Movie Review: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

With an all-star cast and rather unflattering hairstyles on the women, The Maltese Falcon is a seminal film noir. Bogart gives basically a career-defining performance as the smooth private detective Sam Spade.

I really have two main complaints here. The first one is lessening for me over the years, but it’s that it’s too similar to the novel. The first time I saw this movie was the day after I read the novel, and so many lines of dialogue were directly from it. The main differences were the novel was able to be a bit more risque about sex, while the film has to be far more implicit.

But years removed from reading the book, this doesn’t really bother me anymore.

My second complaint and I think a more valid one is that the movie’s locations get repetitive. It’s a lot of Spade’s office, and not much else. Almost all of the movie is indoors, which means the lighting is mostly the same.

There’s just not much visual variety, and that’s a bit of a shame. And the movie is visually compelling, to be fair.

And it’s a great movie overall. I don’t think this should come as a surprise to anyone.

Rating: 8/10