The Maltese Falcon
1941, directed by John Huston
It’s easy to overlook the last line in The Maltese Falcon, because the preceding line, “The stuff that dreams are made of,” sums up the whole story and resonates beyond the ending. The real last line is Tom Polhaus’s half-grunted “Huh?” spoken in reply to Sam Spade’s famous words. This seemingly unimportant syllable is not at all meaningless. The policeman had asked Spade what the heavy statuette was, and he got a philosophical reply. The word “Huh?” cues us to look beyond Spade’s obvious irony. If the policeman doesn’t immediately comprehend that iconic line, there might be something in it that’s hidden from us too. Yes, the falcon stands for the cupidity of people who reach beyond their fair share, but it’s also more than that.
The constant element in The Maltese Falcon is broken relationships. Spade and Archer think so little of each other that Spade wastes no time removing his dead partner’s name from the agency. Archer’s wife doesn’t care for her husband who cheats on her, but she’s crazy for Spade who wants no part of her. Kasper Gutman regards Wilmer as his “own son”, but he’s willing to trade the boy for the precious bird. “Well, if you lose a son, it’s possible to get another. There’s only one Maltese Falcon.” Nearly every other definable relationship is marked by distrust (O’Shaughnessy and Cairo, O’Shaughnessy and Thursby, Spade and the police, Spade and Cairo) or outright hostility (Spade and Wilmer). Gutman is outwardly warm to Spade, but his professions of admiration are so repetitive (he likes a man who drinks, talks, gets to the point, tells you he’s looking out for himself, etc.) that they start to sound like flattery.
There are two seemingly genuine relationships. One is between Sam Spade and his secretary Effie Perine. She’s evidently a skilled detective herself, and he respects her enough that one may wonder why they don’t pair up. In the first line of dialogue he calls her “sweetheart” (in casual banter to be sure, but still it’s given pride of place). She lives with her mother, so she’s probably single, and she’s clearly at pains to avoid seeming jealous, which explains why her “woman’s intuition” deems O’Shaughnessy “all right”. She wouldn’t wish to speak ill of a rival. Though Perine and Spade get along well professionally, there’s a barrier between them – apparently he’s looking for more glamor in a woman, so that there may be an element of self-reflection in his last line. He too has his vain “dreams”.
The smoothest relationship is between Gutman and Cairo, who’ve been traveling the globe together in mutually enthusiastic pursuit of the falcon, but we find out how shallow their bond really is when the statuette turns out to be a lead dummy. Moments later the prospect of renewing their quest reignites their friendship, but in fact they’re both headed to jail, and we can imagine how long their camaraderie might hold up there, if they even get to see each other.
All of these broken relationships put Spade’s famous last line in a richer context. It’s not only that people waste their lives chasing empty dreams, but rather that their dreams are obstacles to normal human connections. This point plays out in the film’s central relationship between Spade and O’Shaughnessy.
It’s odd but nonetheless apparent that Spade has fallen for O’Shaughnessy despite her incessant lies. Bogart’s acting in the last scene shows his struggle to turn her in against the wishes of his heart. It’s also odd that she may actually love him in return, but her feelings are just ambiguous enough to allow for that possibility. Spade is fully aware that dreams of wealth have corrupted her, but he also knows that this corruption makes a healthy relationship with her impossible. The obstacle is not morality. It’s not that he cannot accept a woman who’s done wrong. Rather, he recognizes that a trusting relationship with her is not in the nature of things. When he looks at the falcon and tells Polhaus it’s “the stuff that dreams are made of,” he’s thinking mainly of Brigid O’Shaughnessy. She may love him, but as we’ve seen with Gutman, big dreams tend to override love.
All of the film’s efforts will be lost on us if we read cynicism into Spade’s last line, or if we regard him as jaded. Sam Spade is not cynical but rather clearsighted. His ability to see is his saving strength, as we’re often reminded. “We didn’t exactly believe your story. We believed your $200.” The difference between clearsightedness and cynicism is not a small nuance – it’s akin to the difference between bravery and cowardice. Spade’s clarity of vision is his stock in trade, and it’s why he gets the better of everyone. It’s a combination of nature and discipline. He tells O’Shaughnessy, “I won’t play the sap for you,” willing himself not to let his emotions master him.
The Maltese Falcon is adapted from a 1930 Dashiell Hammett novel, and it had been filmed once before at Warner Brothers in 1931. This version though, with its renowned performances and its particular emphases, is the more immortal one, still widely seen today, and we can easily imagine how well it fit the spirit of a turbulent world in 1941. Sam Spade’s character is central to it, and his lack of naivety, his clearsightedness, was exactly what the world needed to navigate the times. If he were a moral crusader he’d be on the side of the characters chasing vainglorious dreams (the falcon is associated with the Crusades), but instead he has simple, unassuming integrity. He tells O’Shaughnessy, “Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be.” His ability to fit into a world of crime, navigate it, and come out clean bespeaks a practical, sober, down-to-earth realism that would serve Americans well in the wartime years ahead, and it paved the way for Humphrey Bogart’s role in Casablanca the following year. It’s consistent of Sam Spade to care for O’Shaughnessy and reject her at the same time, and Rick Blaine would go through a variation of that ending with a similar clearsightedness.
There are no overt signs of a world at war in The Maltese Falcon, and it was released two months before the Pearl Harbor attack, but if one imagined the story as contemporary then all the international travel may have seemed far-fetched. Still the cast of globetrotting villains chasing an object linked to old empires and religious wars would have resonated in a year with so much conflict building up overseas. The places mentioned – Istanbul, Hong Kong, Malta, Jerusalem, Spain – were by and large outside the main theater of current events, but still close enough to evoke thoughts of danger and intrigue.
In retrospect, The Maltese Falcon forms a neat bridge between two eras, between the communitarian ethos of the Great Depression and the dark times of World War II ahead. The cast of policemen, detectives, and criminals is a microcosm for a world at war, but the values forged during the Depression carry Spade through the story, as they carried the United States through the war. Spade may occupy a world of broken relationships, but he exemplifies a way of thought and action that would give fertile ground to human connections in a more favorable social environment. Despite all the distrust, he knows how to get along with people.
Fourteen times in The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade talks on the telephone. The director John Huston must have recognized that Bogart knew how to carry a phone conversation on the screen as well as anyone, but the pattern is not gratuitous. A telephone is a metaphor for human connection, and it’s remarkable that no other character gets the privilege of being seen on a telephone save for Effie, who like Spade shows a sociable nature uncorrupted by grandiose dreams. Effie talks on the phone three times, including a call she hands to Spade and a call from O’Shaughnessy that she’ll tell the police Spade took. The film didn’t especially need to be so parsimonious with Effie’s phone time, but it relied on Bogart’s talent to show an almost ideal picture of sociability on the telephone in contrast to all the unsociability around him.
In summary, we’re left to understand here, in 1941, that “the stuff that dreams are made of” describes a common human weakness that said much about current events. The Nazis certainly appealed to such “dreams” when they won the German people over, but the reality of those dreams was as fake as the metal bird sitting on Sam Spade’s desk.
CONNECTIONS:
The Sea Wolf – Transition between the uplifting communal ethos of 1930s Hollywood and the darker psychology of the 1940s
Casablanca – Overlapping cast; valuable object as a MacGuffin; Humphrey Bogart’s character turns away a woman he loves at the end