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Quote of the Day: The Maltese Falcon
I’ve previously quoted from this great movie. Here’s another:
Published in Group WritingSpade: [smiling] You are a liar.
Brigid: I am. I’ve always been a liar.
Spade: Don’t brag about it. Was there any truth at all in that yarn?
Brigid: Some…not very much…Oh, I’m – I’m so tired, so tired of lying and making up lies, not knowing what is a lie and what’s the truth.
Stick to the truth. You never have to remember what you’ve told whom.
My bad memory is one reason I so seldomly lie.
The quoted section is at the beginning of
But, Brigid would have made a great politician.
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The movie has another of my favorite lines:
Peter Lorre: “This is the second time you have laid hands on me.”
Humphrey Bogart: “When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it.”
I love that old film.
The interesting undercurrent in this movie is the sexual attraction between Bridget and Sam. At the end, it is apparent they have been to bed together when she says, “You would turn me in ? After…..?
No mention of what “after” refers to.
Brigid: You’ve got to trust me, Mr. Spade. Oh, I’m so alone and afraid. I’ve got nobody to help me if you won’t help me. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You’re brave. You’re strong. You can spare me some of that courage and strength surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. I need help so badly. I’ve no right to ask you, I know I haven’t, but I do ask you. Help me.
Spade: You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like “Be generous, Mr. Spade.”
Brigid: I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it. Not at all in what I said. It’s my own fault if you can’t believe me now.
Spade: [smiling] Now you are dangerous.
For years we thought Sam’s taunting of Wilma as a “gunsel” was a slang term for, you know, a guy with a gun. Nope. Eventually, yes, perhaps because of the movie, but the original meaning was a young guy who was the, er, passive partner in a, er, relationship with an older man. The original line in the book, IIRC, was “the cheaper the gunsel, the gaudier the patter.” As if the little goose is compensating for something.
The bit at the end of the film where (spoiler alert; it hasn’t been 48 hours yet, has it?) he sends her over despite the fact that he obviously loves her is one of my favorite bits in all of cinema.
The bars of the elevator shut like a prison door, and down she goes. It’s a great finish.
That said, I never bought Mary Astor in the role; too brittle, too odd. She didn’t have the femme fatale vibe for me. Don’t laugh, but I would have loved to see what Lucille Ball did with the role. She did some work that showed her non-comedy side, and it was smart and intelligent; she could brought a similar style of theatrical vulnerability Sam saw through from the start, and she was also drop-dead gorgeous.
Did you know there was a sequel to the Maltese Falcon? Hammett squashed the film over money, if I recall, but it ran on one of the most popular radio shows of the day. There’s a scene where the Not Mary Astor Character But Okay Sorta Yeah tells Sam she’s been to other private dicks in town, including Philip Marlowe. Sam says really? I know Phil. Let me give him a call. And he phones Marlowe. They have a chat. For one small scene Spade and Marlowe inhabit the same world, and for me, that’s now canon.
Oh please oh please let there be the audio… And thank you; you’ve made my night. Who needs to listen to podcasts?
That cinematic universe idea; it’s amazing that nobody made a fortune off of it before now. Heck, back when I was doing board game design I proposed that we (insofar as possible) have all the separate games inhabit the same story universe. ‘Course, there’s no surprise that I didn’t make a fortune there…
But you’re right; totally canon.
Of course, there are more than one Maltese Falcon movie, as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maltese_Falcon_(1931_film)
I know Hammett wrote several Sam Spade stories that were collected in The Adventures of Sam Spade and other stories, which can be read by clicking on the title.
Thanks guys! I listened late last night (actually early this morning). It was fun to hear it, but it was crazy how all they did was track The Maltese Falcon. I wonder what other episodes were like. I also kept thinking: “This sounds almost like The Firesign Theater’s spoof: The Further Adventures of Nick Danger from their album How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All.
I liked the part where Spade essentially thinks his way through the story out loud, in front of Brigid.
Hammett is a sort of bard of San Francisco when it was a neat place. Raymond Chandler plays a similar role for Los Angeles. LA has changed much more than San Francisco, which is a small place, but it is fun to find Chandler’s locations. Eddie Mar’s casino was on Lankersheim Blvd, just into the Valley. I remember when Lankersheim ended before the movie studios. His hideout in “The Big Sleep” was in Malibu, which was called “Bay City”at the time. There are a couple of places in Malibu that still have “Bay City” in their names.