The Maltese Falcon
Being someone who doesn't watch movies, I found this movie to be interesting, to say the least. The plot seems to follow at least some of the aspects of a standard mystery: there is a murder early in the movie (and one towards the end), though it isn't really revisited until the very end, and there are multiple suspects, each equally likely to be the culprit. Spade seems to prefer solving mysteries by intuition and through conversations, though he does occasionally search for clues by looking through the belongings of unconscious and dead people and when he searches Gutman's room after being knocked out. What I found really interesting was that the titular Maltese Falcon was never that important of an object. It was the driving force behind the movie, but it never made a physical appearance. This also leads to an interesting twist in that one of the mysteries (the location of the falcon) is never solved at the end of the movie.
I found to be Spade a particularly interesting character. As Gutman says, nobody really knows what he'll do next, except that it will be astonishing. He gets in more (potentially deadly) fights than any of the previous detectives we've read about, and he also flirts with more girls than those detectives. He almost always has a strange smile on his face, even when things seem to go badly, and he has a very short fuse. I also found it interesting that Archer, his partner, was killed off so early in the movie. That has also never happened in any of the stories we have read, and his death was only focused on in the very beginning and in the very end. Initially, it seems that Spade was unconcerned about his death, but his final conversation with O'Shaughnessy gives the viewers an idea of how much it really affected him.
I found to be Spade a particularly interesting character. As Gutman says, nobody really knows what he'll do next, except that it will be astonishing. He gets in more (potentially deadly) fights than any of the previous detectives we've read about, and he also flirts with more girls than those detectives. He almost always has a strange smile on his face, even when things seem to go badly, and he has a very short fuse. I also found it interesting that Archer, his partner, was killed off so early in the movie. That has also never happened in any of the stories we have read, and his death was only focused on in the very beginning and in the very end. Initially, it seems that Spade was unconcerned about his death, but his final conversation with O'Shaughnessy gives the viewers an idea of how much it really affected him.
I liked this comment a lot, Winston. It was super interesting hearing the prospective of someone that does not watch movies. First thing I would say is, movies are awesome! Give Christopher Nolan's movies a go. I also took notice of the lone evidence scene, where he searches through Cairo's stuff after knocking him out. Let me say, for the record, that that scene is laughably bad. You bring up an interesting point, that the Maltese Falcon itself is not even that significant. Perhaps this means that the title is a very good troll. I also agree that he is more James Bondy and flirty than other guys. It comes off kind of creepy also. One thing I disagree with is that Spade's final actions with O'Shag show that he really cares about his partner, I think it was more personal.
ReplyDelete