the map.
• 59:18
  And it was the first of nine films he starred in with Sydney
• 59:20
  Green St. and five films with Bogey.
• 59:23
  Wow. Yeah, nice.
• 59:24
  Yeah, dwelling Casablanca on there.
• 59:26
  That's right, yeah. Get the gang back together.
• 59:30
  Back together, yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic.
• 59:32
  So from there, obviously Sam's on a bit of a journey and we're
• 59:35
  following him very quickly and we're at Bridges and he's
• 59:38
  talking about the Blackbird. He needs to know more about it.
• 59:41
  He's playing his way with her as well.
• 59:43
  And we don't quite know if he's sincere or not, but this is a
• 59:46
  wonderful scene. This is just cat and mouse,
• 59:49
  really just back and forth with each other, like who's the best
• 59:52
  liar here? Who's the best manipulator?
• 59:55
  And the both slowly falling in love with each other, I think.
• 59:57
  And that you kind of get that from the scene.
• 59:59
  It's great. It's really, it is quite
• 1:00:01
  romantic in that sense when she's like, you won't get in any
• 1:00:04
  trouble, will you? It's like, I don't mind a
• 1:00:06
  reasonable amount of trouble. Brilliant.
• 1:00:08
  Real man's man there. Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  You know, he mentions one or two things.
• 1:00:11
  She then starts to feel a little bit flustered by what's going
• 1:00:14
  on. Sam knows a little bit too much
• 1:00:16
  just stalking the fire. She gets a cigarette just
• 1:00:18
  perched on the side of the chair.
• 1:00:19
  And then he just laughs at her. He laughs at her performance.
• 1:00:22
  And he's just like, you're not just going to walk around the
• 1:00:24
  room and store the fire again. You know, see straight friends
• 1:00:26
  say you're good, you're very, very good.
• 1:00:28
  Yeah, really good. And that line's like totally
• 1:00:31
  lifted in Raiders when he's talking about Bond stole.
• 1:00:34
  But it's like, he was good. He was very, very good.
• 1:00:37
  It's just completely lifted off that.
• 1:00:39
  This is like Indian Marion to me.
• 1:00:41
  There's just so much lifted from this film where you get that
• 1:00:44
  back and forth. It's so well done.
• 1:00:46
  He talks about money. Interested, but how else am I
• 1:00:48
  going to buy you? How else can I, you know, win
• 1:00:49
  you over, basically? And then he's just bang straight
• 1:00:52
  in there with the kiss and then he's temper.
• 1:00:56
  It's right on the kisser. And then he goes, that's it.
• 1:00:58
  I've revealed a little bit too much of myself now.
• 1:01:00
  I was honest there. And he kind of kicks himself and
• 1:01:03
  goes around the room and goes, look, if this is going to
• 1:01:05
  happen, if I'm going to be part of this, if we're going to be in
• 1:01:08
  a relationship, if I'm going to trust you, you need to tell us
• 1:01:10
  more. It needs to be put under the
• 1:01:11
  table. I need to have more confidence
• 1:01:13
  in you. Very sincere in this scene.
• 1:01:15
  I think he's like, look, I'll help you.
• 1:01:17
  I want to help you. You've pulled us in.
• 1:01:19
  I'm now attracted to you. We'll know what's going on.
• 1:01:21
  But it's his Sam Spade miss that's fighting against his
• 1:01:25
  actual sexual urges as a man. You know, it's like, I'm really
• 1:01:28
  attracted to this woman. But there's something wrong.
• 1:01:30
  And his brain won't let his heart win.
• 1:01:32
  And I think that's a really wonderful way it's played out in
• 1:01:34
  the performance. I mean, imagine Sam Spade speed
• 1:01:40
  dating. He would sit down, kiss them in
• 1:01:42
  the face, punch them in the face, throw them over a balcony
• 1:01:45
  and then shout, clap his hands, laugh and be like, I need more
• 1:01:48
  confidence in who you are. And that would just be it.
• 1:01:51
  We're not going to progress any further apart from that.
• 1:01:53
  But it's a great scene. They're both having a great
• 1:01:56
  time. We're having a great time
• 1:01:57
  watching it. But again, you're thinking we're
• 1:01:59
  moving forward at the pace and we still don't know who to
• 1:02:01
  trust. No clue whatsoever, you know?
• 1:02:04
  And now we're back at Sam's place with Bridget to confront
• 1:02:07
  Cairo. It's all set up.
• 1:02:09
  Cairo shows up saying there's a boy outside who's putting him
• 1:02:12
  completely on edge. Westie this scene reminiscent of
• 1:02:16
  a scene from Highlander for you. Absolutely.
• 1:02:18
  Yeah, you're going to turn off the table key or I'll shoot this
• 1:02:20
  with the 45. Brilliant.
• 1:02:22
  Yeah, I'm not being tongue in cheeky a bit.
• 1:02:27
  I mean, this is lifted directly for that scene in Highlander.
• 1:02:30
  Where's the cop outside when he goes to Brenda's apartment?
• 1:02:32
  Yeah, it looks just the same. And in this scene, there's a
• 1:02:36
  beautiful dynamic of play here when they get down to business,
• 1:02:39
  discussing the whys and the wherefores of the deal.
• 1:02:41
  Cairo offers the money, Bridget's offering up the
• 1:02:43
  Falcon, but neither of them have either in their possession.
• 1:02:47
  And overseeing all of this is Sam, finding great amusement in
• 1:02:50
  this little charade. Like you said earlier, Westie,
• 1:02:52
  he keeps quiet and let it all play out.
• 1:02:55
  Yeah, and he's just got his own shot as well as he's just shot
• 1:02:57
  in a wanna. As he's shot.
• 1:02:59
  Yeah. Absolutely dominance.
• 1:03:01
  Yeah, love it. Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  And better than that, that shot of him leaning forward when he
• 1:03:05
  he is the fat man mentioned for the first time.
• 1:03:07
  Yeah. Yeah, I'm into this conversation
• 1:03:10
  now. That's like Brando and
• 1:03:12
  Apocalypse Now coming into the light.
• 1:03:14
  Yeah, yeah, great. Pete Lorry here in this horror
• 1:03:16
  film like we've been seeing, he's fantastic, politely
• 1:03:19
  sinister, apologizing for why it would take a week to get the
• 1:03:24
  Falcon. All the while he's like wide
• 1:03:26
  eyed stare suggests all manner of evil thoughts below the
• 1:03:29
  surface half. Past 10 in the morning and then
• 1:03:36
  this. Interrupts Bridget suggests some
• 1:03:38
  nefarious goings on in Istanbul. Before Kara can response, she
• 1:03:42
  sucks him right in the kisser and then he gets his gun out in
• 1:03:47
  retaliation. He's going to kill Spades in
• 1:03:50
  there. All he does through the whole
• 1:03:51
  film is just takes guns off people to take them off.
• 1:03:53
  Yeah, he hates guns. Just.
• 1:03:55
  Chops the gun out. Judo chop the gun out of his
• 1:03:57
  hand and he delivers. My absolute favorite piece of
• 1:04:02
  dialogue in the film, the one Matt you'll quote at the start
• 1:04:05
  when you're slapped. You'll take it and like it.
• 1:04:08
  Yeah, amazing. The three.
• 1:04:10
  Three of the best outrageous behaviour.
• 1:04:14
  But before it all descends into chaos, there's a knock at the
• 1:04:17
  door. Who could it be?
• 1:04:19
  Matthew, is it you? Is it me?
• 1:04:22
  That would make more fucking sense at this point.
• 1:04:26
  So all the major players are together, but things are
• 1:04:28
  spinning out of control. Maybe the knock at the door
• 1:04:30
  might give some answers. Maybe it's the police at the
• 1:04:35
  door. No answers, just a lot of fool
• 1:04:37
  questions before they make their way into the apartment.
• 1:04:41
  First off, Tom and Dundee at the door trying to strong arm salmon
• 1:04:44
  or a confession that they're never going to get again.
• 1:04:47
  Great dialogue if you see it. There's nothing between you and
• 1:04:49
  Archer's wife. You're a liar and I'm telling
• 1:04:51
  you so. Is that the hot tip you brought
• 1:04:53
  you here in this ungodly hour at night?
• 1:04:56
  Brilliant. And he's still got his tie on,
• 1:04:58
  right? made-up like shirts on ungodly
• 1:05:01
  hour, surely? Just relax a little bit.
• 1:05:05
  But as the police are agree to leave, there's an unearthly
• 1:05:09
  scream of help from inside the apartment.
• 1:05:11
  I guess we're going in. I guess you are.
• 1:05:15
  And inside we see a bloody Cairo accusing Bridget of hitting him.
• 1:05:19
  She had to because he tried to attack a Cairo's responsive
• 1:05:22
  screen. You dirty, filthy liar.
• 1:05:28
  But I think here we can kind of assume that Cairo is maybe
• 1:05:32
  telling the truth. He says to Dundee that he came
• 1:05:34
  here in good faith and they both attacked him.
• 1:05:36
  Well, that's true. Yeah, she could definitely have
• 1:05:38
  him like. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:05:40
  She doesn't care for his side of the story at all.
• 1:05:42
  Bridget stands up and kicks him. It's really funny that but.
• 1:05:55
  Fantastic. Sam Smooth talks the coppers out
• 1:05:58
  of his place. He says I wake up Dundee, you're
• 1:06:00
  being kidded. Brilliant.
• 1:06:02
  And they leave, but not before Dundee sucks him right in the
• 1:06:04
  face. I think he's had a common
• 1:06:07
  considering his smart mouth to be honest.
• 1:06:09
  Yeah. The leave and Cairo follows
• 1:06:12
  suit, which leaves Sam to get more information from Bridget
• 1:06:15
  about the Blackbird that everybody's so steamed up about.
• 1:06:18
  Bridget spin some cock and ball story about being offered £500
• 1:06:22
  to help Cairo get away from the man who had it Thursday and
• 1:06:25
  Bridget double crossed Cairo and that's how it's in her
• 1:06:27
  possession. Who knows?
• 1:06:30
  If you say. So who knows?
• 1:06:33
  Here's what's really tantalizing and subversive about this
• 1:06:36
  Bridget takes great pleasure about being accused of lying.
• 1:06:38
  In this passage, she admits there wasn't much truth in her
• 1:06:42
  story, but it's really incredibly done by Aster that we
• 1:06:44
  don't know if she's lying about being a liar.
• 1:06:46
  Yeah, great. So we're no further.
• 1:06:48
  In fact, we're going backwards Here.
• 1:06:50
  We are. Going backwards, yeah.
• 1:06:54
  Incredible stretch so. From there, as far as we know, I
• 1:06:56
  mean, Cairo just leaves. I love his exit from that.
• 1:06:59
  It's like it's getting on a bit. Bye.
• 1:07:02
  See you. See you straight out of it.
• 1:07:05
  Love it. So I've got Sam going to code
• 1:07:07
  going to the Belvedere. Love that, right?
• 1:07:11
  OK, we've got a new location and this location, I mean, we're
• 1:07:13
  talking about space in the frame and depth and the vlog in here,
• 1:07:17
  all the extras. That's so well done.
• 1:07:19
  The way the camera just comes through and you know exactly
• 1:07:21
  where you are. More following Sam and he goes
• 1:07:23
  to the desk and he says Wilma just sitting there with that
• 1:07:26
  paper and there's that. He sits down and that two shots
• 1:07:29
  just fantastic with them both in focus and that drop off in the
• 1:07:32
  background and it's just about them too.
• 1:07:34
  And Sam is having a whale of a time with Wilma.
• 1:07:37
  He is completely out of each depth.
• 1:07:39
  Don't they show off? It's all he's got off and it's
• 1:07:43
  like, no, he's just playing him and tell the fat man and he
• 1:07:46
  knows what's going on and that's absolutely fine.
• 1:07:48
  Then kind of motions over the Luke's obviously the security
• 1:07:52
  guard in the hotel comes over. It's bad news about Miles and
• 1:07:54
  whatever else and he's like, you can let these good men in here
• 1:07:57
  with the Pete sticking through the Jeez.
• 1:07:59
  He knows everything about everybody's so on the ball, but
• 1:08:02
  he ABS. I mean this is so like really
• 1:08:05
  understated bravado. The machismo on Sam here when he
• 1:08:09
  just lights that cigarette. He's been rolling it waiting for
• 1:08:12
  this moment. He's just right.
• 1:08:13
  I'm rolling this because I know if I'm going to blow the smoke
• 1:08:15
  right in this. Right in his face.
• 1:08:17
  What a big move he. Might as well have just pissed
• 1:08:20
  on him. It's just like, it's just such a
• 1:08:23
  like a masculine. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:25
  I'll be watching you. Yeah.
• 1:08:25
  Fuck off. Bang.
• 1:08:27
  Beautifully done. And we've got rid of Will now
• 1:08:30
  he's out of there. So then Cairo's there.
• 1:08:32
  So he goes up and starts taunting him and then some
• 1:08:34
  spinning it the other way. And Cairo's been in with the
• 1:08:37
  cops all night. They've been grilling him.
• 1:08:39
  Right. Well, you know, I had to throw
• 1:08:40
  in with her. What else was I supposed to do
• 1:08:43
  on your side? Really.
• 1:08:44
  Yes. Come on, Let's figure it out.
• 1:08:45
  What we're doing. How?
• 1:08:46
  What do they do? What are they, What are they
• 1:08:48
  talk about? And he's like, right, Well, you
• 1:08:50
  know, I span your story. And it was that he's like, the
• 1:08:52
  story was terrible. I had a horrible time reciting
• 1:08:55
  it. Can you come up with a better
• 1:08:56
  story? And sounds like, don't worry
• 1:08:57
  about the story's goofiness. I mean, Sam's playing Chessy and
• 1:09:00
  not checkers. He's completely moving
• 1:09:02
  everybody. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:09:04
  He's moving everybody where he wants them to be.
• 1:09:06
  And he's just setting up the next stage and the next level.
• 1:09:08
  And he knows Kyrie was the person who's going to get him to
• 1:09:10
  the next level. So he's now playing him on his
• 1:09:13
  side. He's in it for himself.
• 1:09:15
  He does just he's absolutely desperate to know what this is
• 1:09:17
  all about. And he just stopped at nothing
• 1:09:19
  to get to the middle of this whole mystery.
• 1:09:21
  It's unbelievable takes and so many twists and turns.
• 1:09:24
  It does just in these two scenes.
• 1:09:26
  Yeah, Elijah Cook, junior players.
• 1:09:28
  Wilma Cookie, his surname sick. Despite his baby fierce
• 1:09:32
  appearance. He was 39 years old.
• 1:09:35
  Wow, Unreal. He'd been in movies since the
• 1:09:38
  early 30s, and in between pictures he lived a solitary
• 1:09:41
  existence up in the high Sierra hills of Northern California,
• 1:09:43
  and he received his movie offers via Courier.
• 1:09:46
  Right lived off the grid. Two years younger than Boogie in
• 1:09:49
  this. Yeah, it's unbelievable.
• 1:09:51
  Wow. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about
• 1:09:55
  the performance, but this is now when we finally meet Goodman and
• 1:09:59
  Green Street. I mean, and also this
• 1:10:01
  performance is something else for such a big guy.
• 1:10:03
  He just glides through his scenes like he isn't carrying
• 1:10:07
  any weight at all. And it's a bit like the Cairo
• 1:10:10
  introduction, that decision to shoot him from below quite a lot
• 1:10:12
  of the time. So he just, he fills the screen
• 1:10:14
  when he sat down. It just adds to his medicine.
• 1:10:17
  He's like Jabba the hood. The time he's in, he's in that
• 1:10:19
  chair at his. Knees.
• 1:10:23
  Isn't he? Follows that for him.
• 1:10:24
  Yeah, he's looming over everyone, and it's must be one
• 1:10:28
  of the first examples of a bad guy is more sinister the karma
• 1:10:32
  he is, because he doesn't dole out any threats at all to some.
• 1:10:35
  If anything, it's compliments. I distrust a man that says when
• 1:10:38
  he's got to be careful not to drink too much, it's because
• 1:10:41
  he's not because of what he does.
• 1:10:42
  Like, he really gives all his dialogue this beautiful
• 1:10:45
  musicality, and he constantly puts you on the back foot
• 1:10:48
  because I'd say he's full of compliments.
• 1:10:50
  He's really charming, but there's something about him you
• 1:10:52
  know you can't trust because everything that Sam comes out
• 1:10:55
  with government is treated like a game that's wonderful,
• 1:10:58
  wonderful. By God, you are a character,
• 1:11:00
  like everyone says, amusement. And you can't figure out what
• 1:11:04
  does he want? He surely just can't want to be
• 1:11:06
  amused. And I think this is too
• 1:11:08
  wonderful. Touches here.
• 1:11:09
  I think the fact that Sam changes the amount that Cairo
• 1:11:12
  offered him from 5000 to 10,000 purely to see what Goodmans
• 1:11:16
  reaction is and the fact he's very scornful about it tells you
• 1:11:19
  actually it's worth much much more than anyone that's letting
• 1:11:22
  on. It's such a clever little detail
• 1:11:23
  that you could easily miss. And the second one is this is
• 1:11:26
  the only time you really see some ruffled by situation and
• 1:11:29
  getting angry at Gutman for not revealing what he knows.
• 1:11:32
  So he gives them the ultimatum. Get back to me by this time or
• 1:11:35
  deals off, storms back to the lift.
• 1:11:36
  But then you see his hand is trembling, and you realize,
• 1:11:39
  yeah, he's maybe not quite as common in control as he makes
• 1:11:42
  out to be. He was genuinely fearful of this
• 1:11:44
  guy. That part and shot when he
• 1:11:46
  leaves think it over you got till 5:00 you need the year in
• 1:11:49
  or out for keeps. Yeah, yeah, I love it.
• 1:11:52
  Yeah. As was not always the case at
• 1:11:53
  the time, Houston worked with art director Robert M Haas to
• 1:11:56
  build the sets with ceilings, which happens again in Citizen
• 1:11:59
  Came, which came out the same year.
• 1:12:00
  As I said, this allowed him to shoot his signature upshot of
• 1:12:04
  his characters and make it feel like a real location.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah, Houston loves that shot as well.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah, you need to see the ceiling.
• 1:12:10
  Yes. Yeah, and it adds to the cost of
• 1:12:13
  phobia as well. If there's all these mystery
• 1:12:15
  bouncing around, it's got nowhere to escape.
• 1:12:17
  Yeah, exactly. In the 1978, Houston said there
• 1:12:19
  was a time there after Orson Welles and I'm partly to blame
• 1:12:22
  because of the Maltese Falcon when everything was shot looking
• 1:12:25
  upwarded the character. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:27
  Great. It's a proper like, film
• 1:12:29
  movement. It's a real change.
• 1:12:31
  Yeah, it is. Yeah.
• 1:12:32
  Art director Robert M Haas, like you said there, Westie.
• 1:12:34
  He created the sparsely decorated, claustrophobic sets,
• 1:12:37
  which became a hallmark of the new genre.
• 1:12:39
  The addition of the ceiling added to the sense of
• 1:12:41
  authenticity in the locations. But he also worked as art
• 1:12:44
  director on the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon as well.
• 1:12:47
  Right, OK. Great.
• 1:12:49
  So Sam has got a violent temper, but he's playing Goodman for a
• 1:12:52
  fool. Will he fall for it?
• 1:12:54
  Oh, is he? Or is he?
• 1:12:56
  Or is good time for a fool the crew?
• 1:13:06
  A great crew on The Maltese Falcon included a seasoned
• 1:13:08
  writer, composer and cinematographer.
• 1:13:10
  We're starting with the screenplay written by John
• 1:13:13
  Houston himself and his secretary.
• 1:13:17
  What's the your thoughts on the writing?
• 1:13:18
  It's beat for beat for the book, and I think that makes perfect
• 1:13:22
  sense because the dialogue is so well researched.
• 1:13:25
  I think all of it is has this real air of of realism, of
• 1:13:29
  authenticity. Then he brings that to it and
• 1:13:32
  doesn't shy away from that and doesn't try to think about the
• 1:13:35
  audience at all. He's locked into the story.
• 1:13:38
  Everybody understands it on the set, and that's good enough for
• 1:13:40
  Houston. I think he's just very, very
• 1:13:43
  confident with this source material.
• 1:13:44
  Like we've said, even just the scenes that we've spoke new up
• 1:13:47
  to now, the lies are exhausting, but he knows he's going to have
• 1:13:52
  a final scene where it's all spelled out.
• 1:13:54
  And if you don't get it from them monologues at the final
• 1:13:57
  scene, that's your problem. That's your fault.
• 1:13:59
  You haven't kept up. What he does really well is is
• 1:14:02
  subverting a lot of expectations for the audience and that we're
• 1:14:06
  not clear on who's a hero and who's a villain.
• 1:14:08
  Everyone's mixed, all the characters are mixed, and that's
• 1:14:11
  really good. We haven't got anyone
• 1:14:12
  necessarily to follow, so you're just on a ride.
• 1:14:14
  He's invented that linear narrative where he just pulls
• 1:14:16
  you along and you're just there for the ride, and it totally
• 1:14:19
  works. It's a film that's essentially
• 1:14:22
  motivated by greed and distrust and negativity, and it's not a
• 1:14:27
  happy ending. There's nothing positive in this
• 1:14:29
  film. Nothing is really uplifting.
• 1:14:31
  It's not It's a Wonderful life. No, it's definitely not.
• 1:14:34
  But it's very, very popular because I think this was the
• 1:14:36
  mood of the time. You know, it's the same year as
• 1:14:38
  Pearl Harbour happened. It's the same year as this real
• 1:14:41
  confusion in America, especially that kind of social commentary
• 1:14:44
  that he's got on this and that nobody could trust anybody.
• 1:14:47
  And there was this real narcissism and skepticism about
• 1:14:50
  what was actually going on with government and everything else
• 1:14:53
  that was surrounding that. And I think this was a real, you
• 1:14:55
  know, a real good punch and a really edgy screenplay and
• 1:14:58
  really edgy subject material. And Houston takes it, runs with
• 1:15:02
  it and doesn't shy away from any single aspect of it.
• 1:15:04
  It's amazing writing because the novel is amazing.
• 1:15:08
  So it's going to be amazing. So you know, if you've got a
• 1:15:11
  really strong source material and if you love it and you get
• 1:15:14
  it and you believe in it, you've got yourself a winner.
• 1:15:16
  Yeah, he was under a winner straight away.
• 1:15:18
  Yeah. Matt, your thoughts on the
• 1:15:19
  writing? I mean, where to start?
• 1:15:21
  I mean, I think it makes sense. I don't know, I'm not sure, I'm
• 1:15:25
  not clever enough. There's a lot going on.
• 1:15:27
  There's a lot of pivotal information that is delivered
• 1:15:30
  early on in precisely one line that has never revisited and
• 1:15:34
  you've got to remember it and put the pieces together
• 1:15:36
  yourself. Like takes a good bit of working
• 1:15:38
  out to realise why Cairo thinks Sam has the Falcon in the 1st
• 1:15:41
  place at the office. You know, it treats you like an
• 1:15:45
  adult this right? And it doesn't condescend to you
• 1:15:48
  whatsoever. And The thing is, even if he's
• 1:15:50
  struggling to keep up though, there's still so much to
• 1:15:52
  enjoying the right. And as we've been saying, just
• 1:15:54
  loads of zingers and memorable dialogue.
• 1:15:57
  I mean, Wesley's quoted the start when Cairo says to Sam,
• 1:16:00
  you always have a very smooth explanation ready.
• 1:16:02
  What do you want me to do? Learn a stutter?
• 1:16:04
  Brilliant, brilliant. Some later on, don't be too sure
• 1:16:07
  I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be.
• 1:16:09
  Again, it's in the delivery, but it's just beautiful, right?
• 1:16:12
  And it's just got that feeling that every film in the genre has
• 1:16:15
  since taken where the dialogue is rather fast.
• 1:16:18
  And if a line of dialogue in this film isn't moving the plot
• 1:16:21
  long or really more about the characters, it's giving you a
• 1:16:23
  really good laugh at something. Instead it's it doesn't get the
• 1:16:27
  credit for being as funny as it is because of the tone.
• 1:16:30
  It's darkly funny, but it's a pretty hilarious film, really.
• 1:16:34
  In the dialogue, it's. Really funny.
• 1:16:36
  So I think the lesson is don't get too hung up if you're not
• 1:16:39
  following the smaller details of the plot, because it can still
• 1:16:42
  take you on a great ride anywhere.
• 1:16:43
  Yeah. Yeah, it is.
• 1:16:45
  Yeah. I mean the right and so
• 1:16:45
  refreshing here for me. Like you, Madam, dialogue just
• 1:16:48
  sings. There's more wit and invention
• 1:16:50
  here than 99% of films released in the last 10 years for me.
• 1:16:54
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:16:55
  And it's not just the words, it's the plotting, the twist and
• 1:16:57
  narrative. Houston's not pandering to the
• 1:16:59
  audience, and, let's face it, an audience which was likely less
• 1:17:03
  savvy about movie conventions than the artist.
• 1:17:06
  It's absolutely, yeah, Yeah. It's kind of like McDonough
• 1:17:08
  territory, Tarantino territory. Yeah, it is.
• 1:17:10
  Yeah. Very much fearless.
• 1:17:11
  Absolutely fearless. Yeah, it.
• 1:17:13
  Really is the lies are being told from the first scene till
• 1:17:16
  the last from all characters. It's exhausting.
• 1:17:20
  Really is exhausting. Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  It's just when we think we know what's happened, something is
• 1:17:25
  thrown in yet again. And knock us off balance and
• 1:17:28
  question our judgement. We've been played for a SAP all
• 1:17:31
  the way through. Unlike Sam.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah. And Houston.
• 1:17:34
  Like you were saying, Wesley, Houston doesn't stick around to
• 1:17:36
  allow you to catch up. If you're lost off, well, that's
• 1:17:38
  that's your fault. That's not tough.
• 1:17:40
  Yeah. Hard cheese.
• 1:17:45
  And to make it even more difficult, there are countless
• 1:17:47
  pseudonyms. We've talked about LeBlanc
• 1:17:49
  wonderly, the fat man, Mr. G. Then we've got Miles Archer,
• 1:17:52
  who's referred to by both names, and Thursby, who we never see.
• 1:17:59
  And just when we when we think we're on the level, this is the
• 1:18:01
  plot. Who killed Miles?
• 1:18:02
  Who killed Thursby? Incomes Cairo.
• 1:18:05
  We talk of the Blackbird to throw everything into chaos
• 1:18:08
  again. Considering all of that,
• 1:18:09
  Houston's got it completely under control.
• 1:18:11
  He keeps the strings loose before tightening it up right at
• 1:18:14
  the end. Yeah, I think it's writing for
• 1:18:16
  an adult audience who Houston always keeps at least one step
• 1:18:20
  behind every character on screen, and even those
• 1:18:22
  characters don't know what's happening.
• 1:18:24
  No. Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  Yeah, and that just serves to throw you completely off guard,
• 1:18:29
  questioning everyone and everything.
• 1:18:30
  I mean, it's impeccable writing for an 85 year old script.
• 1:18:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible.
• 1:18:37
  Yeah. As mentioned, Dashiell Hammett
• 1:18:39
  wrote the source material before The Maltese Fault and published
• 1:18:42
  as a novel. It was first serialized in crime
• 1:18:44
  fiction magazine Black Mass. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about
• 1:18:47
  authenticity as well and having it was a detective at the
• 1:18:50
  Pinkerton National Detective Agency for seven years before
• 1:18:53
  being a writer and based the main characters from the book on
• 1:18:55
  his experiences. Amazing.
• 1:18:58
  Yeah, and Cairo's real world parallel was a forger.
• 1:19:01
  Goodman was a detective of sorts who was forever in pursuit of
• 1:19:04
  long lost treasure. And no Shauna.
• 1:19:06
  She was made-up of a couple of people, including one woman who
• 1:19:08
  came to Pinkerton to hire someone to fire her housekeeper.
• 1:19:12
  Wow, Great. Spade wasn't based on anybody in
• 1:19:14
  particular, though, Hamid said. Here's what most of the private
• 1:19:17
  detectives I work with would have liked to have been a hard,
• 1:19:20
  shifty fellow able to take care of himself in any situation.
• 1:19:24
  Yeah, like Fleming, right? And Bond isn't.
• 1:19:26
  It. Yeah.
• 1:19:26
  Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:28
  Samuel was Hammett's first name as well.
• 1:19:30
  Samuel Dashiel Hammett. Right.
• 1:19:33
  If I was Hammett, I always said, yeah, it's based on me.
• 1:19:34
  That's exactly. What?
• 1:19:35
  Yeah, yeah, I've got my name and everything, of course it.
• 1:19:40
  Is the film is remarkably fearful of the book, most of the
• 1:19:43
  dialogue is lifted directly from the page.
• 1:19:45
  Naturally, there are a few elements that were omitted.
• 1:19:47
  Characters like Gutman's daughter and Spade's attorney
• 1:19:50
  didn't make the screen, and there was a Sam Spade monologue
• 1:19:53
  that didn't get included at all. Yeah, that involved Spade
• 1:19:56
  telling all Shaughnessy about a fellow named Flick Craft who
• 1:19:58
  nearly died in a freak accident. He loves his wife and his
• 1:20:02
  children and is found about five years later in a similar city in
• 1:20:04
  the same state with a similar job and family.
• 1:20:08
  I guess it reflects human nature.
• 1:20:09
  You are what you are, Gutman, Cairo or Shaughnessy.
• 1:20:12
  And spirit, I suppose, will always be true to their natures,
• 1:20:15
  yes. Exactly.
• 1:20:16
  We don't need another name in there.
• 1:20:17
  No, we don't. Who?
• 1:20:19
  We don't. Even meet yet?
• 1:20:21
  No. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:23
  Does he have the Falcon thick rock?
• 1:20:25
  Probably. Yeah, positive.
• 1:20:27
  Version of it. Yeah, not the fake.
• 1:20:29
  He's got the real one, Yeah. What?
• 1:20:32
  As we've been saying so far, particularly with Cairo, there
• 1:20:35
  was a desire to remove all the gear subtext, but it has been
• 1:20:38
  orders. There was still hints towards
• 1:20:39
  the characters of Cairo, like we've been saying, but also
• 1:20:42
  Wilma and Gutman being gay. Spade continually calls Wilma
• 1:20:46
  Gunsel, which is also lifted from the book, and that's got
• 1:20:49
  nothing to do with his abilities with the firearm.
• 1:20:51
  It's a Yiddish word which translates as little goose, but
• 1:20:54
  it's mean and changed over time and it became a gear slur.
• 1:20:57
  Right, that slipped past the senses.
• 1:20:59
  Unsurprisingly, yeah. As the film is stuffed with
• 1:21:02
  dialogue, owners were worried that this would slow the pace of
• 1:21:04
  the film down and requested the bogey talk faster.
• 1:21:07
  Amazing. Houston instructed his whole
• 1:21:09
  cast to do the same, leading to what the what Matt was saying,
• 1:21:12
  the ratatat style delivery which became synonymous with the noir
• 1:21:15
  genre. Yeah, I'm Dan Atroyd, obviously.
• 1:21:17
  Yeah, of course. Dragnet, yeah.
• 1:21:24
  That's referred to in that scene you mentioned that, Matt, the
• 1:21:26
  DEA's office went bogey, layers down this incredible monologue,
• 1:21:29
  thick with dialogue in detail, machine going fast and
• 1:21:32
  impeccably delivered. He turns to the sonographer and
• 1:21:35
  says, are you getting this all right, son, or am I going too
• 1:21:37
  fast, Boy, brilliant. Yeah, Yeah, the dialogue in that
• 1:21:41
  scene is beautiful as well. He says my guess might be
• 1:21:43
  excellent or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn't raise any
• 1:21:46
  children dippy enough to make guesses in front of the District
• 1:21:49
  Attorney, the assistant District Attorney and the sonographer.
• 1:21:52
  Which is basically Mama didn't raise no fool with a lot more
• 1:21:55
  dialogue. Imagine if you're an actor,
• 1:21:59
  though, and the note given to say that really fast.
• 1:22:02
  Really. Fast.
• 1:22:03
  I mean, I struggle to say it and I have loads of pauses in there,
• 1:22:06
  yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:07
  Exactly. Despite the reports of his
• 1:22:09
  secretary right in that first draft, Houston was solely
• 1:22:11
  responsible for the rewrite. He had a modest explanation for
• 1:22:15
  how to adapt a novel, he said. You simply take apart 2 copies
• 1:22:18
  of the book, paste the pages and cross out what you don't like.
• 1:22:22
  Simple as that. Yeah, easy peasy.
• 1:22:24
  Yeah, no probs. To what Peter Jackson did Lord
• 1:22:26
  of the Rings. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:22:28
  Same, wasn't it? Yeah.
• 1:22:29
  Easy, easy. Done.
• 1:22:30
  Back-to-back to back, Yeah. And Hamid did approve of
• 1:22:35
  Houston's version of The Maltese Falcon in a letter to his
• 1:22:37
  daughter two weeks after the films release, he wrote, Have
• 1:22:40
  you seen The Maltese Falcon yet? They made a pretty good picture
• 1:22:42
  of it for a change. Yeah, they really did.
• 1:22:45
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:22:45
  So with incredibly strong source material to work with, John
• 1:22:48
  Houston provided the film noir blueprint of Rat a tat tat
• 1:22:51
  dialogue and twisted narrative. Yes, he certainly did.
• 1:22:57
  Providing A backdrop to complement the mystery is
• 1:22:59
  composer Adolf Deutsch. Now, at this time, that name is
• 1:23:04
  unfortunate. It's really unfortunate I was
• 1:23:06
  going. To say that, yeah, that's.
• 1:23:07
  The first thing I've got written down 1941 Who did?
• 1:23:10
  Who did the music? Was he for?
• 1:23:17
  I think Deutsche score, I think it shows a lot of restraint and
• 1:23:21
  he doesn't overpower the film, as was often the case at the
• 1:23:23
  time. The music used to fill in the
• 1:23:25
  gaps and do a lot of the heavy lifting.
• 1:23:27
  Yeah. And I think Deutsche knows when
• 1:23:29
  to step in and went to the dialogue and the performances
• 1:23:32
  Breathe. For a film that is essentially
• 1:23:34
  people talking in rooms, double crossing each other, yeah, I
• 1:23:36
  think the music walks a tightrope.
• 1:23:38
  Too much and it becomes over and and too little and it's kind of
• 1:23:42
  empty, empty spaces within the rooms.
• 1:23:44
  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 1:23:45
  I think he gets the balance right.
• 1:23:47
  I really love his work. In that second scene between
• 1:23:50
  Spade and Gutman, there's the usual dramatic blow of music
• 1:23:53
  when Wilma kicks Spade in the head when he passes out.
• 1:23:56
  But then it all becomes apparent when Cairo comes in from the
• 1:23:59
  other room that they're all working together.
• 1:24:01
  And Gutman, who was coming across kind of like a bit of an
• 1:24:03
  old fool in search of this long lost treasure, now looks
• 1:24:07
  incredibly sinister as he's accompanied by this low rumble
• 1:24:10
  in the score, almost like an army marching the battle.
• 1:24:13
  Dun Dun Dun. That music really enhances the
• 1:24:16
  visuals and the menace of the scene, and that's what a great
• 1:24:18
  score should do for me. Obviously, it should elevate
• 1:24:21
  what's already there without announcing itself.
• 1:24:23
  Deutsch isn't trying to tell you how to feel every second, he's
• 1:24:26
  just punctuating key moments underlying the danger and then
• 1:24:29
  pulling back to let the actors do their stuff.
• 1:24:31
  Of course, it's very much of its time, but I do mean that in a
• 1:24:35
  positive way. They don't know why scores that
• 1:24:37
  followed or a debt to what Deutsche established here.
• 1:24:40
  Moody atmosphere and like Houston's direction, always in
• 1:24:43
  service of the story rather than being at odds or competing with
• 1:24:46
  it. Yeah, I think it's great work.
• 1:24:49
  I think it's really interesting because there's more of it in
• 1:24:52
  the film than you might expect, but it's beneath the surface and
• 1:24:56
  we have covered a few films from the Zebra recently, 12 Angry
• 1:24:58
  Man, It's Wonderful Life and when we talked about the music
• 1:25:01
  there, I think we'll see. And well, there's the occasional
• 1:25:03
  flourish here and there to accentuate the emotion of the
• 1:25:06
  scene, but I don't think that's the case.
• 1:25:08
  Ian Want It's more like mood music.
• 1:25:10
  It's not really creating something you can really hold
• 1:25:13
  more memorable in that sense, but it creates this mood of
• 1:25:16
  tension that it needs. And as we're saying, it's a very
• 1:25:19
  talky film, so the music underneath the dialogue, it
• 1:25:22
  gives us a little bit of a lift and it kind of peps the action
• 1:25:25
  up a bit, I think. So it might not be packed full
• 1:25:28
  of tunes, but if you took the music away, so many of the low
• 1:25:31
  scenes of talk that would just feel like dead air that have
• 1:25:34
  nothing to them, It wouldn't be like watching a film stage play
• 1:25:38
  instead of something cinematic. So everything depraves in this
• 1:25:41
  film, which is pretty much everything.
• 1:25:43
  I think the music might be the most underrated quality that it
• 1:25:46
  has. Yeah, good points.
• 1:25:48
  Yeah, I think it really leads the way, especially for the
• 1:25:50
  genre. To me, like Matt said daily,
• 1:25:53
  it's kind of like a theatre player watching a theatre
• 1:25:55
  player. To me, all the music seems like
• 1:25:56
  it opens and closes more scenes. Yes, I know, like the Kurt, the
• 1:26:00
  Kurt closing, it has that real vibe to it where you kind of you
• 1:26:03
  can move to the next part. It's like punctuation.
• 1:26:06
  I guess the way that he uses it, used it really well.
• 1:26:09
  But I do think he's following orders from Houston.
• 1:26:10
  I think he's has a lot to do with how that works.
• 1:26:12
  I mean, you know who else was following orders differently?
• 1:26:21
  I mean, it's very, it's very dark in place, it's very
• 1:26:24
  suspenseful. It does set the tone, especially
• 1:26:26
  for the genre and it's sprinkled in beautifully where it is
• 1:26:28
  needed. But sometimes it does kind of
• 1:26:30
  engulf what's happening. I mean, when Miles is shot,
• 1:26:32
  it's. Boom.
• 1:26:35
  Boom. But then the scene straight
• 1:26:37
  after that, when Sam receives the phone call about Miles being
• 1:26:39
  shot, it's just very understated.
• 1:26:41
  It's very on the bottom. It's very just kind of where the
• 1:26:44
  tone kind of just needs to lift and sit.
• 1:26:46
  But yeah, I'm exactly the same with you guys because I mean, it
• 1:26:48
  just is what it is when you're watching it.
• 1:26:50
  It doesn't change your perception of what's going on.
• 1:26:53
  It is welcome where it where it is needed, but it doesn't change
• 1:26:56
  your opinion or emotion on any of the scenes.
• 1:26:59
  You've still got to make your own mind up.
• 1:27:01
  And I think it's really good to me it it is a soundtrack in the
• 1:27:04
  way that it is just a company in the film and a company in the
• 1:27:06
  performances. But there's no chance of this
• 1:27:08
  taking anything away from the dialogue.
• 1:27:10
  The dialogue is always going to be priority over the music.
• 1:27:13
  Of course. George does that really, really
• 1:27:15
  well. It's very understated, but it's
• 1:27:16
  beautifully done. Not something I'm going to buy
• 1:27:18
  on vinyl. Imagine.
• 1:27:21
  Yeah. I love these 30 seconds of these
• 1:27:24
  really big triumphant booms and then just these little subtle
• 1:27:27
  bits. Yeah, great.
• 1:27:28
  But yeah, it's one of the things that we do, sits with the film.
• 1:27:31
  It doesn't exist outside the world, the film at all.
• 1:27:33
  It's just laminated into it. It's great.
• 1:27:36
  Yeah, it is fantastic. There wasn't a lot of money
• 1:27:38
  allocated to the music in the film, it was considered to be
• 1:27:40
  picture at the time, so the drafted in Deutsch, who was an
• 1:27:44
  Englishman strangely enough. Wow, right?
• 1:27:47
  He'd previously worked on their drive by a night.
• 1:27:49
  That's Pro Door Noir that we talked about and the angels
• 1:27:53
  washed their faces. Unrelated to Angels with Dirty
• 1:27:56
  Faces, but named to capitalize on its success.
• 1:28:00
  Shameless that. It was a dead end.
• 1:28:04
  Kids film star in Ronald Reagan as well.
• 1:28:07
  Oh wow. Janet Kennedy Dutch created an 8
• 1:28:15
  N theme for the main title which represented the pursuit of the
• 1:28:17
  Falcon. It was played in B flat as
• 1:28:20
  opposed to C to give it a darker tone, and orchestrator Arthur
• 1:28:24
  Lang had all violins tuned down a whole step to give the
• 1:28:27
  strength section added weight and a real darkness I think that
• 1:28:30
  brings. It's the darkness you can feel
• 1:28:32
  in the music, yeah. So solid work from Adolf
• 1:28:35
  Deutsch, who adds a sense of dark drama to the narrative with
• 1:28:39
  the occasional playful flourish. Yeah, OK.
• 1:28:41
  Very occasional, yes. Finally, another benchmark in
• 1:28:47
  the new genre, Deep shadows and unusual angles coming from
• 1:28:51
  cinematographer Arthur Edison. Westie, your thoughts on
• 1:28:54
  Edison's worker? Yeah.
• 1:28:55
  It's just really fantastic stuff and the fact that that breaking
• 1:28:59
  rules left, right and centre because they just want to tell
• 1:29:02
  this story and this is the way it should be done.
• 1:29:04
  You know what? Cinematography is overthought,
• 1:29:07
  camera movements are overthought.
• 1:29:09
  A lot of things are, you know, over analysed and this, you can
• 1:29:12
  analyse it, but it doesn't lend itself to be analysed.
• 1:29:15
  It just is. It exists and you know exactly
• 1:29:17
  why that camera is moving, you know exactly why that frames
• 1:29:20
  wide, you know exactly who you need to focus on.
• 1:29:23
  It's just not a part of this that is pretentious in the
• 1:29:26
  cinematography whatsoever. It's an absolute necessary force
• 1:29:31
  for what it is. And Arthur Edison was massively
• 1:29:34
  inspired by German Expressionism.
• 1:29:36
  And that really comes across especially in the light and such
• 1:29:39
  hard lightning, hard shadows, great silhouettes of Spain, just
• 1:29:44
  like on the background. So you can see through the
• 1:29:45
  window, especially on the floor. Like we've mentioned before, you
• 1:29:48
  know, when Miles gets shot, that's great.
• 1:29:50
  It's just drenched in darkness. And he rolls down the hill.
• 1:29:53
  You just see just enough. You know, there's just a
• 1:29:55
  beautiful catch, lights in the eyes.
• 1:29:57
  You don't know who's telling the truth.
• 1:29:58
  And a lot of that's down to the angles, you know, the low angle
• 1:30:00
  that we talked about, the ceiling set.
• 1:30:02
  Just a pioneer of inventive necessity to tell a story in a
• 1:30:06
  really interesting way. It's snappy, it's technically
• 1:30:10
  perfect. If you look at, just look at the
• 1:30:13
  cinematography and the way that it cuts, it shouldn't work.
• 1:30:16
  He's breaking under an 80° rule. He's breaking the line.
• 1:30:19
  He's all over the place. The room doesn't make any sense
• 1:30:21
  and you're so disorientated by what's going on.
• 1:30:24
  But again, Edison and Houston are looking at each other from
• 1:30:27
  across the second one. Yeah, that works.
• 1:30:29
  It's a complete trust here. It's a real partnership and a
• 1:30:32
  real, like I say, a real trust in the writing and then
• 1:30:35
  visualizing that, right. And this is a visualization of
• 1:30:38
  that script and it's just a wonderful piece of work.
• 1:30:40
  You did so, so many films. One of the founders of the
• 1:30:42
  American Society of Cinematographers, he was so
• 1:30:46
  highly regarded. But I would imagine if you sat
• 1:30:48
  down totally, but it would have been very, very humble about it.
• 1:30:51
  Yes. Just wanted to make this film
• 1:30:53
  and wanted to tell this story and he does it in such a
• 1:30:56
  beautiful way. Yeah, incredible.
• 1:30:58
  I think his work, like most people's work here, can't be
• 1:31:01
  understated. He basically shot the blueprint
• 1:31:03
  for what one of the most revealed movie genres would look
• 1:31:06
  like for decades to come. And this kind of coming keeps on
• 1:31:09
  coming up. But it has to because we're
• 1:31:11
  talking about a film like this, a real touchstone in cinema
• 1:31:14
  history. Everything we associate with the
• 1:31:16
  visual language of noir, low key light and long shadows, the
• 1:31:19
  interplay between light and dark.
• 1:31:21
  Edison's. He's essentially right in the
• 1:31:22
  handbook. Yeah, look at the way he shoots
• 1:31:24
  Gutman's hotel room. Those blinds, shadows cutting
• 1:31:28
  across the walls and the characters faces, that images
• 1:31:31
  become synonymous with noir, that it's almost a cliche.
• 1:31:34
  It starts here. Yeah, it does.
• 1:31:37
  All the way. Frames Spade in his office at
• 1:31:38
  night, ice face half illuminated, the other half
• 1:31:40
  swallowed by the shadows. It's just visual shorthand for
• 1:31:44
  ambiguity. That these characters who exist
• 1:31:47
  in great areas. And Edison, he literally puts
• 1:31:50
  that there on screen. Visual storytelling.
• 1:31:54
  There's also his use of low angles.
• 1:31:55
  We've talked about that to make certain characters feel more
• 1:31:58
  imposed and more threatening. When Goodman's hold in court,
• 1:32:01
  that camera is looking up at him and he's just got all mighty
• 1:32:04
  power and menace. Yeah, and you've mentioned the
• 1:32:06
  deep focus work as well, Westie. It's unbelievable, yeah.
• 1:32:10
  Yeah, foreground, middle, background, they're all in sharp
• 1:32:12
  focus. Gives us every density to the
• 1:32:15
  film. Yeah, I mean he's invented 3D
• 1:32:18
  cinema basically because of that depth in that frame.
• 1:32:21
  Then Sam's at Bridget's apartment and goes to kiss her,
• 1:32:24
  but then looks out the window and there's that push to the kid
• 1:32:26
  in the door. It's how much more can you fit
• 1:32:28
  into this world? How deep does the rabbit hole
• 1:32:30
  go? Having 5-6 people in the frame
• 1:32:33
  but having them so you see everyone and everyone has a
• 1:32:35
  place. Pause any of them compositions
• 1:32:37
  and the fucking perfect. They're just album covers.
• 1:32:40
  They're just so well done. Yeah, very much reminiscent for
• 1:32:43
  me of the this is it's seen from Blue Velvet when they're all in
• 1:32:48
  the shot, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes it.
• 1:32:50
  Reminds me very much of that. Yeah.
• 1:32:52
  Matt, your thoughts on Arthur Edison's work?
• 1:32:54
  I mean everything you see have said, but the only thing I think
• 1:32:57
  a lot is there's so much great blocking in this, which I think
• 1:33:02
  compensates for the challenge he has, which is it's as we've been
• 1:33:06
  since such a talkie film. It could be quite static.
• 1:33:09
  The conversations though, they're never dull to look
• 1:33:11
  outside. It's because you do have the
• 1:33:13
  actors doing a bit of business, you know, Sam rolling a
• 1:33:15
  cigarette, Cairo and his business with the skin.
• 1:33:18
  But often it's because Houston and Edison, they have the
• 1:33:21
  characters moving within the frame.
• 1:33:22
  They sat down, then they have the seat to the porn, a drink,
• 1:33:24
  they're back down, they're moving across the other side.
• 1:33:26
  Do him to continue the conversation.
• 1:33:28
  Someone else pipes up. All very simple stuff, but it's
• 1:33:30
  still got to be done well. Otherwise, it's going to be a
• 1:33:33
  very, very dry and static film to watch.
• 1:33:35
  Yeah, it's that first meeting that Sam has with the cops when
• 1:33:37
  they come into his apartment and then either side of the frame
• 1:33:40
  and he Subs back to the cameras. Then he moves through the frame
• 1:33:42
  in between them and the drink moves back.
• 1:33:44
  Exactly. The camera is just backwards and
• 1:33:45
  forwards and it's just everything's framed within that.
• 1:33:47
  Yeah, so beautifully. Done it is.
• 1:33:50
  Houston himself was initially dismissive of the role of
• 1:33:52
  cinematographer players in making a film.
• 1:33:54
  He wrote that he was of the impression that they were nice
• 1:33:57
  fellows who concentrated their efforts on turning out pretty
• 1:34:00
  compositions. Yeah, and this was while he was
• 1:34:03
  a screenwriter. But his view changed when he sat
• 1:34:05
  in the director's chair for the first time, he said.
• 1:34:07
  Practical experience very quickly forced me to revise my
• 1:34:10
  ideas and convince me that the industry cinematographers are,
• 1:34:14
  as a class, perhaps the most invaluable and yet generally
• 1:34:18
  underrated men in Hollywood. Specifically, he often wondered
• 1:34:21
  why there were so many changes to his scripts and the finished
• 1:34:24
  article. He later surmised I simply
• 1:34:26
  didn't know how to write for the camera.
• 1:34:28
  I tried to put it into words things which could more easily
• 1:34:31
  be be told in pictured action. Yeah, visual language.
• 1:34:34
  He didn't understand it. Didn't have a clue.
• 1:34:37
  So that is was like, well what about this?
• 1:34:38
  Yes, Edison had been working in movies since the mid 10's, the
• 1:34:42
  silent era and had shot All Quiet on the Western Front and
• 1:34:45
  the classic Universal monster movies like Invisible Man of
• 1:34:47
  Frankenstein. And before filming started,
• 1:34:51
  Houston and Edison studied the script, agreeing on the mood
• 1:34:54
  lighting in general visuals. This is another reason why
• 1:34:56
  Houston was able to be so economical during production.
• 1:34:59
  Everything was just planned out. Yeah, yeah, Edison was one of
• 1:35:02
  the first DPS to employ Greg Tollens highly influential
• 1:35:05
  cinematographer style from Citizen Kane, which came out a
• 1:35:08
  month before filming on Falcon began.
• 1:35:11
  You can tell there's a lot a lot of influence here.
• 1:35:14
  Definitely. He used his own 21 millimeter
• 1:35:17
  wide angle lens as opposed to the standard 24.
• 1:35:19
  He had a keen eye for depth of the frame and used low key
• 1:35:22
  lightning at extreme angles to cast deep shadows.
• 1:35:25
  I know 21 mil and 24 doesn't sound massively different, but
• 1:35:28
  it really fucking is. Right.
• 1:35:31
  So often going underappreciated sometime by a film's director,
• 1:35:34
  the people behind the camera proved to be just as important
• 1:35:37
  as the people in front of it. Oh, absolutely, if not more so
• 1:35:43
  the end. After Sam's meeting with the DA
• 1:35:48
  is lured back to visit Gutman, but any more of his tough talk
• 1:35:51
  and they'll be picking iron out of his liver.
• 1:35:55
  Yeah, this second scene with Gutman is almost unbelievable.
• 1:35:59
  First off, Sam takes advantage of Wilmers naivety.
• 1:36:02
  He gives him the old Sean Connery, the court over the
• 1:36:05
  shoulders and takes his gun. Love that one.
• 1:36:09
  More great dialogue. This will put you in salary with
• 1:36:11
  your boss. Love it.
• 1:36:13
  Yeah. And when we're in the apartment,
• 1:36:15
  Gutman lays down the most astounding thing that's beards
• 1:36:18
  ever heard, apparently. And there are a lot of standouts
• 1:36:20
  here, Gutman and Ravel, in this deliciously complex tale passed
• 1:36:23
  down through the centuries and no doubt turned into lore and
• 1:36:26
  myth. It's such a strikingly rich
• 1:36:28
  story that I'm just completely on the edge of my seat.
• 1:36:32
  Yeah. Green Street's performance here,
• 1:36:34
  talking about the folk and talking about its history,
• 1:36:37
  leaning in, engulfing the whole frame and whisper in the finer
• 1:36:40
  details of the tale, is if the walls are listening.
• 1:36:43
  Yeah. The Solari is so evocative, and
• 1:36:45
  it absolutely has to be because it's got to be enticing enough
• 1:36:48
  to blind side Sam Spade so that he doesn't know that his drink
• 1:36:52
  has been laced. A man of his Wiles would surely
• 1:36:55
  know if his drink was off unless he tumbles into a fantasy land
• 1:36:58
  of a bejeweled statue, which he has done with with Gutman.
• 1:37:01
  Yes, who knows if any of this is true, but Gutman has to get
• 1:37:05
  speared out of the picture so that he can catch up with
• 1:37:06
  Bridget and retrieve the bird without any interference from
• 1:37:09
  somebody who is his match, which speared absolutely is.
• 1:37:13
  This is something that we will not find out until a tossed off
• 1:37:17
  comment in about 20 minutes time.
• 1:37:19
  And if you don't catch up with it?
• 1:37:24
  He's not part of the plan. No, he's not part of the plan.
• 1:37:26
  He's he's expendable. Yes.
• 1:37:28
  And you know, this is just dialogue that will have you on
• 1:37:31
  the end of your seat and performance to match.
• 1:37:33
  It's stunning stuff, yeah. If you look up this scene you'll
• 1:37:37
  find tales when an incredible unbroken 7 minute take as Wilma
• 1:37:40
  and Sam come down the hallway into Gutmans hotel suite and
• 1:37:44
  then the two have a few drinks and talk about the origin and
• 1:37:46
  value of the Falcon. I think this originated from a
• 1:37:49
  passage by the script supervisor describing the setup.
• 1:37:52
  Yeah, I I don't know whether this is just kind of like a tale
• 1:37:56
  gone wrong, much like the tale of the Falcon itself.
• 1:37:59
  Yeah, yeah. So in script supervisor Meta
• 1:38:02
  Wild's words, the camera followed Green Street and Bogart
• 1:38:05
  from one room into another, then down the long hallway and
• 1:38:08
  finally into a living room. There the camera moved up and
• 1:38:11
  down, then panned from left to right and back to Bogart's
• 1:38:14
  drunken face. The next pan shot was to Green
• 1:38:16
  Street's massive stomach from Bogart's point of view. 1 miss
• 1:38:20
  and we had to begin all over again.
• 1:38:22
  Yeah, I mean, even from the start of that quote, the camera
• 1:38:24
  followed Green Street and Bogart from one room and another, then
• 1:38:26
  down along hallway. Well, that's inaccurate because
• 1:38:29
  it's Bogey and Alicia Cook before Green St. shows up.
• 1:38:32
  So it's all very strange, but it is an incredible scene
• 1:38:34
  nonetheless. And thankfully, there wasn't a
• 1:38:36
  miss. We mentioned how meticulous
• 1:38:38
  Houston was in his planning. Probably the greatest example of
• 1:38:41
  this is during this scene, it was rehearsed for two days
• 1:38:44
  straight. And because everybody knew the
• 1:38:46
  scene so well, it was nailed in one take because the whole day
• 1:38:50
  was allocated to the shooting of that one particular scene.
• 1:38:54
  Production was finished for the day with the remainder being
• 1:38:56
  spent at the Golf Club. Of course.
• 1:38:59
  Nice. Not like, oh, we can get ahead
• 1:39:02
  of schedule. Yeah, yeah, retired.
• 1:39:04
  Yeah, cocktails. Yep.
• 1:39:06
  So the word around the campfire is that this is a 7 minute
• 1:39:09
  Warner. Yes.
• 1:39:10
  If this if there was a 7 minute Warner take in the Maltese
• 1:39:14
  Falcon, that's what it would be famous for.
• 1:39:16
  Yeah, yes, it would be Yeah 1. 100% that's longer than the walk
• 1:39:20
  in Goodfellas. It is, yeah, yeah, but an
• 1:39:23
  incredible scene nonetheless with simply in dialogue.
• 1:39:26
  Yes, it's an amazing scene. It is from one amazing scene to
• 1:39:30
  another. I mean, we're back and we've got
• 1:39:32
  Sam in the office and then he's talking to Effie doesn't We
• 1:39:38
  don't quite know what's going on.
• 1:39:40
  We're in, we're in a little bit of a lull here.
• 1:39:42
  We're in a little bit of a breather for about a minute and
• 1:39:46
  1/2 door opens. Some guy stumbles in with a
• 1:39:50
  package. He's been shot, right?
• 1:39:52
  Who the fuck's this guy? Who's this?
• 1:39:55
  Sam wakes up. We'll backtrack a little bit.
• 1:39:57
  He wakes up and he happens to find the newspaper that circled
• 1:40:00
  with the ship that's really handy.
• 1:40:03
  And then turns up. The ship's on fire.
• 1:40:04
  He's worried about someone about.
• 1:40:05
  Yeah, I know. Everyone got off fine.
• 1:40:06
  That's great, No problem. Comes back and he's like,
• 1:40:08
  shaking his head, thinking, well, the ship was on fire,
• 1:40:10
  what's going on? Then this guy stumbles in, it
• 1:40:14
  sounds like. All right.
• 1:40:15
  Sits him down, looks to his credentials, while if he's out
• 1:40:17
  the room, she comes back. And he knows who he is, but he
• 1:40:19
  doesn't say to her straight away who he is, so keeps her in the
• 1:40:22
  back foot. But that scream in the
• 1:40:23
  background that is such a femme fatale like noir scream.
• 1:40:28
  It's like the Wilhelm scream of the new genre.
• 1:40:31
  It's like used over and over again.
• 1:40:33
  It's so recognizable. Wonderful.
• 1:40:35
  Absolutely love that. But what a bang moment.
• 1:40:37
  This guy's stumbling in and the dialogue here couldn't have come
• 1:40:39
  that far with all them holes in him.
• 1:40:41
  That. That's really brilliant.
• 1:40:43
  And then if he's just not taking it well enough, don't pass out
• 1:40:45
  on us. What's the matter with you, this
• 1:40:46
  dead body in the room just shaking her like, don't, don't
• 1:40:51
  be so stupid, right? Don't pass out on me now.
• 1:40:53
  But we are thinking, well, who is this guy?
• 1:40:55
  And then the pick up the package, open it, and he's like,
• 1:40:58
  we've got an Angel. And he's grabbing us so hard.
• 1:41:00
  She's like, that hurts. It's not that important.
• 1:41:04
  What are you doing? Then we got an Angel.
• 1:41:06
  You would have fallen, right? OK.
• 1:41:08
  Then there's a phone call. It's all showing to see she's in
• 1:41:10
  trouble, right? Call the police.
• 1:41:12
  But it happened exactly the way it happened, but there was no
• 1:41:15
  package. You'll mention the bundle.
• 1:41:17
  And don't mention the bundle. And I took the call.
• 1:41:19
  You didn't. That's exactly what the ground
• 1:41:21
  then that's who it is. And who is this guy?
• 1:41:23
  Oh yeah, that's, you know, that's Captain Jaggery.
• 1:41:24
  Okay, yeah, great. You just cracked on with that
• 1:41:27
  and then he's just out of there. Amazing.
• 1:41:29
  Just leave. So with a dead body waiting for
• 1:41:31
  the police to turn up, Effie is a fucking Angel.
• 1:41:34
  Like in a derogatory way. She is just what a wonderful
• 1:41:38
  human being to stick with them through all this.
• 1:41:40
  Then she fucking delivers it in the final scene, which we'll
• 1:41:42
  talk about later on. Maybe 6:00 AM, but he's your
• 1:41:45
  bundle. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:41:46
  And he's like, you know, PDQ, which I would imagine is pretty
• 1:41:49
  damn quick. So she's just up and out of
• 1:41:51
  there. But that's, you know, that's,
• 1:41:52
  that's the scene that's coming up.
• 1:41:54
  But it's hard to talk about PDQ. And we'll just do we don't get a
• 1:41:58
  chance to breathe now from here. We think we're going to get some
• 1:42:01
  answers. He's got it, he's found it.
• 1:42:04
  He'll go. Let's get into the end.
• 1:42:06
  And and it just assaults you from here on it it really.
• 1:42:08
  Does. Yeah, The bundle itself, the
• 1:42:11
  Great Maltese Falcon, was inspired by the Niphausen Hawk,
• 1:42:15
  which was a pouring vessel made in 1697 for George William von
• 1:42:20
  Niphausen, who was count of the Holy Roman Empire.
• 1:42:24
  Ohh, right, that guy. You know him well, I imagine
• 1:42:27
  West. Yeah, Nip Hosen.
• 1:42:28
  Yeah, yeah. The big nip.
• 1:42:30
  The big nip. The big nip boy.
• 1:42:35
  And there were a number of different Falcon props created
• 1:42:37
  for the film, all based on artist Fred Saxon's design.
• 1:42:40
  There has been some conflicting information about this, but the
• 1:42:43
  general consensus is that most of the props, around six of
• 1:42:46
  them, were made of plastic resin and as a result were very light.
• 1:42:49
  There were also two made of lead.
• 1:42:51
  They weighed around 45 lbs compared to the 5 LB resin ones.
• 1:42:55
  Yeah, really heavy. The prop department spent under
• 1:42:59
  $700.00 designing and manufacturing the different
• 1:43:02
  blackbirds. One of the lead props was
• 1:43:04
  dropped on Bogey's foot during production by Lee Patrick, who
• 1:43:06
  plays Effie, and as a result, the tail feathers were dented.
• 1:43:10
  Nothing about Bogey's foot, obviously just bounced off it
• 1:43:12
  because he's just made of solid, solid, solid man.
• 1:43:19
  Yeah, have a look again at the bird when Sam carries it out of
• 1:43:22
  his apartment at the end. You'll see the damage.
• 1:43:24
  It is this that is the only official prop out there, as
• 1:43:27
  confirmed by Warner Brothers archives.
• 1:43:30
  It resurfaced in the 80s in the hands of a Beverly Hills
• 1:43:32
  surgeon, and it was most recently put up for auction in
• 1:43:35
  2013, when it was expected to go for around $1,000,000.
• 1:43:39
  But there was a Bidden war, with Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn
• 1:43:42
  ultimately paying $4.1 million for it.
• 1:43:45
  Wow. $4 million. Wow.
• 1:43:49
  Incredible. There's a really compelling
• 1:43:51
  Vanity Fair article that paints an alternate history of the many
• 1:43:55
  Falcon props and the validity of the one that Steve Wynn bought.
• 1:43:58
  It involves eccentric collectors the Black Dahlia and Leonardo
• 1:44:01
  DiCaprio. It's as twisty and turny as the
• 1:44:04
  film itself. It's an incredible read.
• 1:44:06
  OK, I'll check it. Out, yeah.
• 1:44:07
  Check it out. The captain of La Paloma, the
• 1:44:09
  burning ship, is Captain Jacobi. He finally delivers the Falcon
• 1:44:13
  into the narrative. As we've just discussed, Jacobi
• 1:44:15
  was played by John Houston's father, Walter Houston.
• 1:44:17
  Uncredited for his work for a laugh, Walter kept on fumbling
• 1:44:21
  his entrance, meaning John had to do a number of takes for his
• 1:44:24
  scene. Dad, man.
• 1:44:26
  It's been debut film, for Christ's sake, such.
• 1:44:29
  That behaviour that like isn't it?
• 1:44:31
  Classic. Yeah, he brings a bundle of
• 1:44:34
  what's that, just fish and chips.
• 1:44:40
  John later got his own back on his dad.
• 1:44:42
  He got Mary Astor to impersonate producer Hal Wallace's secretary
• 1:44:46
  and called Walter Houston to explain that Hal thought he'd
• 1:44:49
  over acted in his scene. He was enraged and I've never
• 1:44:53
  been accused of such a thing in his career.
• 1:44:55
  But he did agree to come down to the lot to do reshoots.
• 1:44:57
  The next day, John Houston took over the phone off Astor and
• 1:45:01
  impersonated Wallace himself, reiterating his point about his
• 1:45:04
  overacting. And this made Walter blow even
• 1:45:07
  further with him allegedly saying you tell my son to get
• 1:45:09
  another actor or go to hell. It was only after John Houston
• 1:45:16
  couldn't contain his laughter that the penny dropped for his
• 1:45:18
  dad. Wow, great story.
• 1:45:21
  Yeah, great relationship that though, isn't it?
• 1:45:23
  Yeah, fantastic. Love that.
• 1:45:25
  And then things are starting to finally come to a head and
• 1:45:27
  things are finally starting to kind of unravel a bit and, and
• 1:45:30
  points of being underscored and there's got to be a fall guy to
• 1:45:33
  take the blame for all of this. And Weedley, I do feel a bit
• 1:45:36
  sorry for Wilma because yes, he's he's been an absolute
• 1:45:39
  asshole throughout the film. Murdering.
• 1:45:41
  Yeah, apart from that sound guy, but he's that type of person.
• 1:45:48
  He's desperately trying to prove himself and prove he belongs in
• 1:45:51
  this tough world of men being men's men.
• 1:45:54
  And he just has no place in it. As we said, Sam gets the drop on
• 1:45:57
  him so easily early on. And now you get this scene.
• 1:46:00
  And it's the piercing of this. I mean, Cairo's there.
• 1:46:03
  He pulls his gun. Obviously, the suggestible way
• 1:46:05
  we will put a Cairo up as the fall guy.
• 1:46:07
  We need to have one. It's double cross upon double
• 1:46:10
  cross upon double cross. And when Sam says no, it should
• 1:46:13
  be Wilma again, forgotten. This is just a game to him.
• 1:46:17
  I mean, Wilma is someone who's worked pretty faithfully for him
• 1:46:20
  and government just thinks it's hilarious.
• 1:46:22
  What do you think of this woman to mighty funny a mighty funny.
• 1:46:27
  Just everything has been ranged against them because loyalty
• 1:46:29
  means nothing to anyone in this room and as soon as government
• 1:46:32
  is convinced Spade can fit Wilmer up without any comeback
• 1:46:36
  and the DA will be happening, there'll be no questions.
• 1:46:38
  Wilmer's doomed and the grin on Sam's face say 6 to and even
• 1:46:43
  they're selling you out, Sonny, when they're just discussing it
• 1:46:45
  amongst. Themselves.
• 1:46:46
  That's great, yeah. So let's say I do feel slightly
• 1:46:48
  sorry for him because he can't keep up with what's going on and
• 1:46:51
  everyone in this room is just five steps ahead of him and he's
• 1:46:54
  got no chance of getting out. Yeah, when he's got tears in his
• 1:46:57
  eyes when he confronts Sam, that's really, really, really
• 1:47:00
  powerful moment. Yeah, it is.
• 1:47:01
  Yeah, yeah. This whole stretch with all 5
• 1:47:03
  principals together in one room accounts for around 25% of the
• 1:47:07
  entire runtime and took a full week to shoot, 3 days of which
• 1:47:11
  were allocated to the closing dialogue between Sam and
• 1:47:14
  Bridget. And it's compelling. 25% in one
• 1:47:17
  own room. Yeah.
• 1:47:18
  Yeah, that's not happening today.
• 1:47:20
  No. No, but no.
• 1:47:22
  No. Absolutely not.
• 1:47:23
  So it's a Mexican standoff we will not take in the fall, but
• 1:47:26
  there's bound to be a few more twists before the resolution.
• 1:47:29
  Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:47:33
  The plot thickens even further as Bridget's part and
• 1:47:35
  proceedings become untangled before the Fulton gets delivered
• 1:47:38
  with devastating results. Yeah, now I'm starting off with
• 1:47:41
  just after Wilmer has been pinned as the fall guy.
• 1:47:44
  Spade still has a load of questions.
• 1:47:46
  He may be spotted as a whip, but he's always playing catch up.
• 1:47:50
  Yeah, he's got to know exactly what happened so that the parts
• 1:47:52
  that don't fit can be covered up.
• 1:47:54
  And Gutman lays down yet another incredibly complex story, and
• 1:47:57
  the extent of Miss O'shaughnessy's involvement is
• 1:48:00
  laid out. At this point, I don't even
• 1:48:02
  think that the characters know what is true and what's a lie.
• 1:48:04
  No. So his count is that Bridget
• 1:48:07
  give the bird to Jacoby to deliver to her later, and once
• 1:48:10
  Gutman had found this out, he's decided to slip Spade a Mickey
• 1:48:13
  and infiltrate the meeting between the two to get his
• 1:48:16
  greasy fingers on the bird. Yes, layer of details, layers of
• 1:48:20
  characters, lies, deceits. You'd be forgiven for not to
• 1:48:23
  understand 90% of anything from here on out.
• 1:48:26
  Yeah, Fairpoint, it's. The kind of narrative that just
• 1:48:28
  in bands repeat viewings because try and getting all this in your
• 1:48:32
  first watch, forget about it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:35
  And after this yarn, Wilma comes to and realises that he's being
• 1:48:38
  stabbed in the back. The dramatic individual shots of
• 1:48:41
  everybody bearing down are a little bit heavy-handed, but
• 1:48:44
  I'll Yeah, put that down to the time it was made 85 years ago.
• 1:48:47
  Yeah, with the the score as well.
• 1:48:49
  Yeah, and it is also made-up by some gloriously diabolical
• 1:48:56
  dialogue from Gutman, who says I wanted to know.
• 1:48:59
  I couldn't be fond of you if you're my own son, but if you
• 1:49:02
  lose a son, it's possible to get another.
• 1:49:04
  There's only one Maltese Falcon. Yeah.
• 1:49:07
  Come on, who wrote that? It's incredible.
• 1:49:11
  He's in secretary. And finally another huge swing
• 1:49:16
  and who were inclined to believe here and who were inclined to
• 1:49:19
  think is a liar. Bridget hands over the 10,000.
• 1:49:22
  Gutman says business should be transacted in a business like
• 1:49:24
  manner. There were only 9 bills, the
• 1:49:27
  originally 10. As you knew she must have palmed
• 1:49:30
  the 1000. But no, turns out that it's
• 1:49:32
  Gutman who did it, so whatever he's just told us in the last 10
• 1:49:35
  minutes probably all lies. Yeah, yes, garbage.
• 1:49:39
  Gutman even warns Sam to be careful of missile Shaughnessy
• 1:49:42
  after he's been caught in a lie. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:49:46
  The nerve. You know.
• 1:49:48
  And that $1000 bill that Goodman pockets and tries to pin on
• 1:49:51
  Bridget was actually a Mexican 10 peso note, and it was
• 1:49:55
  commonplace to use pesos at the time due to the restrictions on
• 1:49:58
  how US currency could be displayed on film.
• 1:50:00
  Yeah. Scans on screen, it looks great.
• 1:50:03
  Yeah, yeah. And $1000 bill is quite flashy.
• 1:50:07
  Yes, it is. A little bit.
• 1:50:08
  I mean, now it would be incredibly flashy, but eight
• 1:50:11
  years ago, yeah. It just shows the kind of
• 1:50:14
  character Gutman is those yeah, it really works for that
• 1:50:16
  character. And then finally we'll get to
• 1:50:18
  see the Falcon. As I said, Fe delivering at 6:00
• 1:50:21
  in the morning. That's why no bother for her.
• 1:50:23
  She worries. She works 24 hours a day.
• 1:50:24
  That's absolutely fine. You do look at it and you go, is
• 1:50:29
  that it? So what this whole thing is
• 1:50:31
  being about? But obviously it's not even the
• 1:50:33
  real 1. And it's just the most glorious
• 1:50:36
  ironic twist I think the film has ever had.
• 1:50:38
  Because all the knots Bridget and Cairo and Goodman have been
• 1:50:42
  twisting themselves into to get hold of it, the people that have
• 1:50:45
  died because of the situation Sam has had to get himself out
• 1:50:48
  of because of it. And it's just worthless drunk.
• 1:50:51
  And the whole thing is just an absolute lesson on the
• 1:50:54
  foolishness of greed. Everyone chasing after this in
• 1:50:57
  the main to nothing. And it's the one time you see
• 1:51:00
  Goodman lose his cool, like his big, meaty hands ripping through
• 1:51:03
  the package and to get hold of it, the sweat on his brow,
• 1:51:06
  hacking away there with a pen knife when he realizes it's
• 1:51:09
  fake. It's great to see him out of
• 1:51:11
  control here. And Sam just, you know, back in
• 1:51:13
  control of this situation. But it's Cairo for me because
• 1:51:16
  his reaction is so funny. No one ever got it so easily.
• 1:51:21
  You imbecile, you bloated idiot, you stupid fatheaded.
• 1:51:25
  And then he just cries in that chair like a little kid.
• 1:51:29
  Yeah, he just sauces down. Yeah.
• 1:51:31
  Stupid fathead. Stupid fat head.
• 1:51:34
  No wonder it's too easily. I love that line as well.
• 1:51:37
  Like we got away with it. Was this easy?
• 1:51:39
  Was this all supposed to be easy?
• 1:51:41
  Gutman would have absolutely fucking loved it if it was
• 1:51:43
  chocolate with me. The Maltesa.
• 1:51:46
  Falcon, that's wonderful, scratching away with the.
• 1:51:55
  Fucking Easter egg, I love that. There's a market for that W the
• 1:52:02
  hotel and that's wonderful. But the thing about Goodman,
• 1:52:11
  though, it's what I've been saying all along, it's just a
• 1:52:13
  game for him. Like he gets off that
• 1:52:15
  disappointment very, very quickly.
• 1:52:17
  He does, Yeah. No.
• 1:52:18
  What's next? Yeah, well, that's it.
• 1:52:20
  Sure. We call each other names or show
• 1:52:21
  we go to Istanbul like it's just.
• 1:52:23
  That's fine, we'll go there instead.
• 1:52:25
  I don't want Sam to go with him. Are you going to come with her?
• 1:52:28
  Cheers, thank you. Wouldn't have thought so.
• 1:52:30
  You've been lying your ass off for the last three days.
• 1:52:34
  Yeah, because the ending of this pursuit is so ironic, because
• 1:52:37
  it's all been meaningless. No one's achieved anything, and
• 1:52:40
  yet somehow it's still completely satisfying.
• 1:52:43
  Yeah, exactly. I think Gutman is is obsessed
• 1:52:45
  with the pursuit, not the result.
• 1:52:47
  Yet I think he wouldn't have been happy if that was really
• 1:52:49
  no. No, exactly.
• 1:52:50
  He's upset. One of the next thing.
• 1:52:52
  It's keeping him alive. It's keeping him focused.
• 1:52:54
  Great. And because we're at this moment
• 1:52:56
  in the narrative, we've got our final Patreon question.
• 1:52:59
  This one comes from an old friend of ATRM.
• 1:53:02
  This is just Joe. Hi, Joe.
• 1:53:04
  Hi, Joe. Hello, Joe.
• 1:53:05
  Great to hear from you. Yes.
• 1:53:07
  Yes, absolutely. Joe says.
• 1:53:09
  Love that you're covering this film.
• 1:53:11
  She says the Maltese Falcon is often cited as a classic
• 1:53:13
  Mcguffin. If you were making your own
• 1:53:15
  film, what would your Mcguffin of choice be and why?
• 1:53:19
  Thanks. She's even left a little kiss,
• 1:53:21
  which is most welcome. A great question, Joe, thank
• 1:53:24
  you. For those who don't know, I
• 1:53:27
  don't want to be preaching the converted here, but a Mcguffin
• 1:53:29
  is essentially the thing that everyone is chasing that drives
• 1:53:32
  the plot. Yes.
• 1:53:33
  What it actually is doesn't really matter, usually.
• 1:53:36
  No. Yeah, it's called popularize.
• 1:53:38
  The term The Maltese Falcon is perfect because it turns out to
• 1:53:41
  be fake anyway. It's worthless, but everyone's
• 1:53:43
  killed and double crossed each other to get to it, which is
• 1:53:45
  amazing. If I will make my own film, I
• 1:53:47
  think I'd go with kind of like a lost recording, maybe the only
• 1:53:51
  existing tape of a of a musician or an unreleased album or
• 1:53:55
  something like that. Yeah.
• 1:53:56
  Something where the myth around it has grown so large that
• 1:53:58
  people have convinced themselves that it's priceless, even though
• 1:54:00
  it might be terrible. So with that in mind, I'm going
• 1:54:03
  to go with the Bob Dylan recording.
• 1:54:04
  OK, thought you might. He's the master at creating his
• 1:54:07
  own legend and myth, and his own lost recordings have been
• 1:54:09
  pursued and poured over 4 decades.
• 1:54:12
  Much like the fog in itself. He also has it in his locker to
• 1:54:15
  put out a stinker or two, and I think he would be laughing in
• 1:54:18
  his grave at the idea of this eternal pursuit for something
• 1:54:20
  that was deliberately crap. Yeah, yeah, I think it would be
• 1:54:24
  good. Like from a Dylan point of view
• 1:54:25
  when everyone went crazy when he went electric, but like there's
• 1:54:28
  a Cdr out there of Dylan goes hip hop.
• 1:54:35
  That's crazy. Then we don't know if it plays
• 1:54:40
  on, it just doesn't play at the end.
• 1:54:41
  It's been scratched too much. So we'll.
• 1:54:43
  Never know. That's mine.
• 1:54:47
  What about yours, Matt? I'm going to mention the idol
• 1:54:50
  from the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark because kick starts
• 1:54:53
  this incredible character. We follow through numerous
• 1:54:56
  adventures and we never see it again.
• 1:54:58
  And I've always wondered what did happen to it.
• 1:55:00
  I mean, presumably Bellock sold it to somebody, but who?
• 1:55:03
  And I'd have quite liked a little Easter egg scene
• 1:55:05
  somewhere along the way when Indie finally gets his hands on
• 1:55:08
  it. And I think you could then make
• 1:55:09
  quite a meta film where some die hard film fan wants to find the
• 1:55:13
  original idol, you know, where has that?
• 1:55:15
  I do. So I think you could spin off
• 1:55:17
  and it like a real kind of meta comedy about it.
• 1:55:19
  So that's what I would. Do excellent Westie, over to
• 1:55:22
  you. Some kind of microfilm?
• 1:55:24
  I love the idea of microfilm. You do, don't you?
• 1:55:26
  You love them. Yeah, like North by Northwest.
• 1:55:28
  Yeah. But then I would kind of spin it
• 1:55:31
  kind of similar to yours, Luke. I love that idea of something
• 1:55:33
  that's just a piece of forgotten media because I just found some
• 1:55:36
  CDs under me stairs when I've been tidying stuff up, stuff
• 1:55:40
  away, and they say all the old CDs and some of them don't play
• 1:55:43
  and some of them do. And it's like, what was on that?
• 1:55:44
  I can't remember. But I would love something just
• 1:55:46
  far enough away where there's something on it, but we don't
• 1:55:49
  quite know what it is. So there could be like any kind
• 1:55:51
  of government files or any kind of like a recording between two
• 1:55:54
  people that we don't quite know what it is and this is the
• 1:55:56
  actual thing, but it's a mini disc.
• 1:55:58
  Oh lovely love minidiscs. And like, nobody's got a
• 1:56:02
  minidisc player. No, you don't know how to play
• 1:56:04
  it. It's just like, it's no other
• 1:56:06
  way of doing it. So the Mcguffin is actually the
• 1:56:08
  player, not the minidisc itself. Right, right.
• 1:56:10
  That's great. And that's a great question,
• 1:56:12
  Joe. Thank you very much.
• 1:56:13
  Let us know what your Mcguffin would be.
• 1:56:15
  Yes, absolutely. Right.
• 1:56:16
  OK, here we go. We'll go home.
• 1:56:20
  Don't let us down here, Westie. Sam's going to explain it all.
• 1:56:22
  I'm going to do this ratat straight down there.
• 1:56:25
  OK, so you find out she killed Miles with Thursday's gone.
• 1:56:29
  Thursday was in love with her, so she played him.
• 1:56:31
  She was going to play Miles, shot him to set up.
• 1:56:34
  Thursday was going to go after it, but he didn't actually go
• 1:56:36
  after him. So that was the whole point of
• 1:56:37
  that. So then when Thursday was shot,
• 1:56:38
  you know, Gutman was in town, so she kind of freaked out about
• 1:56:42
  that. She needed a bit of a Patsy,
• 1:56:43
  needed a bit of a fall guy, so she got Sam involved.
• 1:56:45
  That is to be a room doing because this is the man who
• 1:56:49
  knows what the fucking crack is. Glad somebody does.
• 1:56:52
  Exactly. And I think the whole point is
• 1:56:54
  it's more about Bridges Corridor than it is about the Falcon.
• 1:56:57
  It's about stopping her from doing what she's doing because
• 1:56:59
  she's just corrupting every single person that you meet and
• 1:57:02
  just on a path of self destruction.
• 1:57:04
  And what Sam does is the ultimate act of love and stops
• 1:57:07
  her from doing it because it's self-destructive.
• 1:57:10
  And he says it doesn't matter what this is or what dreams are
• 1:57:13
  made of, it's the dreams themselves.
• 1:57:14
  And you've got to wake up to reality because dreams don't
• 1:57:17
  exist. You've got to be part of the
• 1:57:18
  real world and you've actually got to stop playing these games
• 1:57:22
  because it's going to hurt you and it's going to end up killing
• 1:57:23
  you. And it's the way that he does it
• 1:57:25
  and he's got a dedication in his own way of doing it.
• 1:57:28
  This is a really beautiful ending.
• 1:57:29
  It's probably one of the most romantic endings to any film
• 1:57:32
  ever because in his own way, he declares he's undying love for
• 1:57:37
  her in ways that you would think.
• 1:57:39
  It's really throw away and quite harsh and hard.
• 1:57:42
  I hope you know, in 20 years you'll come back and I'll still
• 1:57:46
  be waiting for you. That's a beautiful thing to say
• 1:57:48
  to someone. And he has the solid reasoning
• 1:57:51
  of I don't trust you, you don't trust me.
• 1:57:54
  This relationship will never work because the foundations
• 1:57:56
  aren't right. You're not in the right place.
• 1:57:58
  You're not the person that I believe you can be.
• 1:58:00
  And you've got to go away and find that person.
• 1:58:02
  Even if that takes 20 years, I'll be here when you are the
• 1:58:05
  person I know you can be. It's not about the fault and
• 1:58:07
  it's about them to finding each other and being better people
• 1:58:10
  ultimately paying the price to do that.
• 1:58:12
  And he says things like, you know, I hope they don't hang you
• 1:58:15
  with that beautiful neck. It's horrible thing to.
• 1:58:18
  See, until I'm going to send you over, yeah.
• 1:58:21
  I'm going to send you over, but it's just I won't play the SAP
• 1:58:24
  for you. It's a solid reasoning that he's
• 1:58:26
  given. It's just he's not going to give
• 1:58:27
  it a go. And like Matt says, I'm going to
• 1:58:29
  have some rotten nights, but that will pass because I think
• 1:58:32
  he knows who she is and what who she can be.
• 1:58:35
  And he knows that she'll probably get out of there
• 1:58:36
  quicker because she will remember that.
• 1:58:39
  And then he says, if the hanger, I'll always remember you.
• 1:58:42
  That's a beautiful thing, but so, so cynical and wrapped in
• 1:58:47
  this horrible kind of downbeat moment.
• 1:58:50
  But at the same time, that's the best he's got.
• 1:58:52
  That's the best that Sam Spade's got.
• 1:58:54
  So the real reason that all of this comes to the head and all
• 1:58:57
  of this comes to the point of realization is that being a
• 1:59:01
  human being and having relationships is about honesty,
• 1:59:03
  It's about truth, it's about openness, and it's about being
• 1:59:07
  disappointed and have you get through them.
• 1:59:09
  Disappointments. There isn't a dream.
• 1:59:11
  There's nothing to find to take all of the pain away.
• 1:59:13
  Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says different than
• 1:59:16
  selling something. And that's the whole point of
• 1:59:18
  this film. And I think that absolutely hits
• 1:59:20
  at home. And the more you watch it, the
• 1:59:21
  more you realize that that's what it's about.
• 1:59:23
  Don't be corrupt. Don't try and find an easy way
• 1:59:25
  out in life because it doesn't happen.
• 1:59:27
  You've got to work, you've got to be honest, and you've got to
• 1:59:29
  be a good person. And if you do that, you've
• 1:59:31
  already got the Falcon. Brilliant.
• 1:59:33
  Lovely. Excellent.
• 1:59:34
  What a way to end this. Just like Sam, The stuff that
• 1:59:37
  dreams are made of. That line is a riff on a line
• 1:59:41
  from Shakespeare is The Tempest. Yeah, we are.
• 1:59:44
  Such stuff as dreams are made on an unusually bleak ending for
• 1:59:48
  the time as well. The stuff that dreams are made
• 1:59:51
  of, in certain respects, certainly.
• 1:59:54
  Yeah, definitely reception and awards.
• 2:00:01
  Judy Houston's meticulous planning approach editor Thomas
• 2:00:05
  Richards job required minimal cuts and the removal of only one
• 2:00:09
  scene that was shot, a telephone conversation.
• 2:00:11
  The Hollywood Reporter praise Richard's splendid edit.
• 2:00:14
  Yep, it was this swiftness that allowed for an October release
• 2:00:18
  after filming wrapped on 18th of July.
• 2:00:21
  Jack Warner did request reshoots after test audiences, funnily
• 2:00:24
  enough, found the opening scene too confusing.
• 2:00:27
  Yeah. So we've got a simpler version,
• 2:00:30
  yeah? Or could it be more complex?
• 2:00:34
  Arthur Edison wasn't available as DP, so Ernest Haller stood in
• 2:00:37
  from Halle, had shotgun with the wind in 1939 and would later
• 2:00:40
  shoot Rebel Without a Cause 14 years later.
• 2:00:43
  Yeah, big boots to fill, but they've got the right man.
• 2:00:46
  Yeah, not much was expected but the Maltese folk and was a huge
• 2:00:49
  hit at the box office. On a budget of around $375,000,
• 2:00:53
  it returned just over 1.8 million.
• 2:00:56
  Massive. Yeah, yeah, huge at the.
• 2:00:58
  Time, yeah, and the reviews at the time hit the spot also,
• 2:01:02
  didn't they, Westie? The Dade Otis Ferguson of the
• 2:01:04
  New Republic called it the first crime melodrama with finish,
• 2:01:08
  speed and bang to come along in what seems like ages.
• 2:01:12
  Yeah, agreed Otis. Yeah, the film dearly said John
• 2:01:16
  Houston's direction of his own screenplay is as brilliant as
• 2:01:19
  any of the jewels which are alleged to encrust the Falcon,
• 2:01:22
  whose possession is the crux of the story.
• 2:01:24
  Poetic Bosley crowd that we talked about, I mean, is scathe
• 2:01:28
  and attack of the second adaptation of the Maltese Falcon
• 2:01:32
  writing in the New York Times, he said.
• 2:01:34
  One of the most compelling nervous laughter provoke as yet.
• 2:01:39
  Yeah, I assume it means in the history of cinema up to that
• 2:01:42
  point. Yeah, I would have thought so,
• 2:01:44
  yeah. Our big man Roger Ebert
• 2:01:46
  obviously wasn't around at the time to review it on release,
• 2:01:49
  but later included it on his great movies list and gave it
• 2:01:52
  obviously 4 out of four of. Course he does, yeah.
• 2:01:55
  Now it has 7.9 out of 10 and IMDb and on Rotten Tomatoes, 99%
• 2:02:00
  from critics and 91% from audiences.
• 2:02:03
  At the 14th Academy Awards, the film was nominated in three
• 2:02:05
  categories best picture, best adapted screenplay and best
• 2:02:09
  supporting actor. Cindy Green St.
• 2:02:15
  Yes, but it lost out to How Green is My Valley for Best
• 2:02:18
  Picture. That film also won Supporting
• 2:02:21
  Actor for Donald Crisp and And Here Comes Mr. Jordan one for
• 2:02:25
  Adapted Screenplay instead. Yes, Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
• 2:02:28
  That's a film which would later be remade as Heaven Can Wait in
• 2:02:32
  1978 with. Warren Oh yeah.
• 2:02:34
  Baby right, Baby one. Right.
• 2:02:35
  Good. Nice.
• 2:02:36
  But it has received a long list of accolades since its release.
• 2:02:39
  It was one of the 1st 25 films inducted into the National Film
• 2:02:43
  Registry in 1989 by the Library of Congress.
• 2:02:46
  Yes, and a Lord of Accolades according to the Year 5 is #31
• 2:02:51
  in their 100 years 100 movies list, 26 in there 100 years 100
• 2:02:56
  Thrills list, 6 in the Year 5 top ten Mystery films and 14th
• 2:03:01
  in the 100 Movie Chords list. The stuff that dreams are made
• 2:03:04
  of. Right.
• 2:03:05
  I would put that slap court in there. 13th Yeah, top for you.
• 2:03:19
  So success on all fronts for a film that continuously gets
• 2:03:22
  showered with accolades. A true one off.
• 2:03:25
  Oh absolutely. Sequels and influence.
• 2:03:33
  Considering the popularity of the Maltese Falcon, Warners were
• 2:03:36
  interested in green light in the sequel immediately.
• 2:03:38
  Yeah. The first suggestion was the
• 2:03:40
  Further Adventures of the Maltese Falcon.
• 2:03:43
  Tune that up a little bit, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:03:46
  That would have had Houston in the hot seat.
• 2:03:48
  One has approached Dash and Hammer to write the screenplay,
• 2:03:50
  but he asked for a $5000 advance, and that combined with
• 2:03:54
  Houston and Bogey salary demands were too rich for Warner's
• 2:03:57
  tastes, so they backed out. Right.
• 2:03:59
  And the second sequel option was called 3 Strangers, and this was
• 2:04:03
  a Houston script he'd written in 1936, which was then bought by
• 2:04:06
  Wanders. And the proposal was to
• 2:04:07
  repurpose this as a Falcon sequel.
• 2:04:09
  But Hammett kindly reminded Wanders that he held the rights
• 2:04:12
  to the characters, so that was a no go. 3 Strangers did
• 2:04:17
  eventually get made in 1946 with no reference to Falcon.
• 2:04:21
  It starred Sydney Green Street and Peter Laurie and was shot by
• 2:04:24
  Arthur Edison with music from Adolf Dutch, so the crews got
• 2:04:27
  together. Yeah, yeah, get the band back
• 2:04:29
  together. Lovely.
• 2:04:31
  So we didn't get a sequel, but the main cast did get back
• 2:04:33
  together again in 1943 to voice their characters in a 30 minute
• 2:04:37
  CBS Radio adaptation of The Maltese Falcon.
• 2:04:40
  Right. Yeah, Bogart, Astor, Green
• 2:04:43
  Street and Lori, we're all on board.
• 2:04:45
  It's certainly worth listening to.
• 2:04:46
  It's only 30 minutes and you know they take some liberties in
• 2:04:49
  the narrative. Obviously you don't.
• 2:04:51
  Have to condenseness of 30 minutes.
• 2:04:53
  Oh my gosh. How fast the dialogue on that?
• 2:04:57
  It's just a film on times 4 speed.
• 2:05:01
  So in the years since its release, where have we seen the
• 2:05:04
  Maltese Falcons influence? What is its legacy?
• 2:05:07
  Westie, open the gate. Yeah, I'm.
• 2:05:10
  I'm not going to stay too long on this because I could be here
• 2:05:12
  all afternoon. I mean, it's the birth of noir.
• 2:05:15
  There's not really an argument against it.
• 2:05:16
  There's a few niggles against it, but you kind of deny its
• 2:05:19
  impact. You kind of deny its influence
• 2:05:21
  and you kind of deny that. Yeah.
• 2:05:22
  I mean, this is kind of paved the way, hasn't it?
• 2:05:24
  Of course it has. There's so many elements in this
• 2:05:26
  that have just been taken from people.
• 2:05:29
  It's just such an inspirational film, I think because of the
• 2:05:31
  energy that's involved in it. You want to be part of this.
• 2:05:33
  You want to just take this further.
• 2:05:34
  You want it to continue. So many of my favorite films
• 2:05:37
  that I've watched this again, and I'm thinking, yeah, you
• 2:05:39
  know, I've mentioned Raiders. It's a massive influence on
• 2:05:42
  Lucas. It's a massive influence on
• 2:05:43
  Spielberg. Just even the look of Sam Spade
• 2:05:46
  when he's in the hotel, you just think, well, that's in these
• 2:05:48
  kind of dressed down outfit when he's not, you know, the whips
• 2:05:50
  not there. It's his, you know, school
• 2:05:52
  teacher very much like Bogart. But then it's just the more
• 2:05:56
  obvious ones. I mean, who from Roger Rabbit
• 2:05:57
  that's massively influenced by it and then spun on a little
• 2:06:00
  bit. It pokes fun at it, but at the
• 2:06:02
  same time really appreciates the genre.
• 2:06:03
  I don't think Blade Runner will be anywhere near as good if it
• 2:06:05
  wasn't for this film. I think Brick as well takes a
• 2:06:08
  lot of history and Johnson's effort.
• 2:06:10
  I think that's a really, really good detective film comes a lot
• 2:06:13
  from this. You know, the Cohens been able
• 2:06:15
  to kick the start the career without blood simple.
• 2:06:17
  And I think that's got a lot to do with this.
• 2:06:18
  And again, Mulholland Dr. big influence on Lynch, big
• 2:06:21
  influence on on cinema as we see it today.
• 2:06:24
  I mean, you cannot turn around and say I don't like the Maltese
• 2:06:26
  Falcon because everything that's come from it, it's just it's
• 2:06:29
  fingerprints on everything. It's such an important film and
• 2:06:34
  the one that it caps it all off. I mean, this is literally
• 2:06:36
  Chinatown. Our Fast forward.
• 2:06:38
  It is. And that's that's what you get
• 2:06:40
  John Houston's in that as well, which is a massive and it's an
• 2:06:42
  incredible film. So you know, if you're forcing
• 2:06:45
  for this, you wouldn't have half of the dialogue heavy films that
• 2:06:48
  we have now and that we really love and appreciate.
• 2:06:50
  So I would go as far as to see if it wasn't for the Maltese
• 2:06:52
  Falcon, you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast.
• 2:06:55
  Wow. Absolutely.
• 2:06:57
  Very strong. Yeah.
• 2:06:58
  I agree. It made Bogey A genuine star,
• 2:07:00
  which later turned into a screen icon.
• 2:07:03
  Yeah. Yeah, John Houston is saying,
• 2:07:04
  making them one of the most revealed film makers ever.
• 2:07:06
  Without this film, there's no Casablanca, no Treasure of
• 2:07:09
  Sierra Madre, no African Queen, no Double Indemnity, no
• 2:07:12
  Chinatown, no Blade Runner, no Big Lebowski.
• 2:07:15
  No universal soldier. No universal soldier.
• 2:07:20
  You gotta believe I bought that at the same time.
• 2:07:22
  What was I thinking? That's crazy.
• 2:07:24
  It pulled together some elements that were already there in
• 2:07:26
  cinema, invented a fair few of its own, and boiled it down into
• 2:07:29
  one of the most beloved of movie genres.
• 2:07:32
  I'd go so fast to say that if this film doesn't get made, the
• 2:07:34
  ripple effect on the industry would be enormous and it would
• 2:07:36
  look incredibly different. Yeah, so much more, yeah.
• 2:07:39
  I could go on and on, but I'm not going to, so I'll hand over
• 2:07:42
  to you, Matt. Yeah, I mean, it's just very
• 2:07:44
  similar to me. It's the fact that it filters
• 2:07:47
  down into films you wouldn't think of at first, but then you
• 2:07:50
  go, actually, there's so much of this is in Raiders.
• 2:07:52
  Yeah, Green Street is definitely a proto Bond villain before Bond
• 2:07:56
  existed. All three of them are.
• 2:07:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Used to mention two Corn
• 2:08:01
  Brothers films, they're Blood Symbol and Big Lebowski.
• 2:08:04
  I'd say Miller's Crossing takes a lot from this.
• 2:08:07
  The dialogue in that one, the double crossing, how that film
• 2:08:09
  looks, and just really, really random ones when you think about
• 2:08:12
  like, remember that Carter and Ren and Stimpy, yeah, Ren is
• 2:08:16
  basically Peter Laurie voice, same voice.
• 2:08:21
  And obviously Laurie did a lot of films, but this is the one
• 2:08:24
  that, as we've been seeing, put them back on the map.
• 2:08:26
  And I think everything from Laurie's kind of second career
• 2:08:29
  that didn't come from Airmen is kind of German films comes from
• 2:08:32
  the Maltese Falcon. So it really is incredible to
• 2:08:35
  sell. This is folded down into so many
• 2:08:37
  different things in different ways.
• 2:08:38
  Yeah, it is. There are a couple of other
• 2:08:41
  specifics as well. To prepare for her part in
• 2:08:43
  Casablanca, Ingrid Berman studied bogey in the Maldives
• 2:08:45
  Vulcan. Allegedly, she watched it
• 2:08:47
  multiple times so that she knew how to interact with him on set.
• 2:08:51
  Yeah. And in an early draft of Robert
• 2:08:53
  Towne's Chinatown screenplay, the character of JJ Kita says,
• 2:08:57
  in my case, being respectable would be bad for business.
• 2:08:59
  And this is very similar to Spade's line in this film.
• 2:09:02
  Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be.
• 2:09:04
  That sort of reputation might be good business.
• 2:09:07
  Town lit, I said It doesn't show up in the shooting script of
• 2:09:10
  Chinatown, so I obviously removed it.
• 2:09:12
  I guess it was an unconscious echo that I didn't feel was
• 2:09:14
  right. Forget us.
• 2:09:16
  Yeah, so it's there. He's just drawing from the
• 2:09:18
  history of film. Wow.
• 2:09:20
  Which all leads back to this. Yeah.
• 2:09:22
  It's Ebenovi's subconscious when he's even writing it and he's
• 2:09:25
  actually not. That's not right for.
• 2:09:26
  That it's just in a subconscious.
• 2:09:28
  It's cinematic inception. It just.
• 2:09:31
  Yeah, that's level 4. Yeah, it is.
• 2:09:34
  So, surprisingly, no sequel to The Maltese Falcon.
• 2:09:37
  Not for the one to try in. For a film whose influence and
• 2:09:40
  legacy is pretty much immeasurable, yeah.
• 2:09:42
  Yeah, all the right movies ranking.
• 2:09:49
  Now we've got all concerned parties in one room, it's time
• 2:09:52
  to give our summary and score for The Maltese Falcon.
• 2:09:54
  Matt, over to you first. This is going to be 25% of the
• 2:09:58
  podcast. Great, great, great film.
• 2:10:03
  It defines the genre to find the image of Humpy Bogart, which
• 2:10:06
  really didn't kick his career up to another level, defines idea
• 2:10:09
  of what a femme fatale could be. And this amount of sizzle and
• 2:10:13
  dialogue, complicated plot and phenomenal supporting
• 2:10:16
  performances and characters like Cairo, like Govern, all to be
• 2:10:19
  stirred together in the same plot in a debut film, it is
• 2:10:23
  quite the achievement. Only possible thing I can say
• 2:10:26
  against it is it's just never been on the level of being a
• 2:10:29
  personal favorite of mine. Yeah, in.
• 2:10:31
  Terms of the genre, I'll always go for Double Indemnity over
• 2:10:34
  this first. In terms of Bogart performances,
• 2:10:37
  I'll always go to Casablanca first over this.
• 2:10:40
  They are the ones that I would give the very, very top marks
• 2:10:43
  to. With this one, absolutely.
• 2:10:45
  It came first and it defined evident just for me, a couple of
• 2:10:47
  films that came after it maybe just achieved a little bit more
• 2:10:51
  in terms of personal preference. So this one is a 9.5 for me.
• 2:10:55
  Oh, OK. Oh, controversial.
• 2:10:57
  I mean high, high, high, high. Yeah.
• 2:11:01
  Yeah, it's controversial, Yeah. And Westie, what about you?
• 2:11:03
  I mean, I said at the top that this one took me a long time to
• 2:11:06
  get into and going over it for this, I did feel like it was
• 2:11:10
  less of an emotional film where I disappeared into it and forgot
• 2:11:13
  what was going on. It was more of reading a
• 2:11:15
  textbook, I think at this point, because it's technically superb.
• 2:11:19
  The acting is superb and I feel like I'm watching the acting.
• 2:11:22
  I'm not watching a character as a performance, if you know what
• 2:11:26
  I mean. I'm not like immersed in it.
• 2:11:28
  But I think that's a beautiful thing as well because it is like
• 2:11:30
  watching a stage show. It is like watching the perfect
• 2:11:32
  theatre performance and being swept away in it.
• 2:11:35
  It's such an influential film, which makes it such an important
• 2:11:38
  film. I mean, this film itself
• 2:11:40
  influenced a wave of directors that we thought were the first
• 2:11:43
  directors of all time. You know, Spielberg, Kubrick,
• 2:11:46
  Coppola, De Palma, you know, Lucas, all those guys who kind
• 2:11:51
  of just came up and we thought, well these guys invented film
• 2:11:53
  and goes back to Houston. He invented this and made this
• 2:11:56
  was just such an important step in the history of cinema.
• 2:12:00
  Once you've seen this film, you won't forget it.
• 2:12:02
  For good or bad. There is other films that you'll
• 2:12:04
  go to on top of this. This is, I probably won't watch
• 2:12:07
  this again for a good few years, but I don't need to because it's
• 2:12:10
  baked in. No matter what.
• 2:12:12
  I right now there might be elements of this in there
• 2:12:14
  because it is such an incredible story and it's such an
• 2:12:17
  incredible achievement. I cannot give this any less than
• 2:12:20
  full marks because it is such an influential, such a powerful and
• 2:12:24
  such a well made film and it's pure energy and it's pure
• 2:12:27
  cinema. It's a 10.
• 2:12:29
  Kaboom boom. Very nice Westy.
• 2:12:31
  Well done. Thanks man, More honest.
• 2:12:40
  Yeah, we've talked at length about this film, so no surprise
• 2:12:42
  that it's going to be given the endless prayers that we've been
• 2:12:46
  given it and and the same is going to be in the summary here.
• 2:12:49
  It is everything that I want in cinema and more.
• 2:12:51
  A great setting, even though it's on a set, a story,
• 2:12:55
  incredible dialogue that sizzles, wonderful performances
• 2:12:59
  from every cast member but Humphrey Bogart.
• 2:13:01
  This is, for me, in the top ten acting performances ever.
• 2:13:05
  It's so magnetic. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:13:07
  You need multiple viewings to get a handle on the twisted
• 2:13:09
  narrative. And when you do that, the film
• 2:13:11
  just gets under your skin and doesn't let go.
• 2:13:13
  Simply, it's it's one of the greatest films ever made, one of
• 2:13:16
  the most important, a landmark. It it it can be nothing other
• 2:13:20
  than a 10 on 10. Fair enough.
• 2:13:22
  Yes, our 4th and final score for The Maltese Falcon comes from
• 2:13:25
  our Patreon community. Before the big reveal, here are
• 2:13:29
  some choice comments. OK.
• 2:13:31
  James Aussie Pugh said. For me, The Maltese Falcon is 10
• 2:13:34
  out of 10 because it's the blueprint for everything great
• 2:13:37
  about film noir. Raise a sharp dialogue, moral
• 2:13:39
  ambiguity and characters who feel dangerous simply by
• 2:13:42
  talking. Absolutely yes, I'll have some
• 2:13:46
  of that James. Very nice, John Shively said.
• 2:13:49
  The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies ever.
• 2:13:51
  It is the film that had me hooked on Humphrey Bogart and
• 2:13:54
  film noir. Cheers to you guys for analyzing
• 2:13:56
  such an important film. Please keep up the great work
• 2:13:59
  we'll. Try.
• 2:14:00
  Nice. Thank you, John.
• 2:14:01
  We certainly will. Yes, I hope we've done a
• 2:14:02
  justice. And finally, Shaza.
• 2:14:05
  She says 8 for me. Oh OK, she says.
• 2:14:08
  Bogey is great, as is Green Street, but Mary Astor stinks up
• 2:14:11
  the screen. Oh, really?
• 2:14:13
  Yeah. Ouch.
• 2:14:13
  Swap her out for Bette Davis evenly.
• 2:14:16
  Patrick was far better than Astor.
• 2:14:18
  Good story but not tip top in my world.
• 2:14:21
  Wow. So there you go, one or two
• 2:14:23
  controversial. Well, 1 controversial view
• 2:14:25
  really. But thank you for your honesty,
• 2:14:26
  Shazza. Yes, absolutely.
• 2:14:28
  So what do you say, boys out of 10 from the ATR and patrons?
• 2:14:32
  I'm going to say 10. 9 Wester, you've got it. 10 The Big 10
• 2:14:37
  inevitable I suppose, meaning that the Maltese folk and got an
• 2:14:40
  overall 39.5 out of 40 just missing that amazing hallowed
• 2:14:45
  top spot, yeah. Indeed.
• 2:14:47
  That's on you, Matt, if you weren't sure.
• 2:14:49
  Right. Yeah, I thought, is this you're
• 2:14:50
  pretty sure about that? I'm sure I won't hear the last
• 2:14:54
  of that. Yeah, join us again in all the
• 2:14:59
  right movies. In two weeks, John, Westie and
• 2:15:02
  Matt will be tackling another absolute Hollywood classic.
• 2:15:05
  They'll be in the war room for Doctor Strangelove Who?
• 2:15:08
  Will be. An incredible film.
• 2:15:10
  Yeah, if Luke hasn't killed Matt, but.
• 2:15:14
  I am definitely worried about my precious bodily fluid.
• 2:15:17
  Yeah, exactly. Before that, though, our studio
• 2:15:20
  head and directors chair patrons can Heroes review and six new
• 2:15:23
  releases in the latest episode of The Watch List.
• 2:15:25
  Yes. That's next week, and we have an
• 2:15:28
  extra special treat next week as well.
• 2:15:30
  A brand new episode of A Life in Movies, our interview show.
• 2:15:33
  And this one's a big one. It is a big one.
• 2:15:35
  We're joined by Oscar nominated Golden Globe and Emmy winner
• 2:15:39
  James Woods. The one and only James Woods.
• 2:15:41
  Amy Woods. That's going to be really
• 2:15:44
  special, that one. Yeah, yeah, he's stopping by to
• 2:15:46
  talk about some of his most iconic films and his career.
• 2:15:49
  Overall a great conversation full of incredible stories.
• 2:15:52
  Oh yeah, I don't doubt it. Amazing.
• 2:15:55
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• 2:16:01
  So don't make a SAP out of us. Five stars all the way.
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• 2:16:07
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• 2:16:09
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• 2:16:12
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• 2:16:14
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• 2:16:17
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• 2:16:20
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• 2:16:26
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• 2:16:30
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• 2:16:34
  movies.com. Nice.
• 2:16:38
  And that is a wrap, everyone. Now we're off to Istanbul in
• 2:16:40
  pursuit of the Blackbird. Do you want to come?
• 2:16:43
  By God, Sir, you're a character by God.
• 2:16:45
  We'll be doing it for 17 years. Might as well crack on Istanbul.
• 2:16:47
  Let's go. And as the shortest farewells,
• 2:16:49
  our best Adya come back for Doctor Strangelove in two weeks.
• 2:16:54
  Goodbye. Adya 2 year and here and here
• 2:16:57
  and here. Thanks everyone.
• 2:17:02
  Thanks guys. Thank you for this.
• 2:17:03
  I really. Appreciate it.
• 2:17:04
  Bye. No wonder we had such an easy
• 2:17:27
  time. Stealing it you.
• 2:17:29
  You imbecile, you bloated idiot. You stupid fat at you.