“If you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere.”

    Film noir—that elusive genre, invented years after it had faded from being popular. Made by Americans, coined by the French. Dark shadows, sullen detectives, bombshell blondes. There is nothing like a great film noir—Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, Touch of Evil, and the list goes on. But for many, it all began with an inexperienced director, a B-list actor, and a mythical statue of a falcon: The Maltese Falcon.

    Interestingly enough, The Maltese Falcon, when released in 1941, had been made twice into a film before. The Dashell Hammett novel had been made by the studio Warner Brothers in 1931 as a light thriller and then in 1936 as a screwball comedy called Satan Met a Lady in the vein of The Thin Man series. But when John Huston came to Warner Bros as a writer in the mid-30s, he had seen these versions and felt there was something missing. The grit of Hammett’s writing was missing, and the dark essence of the book had vanished. According to some legends, Huston’s adaptation for the studio consisted of simply writing down the dialogue straight from the book and adding cues in-between.

    Whichever it is, film noir never began as film noir. At the time when Huston’s was getting the go-ahead from studio head Jack Warner and production head Hal Wallis for his “little B-picture,” Warners had all the elements of a film noir in their previous films, but not together. The comedies like Satan Met a Lady are essential, because not only do they contain the detective narrative, but also they have the many “one-liners” that are essential in the genre. The major difference is that screwball lines emit laughs while film noir lines simply sting. But then there was Warner Bros trademark—the gangster flick. The original gangster films—Scarface, Public Enemy, Little Caesar—had become a problem since the production code banned such outlaws as heroes, making gangsters secondary characters in flicks like G-Men and High Sierra. But The Maltese Falcon was a perfect little picture to bring gangsters back because besides our hero Sam Spade, almost every character is corrupted in some way. Thus, while other theorists would like to discuss post-war malaise and the lost of masculinity in American culture following the war (important but nowhere near essential for The Maltese Falcon), film noir may have been born out of good-ol’ genre mixing.

    As The Maltese Falcon begins, director John Huston gives us a legend before introducing us to our hero, and the film’s breakthrough star Humphrey Bogart. Today, Bogart is mythical in his status as a Hollywood actor, but before The Maltese Falcon, he played small parts as tough guys. But in Falcon, he changes his game—he’s still a tough guy but there’s something honest and lovable about his persona (something Hal Wallis liked so much that he tried to reunite Bogart and his Falcon co-star Mary Astor for a small war picture, though she dropped, Ingrid Bergman came in, and the film became Casablanca).

    Its interesting that the two most memorable characters out of the entirety of film noir are Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, the protagonist of Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, also played by Bogart. Bogart knew how to make those lines crack, to play intense but have fun at the same time. He makes The Maltese Falcon what it is today. He might shine even more in Huston’s The Treasure of Siera Madre or especially in the recently re-discovered Nicholas Ray film In a Lonely Place, but this is Bogart at his most in place and enjoyable.

    The Maltese Falcon also is full of great side actors that fill the universe Spade inhibits. Before femme fatales really took off, Mary Astor did it the best as Bridget O’Shaughnessy (though that name might not be correct). Astor plays her innocence so well, because she can hide her beauty. One look at Jane Greer in Out of the Past and Robert Mitchum is doomed; But Astor acts so coy, and so innocent that she sells it even as she drops down that elevator in the film’s wondrous penultimate shot.

    Then there’s Peter Lorre as the affable, amusing Joel Cairo. Lorre, often cited for his wondrously complex performance as the villain of Fritz Lang’s German film M. As an actor for Warner Bros, Lorre mastered the character actor. In The Maltese Falcon, he gives Cairo a somewhat homosexual undertone to Lorre that emphasizes his submissive relationship to his master.

    Finally, there is theater actor Sydney Greenstreet as the haunting master of the world of The Maltese Falcon, Kasper Gutman. Huston captures every single pound of Greenstreet’s massive body, and gives him that truly ultimate power. Even in the film’s final sequence, where Gutman realizes everything is lost, Greenstreet brings him back into reality, and lets Gutman walk out proud and ready for his next adventure.

    The central mystery, a McGuffin that Hitchcock couldn’t beat, is solved through a scene of great dialogue. There are no shots or explosions, just actors trying to play cards against each other. It might not sound thrilling, but Huston’s camera gives it tension. Look at how he brings a close-up to Mary Astor grabbing the gun, even though Bogart takes it without even thinking about it. But Huston gives this a brilliant line of foreshadowing, giving the insight to what O’Shaughnessy.

    Many of what followed that became what is known as film noir is missing—the real dark shadows, the narration, the time mixes. But it’s easy to see why The Maltese Falcon was seen as something completely original and thrilling. Huston may have not known what he was doing when he decided that Hammett’s novel needed another try, but he launched a world of danger, suspicion, and a suspense that was truly original.