Maltese Falcon

I think that The Maltese Falcon was a pretty okay movie, though I personally was not really curious about what was going to happen next, though the movie does attempt to be suspenseful. At first, the introduction of the three separate characters who met with Spade was a bit confusing because I did not know what relation they had with each other, but it eventually came pretty clear, though I wish the identity and importance of the Maltese Falcon was revealed earlier than half way through the movie, though I guess that does keep the viewers engaged and curious. I was quite surprised that Archer died so quickly, because it is usually noted that in some detective stories, the detectives are supposed to be assumed to be immune from danger and unchanging, as discussed in “The Typology of Detective Fiction” by Tzvetan Todorov. It seems like this movie is more of the thriller and suspense genre that was discussed in the essay because we didn’t know what would happen to the detective and he wasn’t immune from death. I was also quite surprised that they incorporated love and relationships into the movie because detective stories usually have detectives that are not really interested in love or are already settled down in that aspect, as discussed in “The Typology of Detective Fiction” and in “The Guilty Vicarage.” This made it more interesting since it made the viewers wonder if Spade’s feelings for the girl would influence his decisions in the end, which did not happen after all.

I kind of wished that we could see more about how the actual murders and crimes in the movie played out such as like eventually being able to witness the murders, especially the shooting of the guy who eventually gave the falcon to Spade. There was a lot of reference to these action scenes but I wanted to actually see the action. Also, the majority of the movie was spent figuring out what the falcon was and how people were getting paid to do certain things, and the parts with evidence were very few. It was only in the last few minutes that we actually find out who murdered the victims and how, and this was simply through Spade’s mouth from some sort of train of thought that the viewers are never actually hinted to. For example, how did he know that the girl murdered Archer? It seemed like a lot of circumstantial evidence, but I would have liked to have had some kind of evidence or thought process shown to the viewers instead of being fed the fact at the end of the movie. The discovery of the murderers was not very excited and that really made me less interested in the movie. Also, it felt really inconclusive the way that we’re never told about the actual whereabouts of the Maltese Falcon even though the movie is named after it.