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Brennan: You’re listening to Dodge Movie Podcast. Your hosts are Christi and Mike Dodge, the founders of Dodge Media Productions.

We produce films and podcasts. So this is a podcast about films. Join them as they share their passion for filmmaking.

Christi: Welcome back, everybody, to the Dodge Movie Podcast. This is episode 170, and we are going to be discussing the Maltese Falcon, the 1941 Maltese Falcon, because apparently there were two others before this one.[00:01:00]

According to a Leonard Maltin video I watched. We watched this on Amazon for $3. 59. This is director John Huston, and I believe this was, if not his first foray into directing.

Mike: It was his first directing.

Christi: Yeah. He, he had produced some films and he was a writer, but this was his first directing bit in, he followed it up in 1948 with Treasure of the Sierra Madre and 1950 The Asphalt Jungle 1974 Chinatown, and probably came into at least my awareness for 1985.

Pritzy’s Honor.

Mike: Who was in that? Didn’t that also include Kathleen Turner? Yes, it did. Friend of a friend of the podcast.

Christi: Well, does it count? Am I one degree if I met her? Or am I two degrees because I know somebody who knows her?

Mike: I mean, I would give you the one degree, but perhaps if we’re being strict it would be a [00:02:00] second degree.

Because you haven’t worked with her.

Christi: I haven’t worked with her. I asked her a question and she looked me in the face and answered me.

Mike: Very kindly.

Christi: Yes. Yes. No, she’s amazing.

Mike: So she gave you the first degree.

Christi: She’s amazing. Okay. Stars. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, and Peter Lorre. I’ve always heard of Peter Lorre, but I probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.

Mike: I probably couldn’t have until we watched this film and now I’ll remember him for at least a little while. Huh. But a month from now, maybe. Couldn’t figure him from Sydney Green Street.

Christi: The DP was Arthur edeson , E D E S O N, not like the famous inventor. And he did 1930s All Quiet on the Western Front and 1942’s Casablanca, among other films.

But those were two that I recognized. The writer is, like I said, John Huston. And, but he must’ve just kind of touched it up because it was based on a Dashiell Hammett Screenplay and he was an interesting [00:03:00] character. In fact, I watched a couple videos. We just kind of perused his wiki he worked for the Pinkerton detective agency Which is so funny.

Like I guess do we have detective agencies? I mean, I guess

Mike: I don’t believe you have large ones Pinkerton was the largest one Right.

Christi: Who was hiring detectives back then? Like, it seems like a rough, I don’t know, like, I feel like if we added them up we’d have more bail bondsmen now than detective agencies.

Mike: I suspect that this was back before government got so big and took over everything. Probably back then you had the level of police involvement. Across the country that we have where we live, which is basically none. So people were probably hiring these private detectives to find their lost statuettes and stuff because there just weren’t any detectives to go around.

Be my guess.

Christi: And so Daschle also wrote The Thin Man, which I’ve heard of that [00:04:00] film. This film, The Maltese Falcon, is set in San Francisco, so the Golden Gate Bridge, Bush Street, the Ferry Building all were filmed in San Francisco, and then it was also filmed , on a Warner Brothers Studios lot in Burbank.

The synopsis for this film is San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous, liar? Yeah. Okay. With three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette with the stakes rising after his partner is murdered, murdered.

Alright, I got a few taglines for you, let me see. Okay,

Mike: I hope they did a little bit better than Duck Soup’s taglines.

Christi: Right? Another great story from the author of The Thin Man.

Mike: That’s actually good marketing, I don’t know if it’s a good tagline though.

Christi: Right. Killer Bogart, a guy [00:05:00] without a conscious.

Mary Astor, a dame without a heart.

Mike: Yeah, no, especially because Bogart wasn’t Bogart until after this film, so that’s not a great tagline.

Christi: Really?

Mike: That’s what I heard. This was his break.

Christi: Yeah. Oh, okay. Humphrey Bogart takes both guns and gals in stride till he meets Mary Astor, a kind of menace Bogart never met before.

Mike: Yeah. Again, not so keen. Not really.

Christi: Okay, how about this. A story as explosive as his blazing automatics. . I wonder what automatics are?

Mike: Well, there , Sometimes you would call it Yeah, the We can, we can delve into that a little bit more when we get into we don’t really have a firearm section, but maybe under props, we could talk about that.

Christi: Okay. He’s a killer when he hates.

Mike: Okay, that’s closest to an actual tagline.

Christi: Okay, and you shared this bit of trivia with me when we were watching it or shortly after we finished. Mary Astor was having an affair with the director, John Houston, while the [00:06:00] making of this film.

Mike: Which is a tried and true way to get the part.

Christi: Yeah. All right. Kick us off with your pickup line for the Maltese Falcon.

Mike: Yeah, sweetheart. From Sam Spade.

Christi: Yeah. Played by Humphrey Bogart.

Mike: Humphrey Bogart. Now I also there is a parting shot, the last line, which is very, very famous. The stuff that dreams are made of, referring to what is the Maltese Falcon.

And some people, such as one of the pedantic nerds that wrote into IMDb say that that’s not actually the last line because apparently Ward Bond’s character says, “huh”, but I would argue that’s not a line in dialogue. That’s a sound. And I think the person who wrote that in is also the same person that told you that the year 2000 was part of the 20th century.

Now the 21st century, no one likes that nerd. So but apparently that line, the stuff that dreams are made of is considered one of the, like the top. movie lines. And I [00:07:00] think it’s interesting because the next film that we kind of know him from Casablanca also has a famous parting shot. So Bogart was good at those zingers on the way out.

Christi: Yeah. He knew how to close out a movie.

Mike: Puts butts in seats.

Christi: So this one is There’s been some debate on whether or not this is a noir and that’s what one of the videos I

Mike: just think that’s fascinating because I would say that I think a lot of the lay person would probably say this is, you know, this very much is a noir.

Christi: So one of the things they said, why it’s debatable, I guess, is apparently in noir, the, the Sam Spade character, the detective, he’s kind of He pushes against conventional authority, I guess, or like he’s, you know, he’s a wild man, you know, kind of like I think of Mel Gibson’s character in Lethal Weapon, right?

He was like so crazy, he can’t be tamed to be on the police force. Right. [00:08:00] Wasn’t he, he wasn’t a cop, or was he a cop?

Mike: Mel Gibson’s character was a cop, although this is one of those movie things, I think in general if someone is mentally ill, they tend not to let you remain employed. But yeah, so I would actually push back against that person because, for a couple of reasons, right?

One is we do See him, Bridget says at some point aren’t you going to get in trouble? And he says something like, just a reasonable amount of trouble, right? So that shows us that he is pushing back against authority. And he, he actually immediately is antagonistic toward the two detectives who show up.

But one, he kind of, you know, Like, grudgingly respects, and the other guy he just hates. And this leads into another interesting topic, because one of the things he insults him with is, What’s your boyfriend getting at, Tom? So he does the old classic, I’m gonna call you gay as an insult thing, which I find fascinating, because Peter Lorre’s character of [00:09:00] Cairo Is established, I think, to be a gay character.

So in the dialogue, they mentioned that he smells like gardenias. And I think in the book, it’s maybe a little bit more obvious that he’s supposed to be gay, even though I don’t think Peter Lorre was himself. But I also read that Wilmer. The young fellow that Gutman has who keeps shooting people is also supposed to be gay, I think.

And then there’s a scene where Gutman is trying to convince Humphrey Bogart to do something and he sits down next to him on the couch and he puts his hand on his knee. And so I was like, man, there’s a lot of man on man action in this film for 1941. So I found that just kind of fascinating. That in, in a film like this, so is but anyway, all that coming back to, I do feel like they established that Spade was pushing back against the authorities.

Christi: Yes, the lighting is very much a part of noir. And the cinematographer used low key lighting and [00:10:00] arresting angles to emphasize the nature of the characters and their actions. So such as the scene where Gutman explains the history of the Falcon to Sam Spade, he’s drawing out his story so that the knockout, the, I guess, femme fatale,. Oh, so that the knockout drops in Sam Spade’s drink will take effect. And Roger Ebert describes this scene as an astonishing unbroken seven minute take. And the script supervisor, Meta Wilde, remarked of this scene.

Mike: So one thing I would mention the knockout and we, we talked about the actress, Mary Astor was involved with some scandals of a sexual nature.

She is a knockout in a different sense than today. In fact, she looks to me like Betty Boop. I don’t know who Betty Boop was supposed to, I thought it was Betty Davis that was the, the, the visual model for Betty Boop, but it’s just, [00:11:00] I found it interesting, different areas, you know, have a different standard for what is, you know, the knockout from Hollywood.

I wouldn’t have necessarily picked Mary Astor out of the lineup and said, Oh, this is your va va voom. But at the time she was, so that probably plays a little different. Right. To the audiences at the time than us, because when she came on screen, I didn’t immediately peg her as the femme fatale, you know, the knockout that we have to keep our eye on.

Christi: Was there anything else that you noticed? Especially since it’s noir and it was black and white and the lighting that anything in the cinematography

Mike: Well, I thought it was interesting that the opening shot is of the titular bird statue just kind of getting right to it. It’s title of the film.

Here’s what we’re going to, this is our McGuffin. At one point they had the classic Vaseline gel shot of Mary Astor. So in case we weren’t clear that she was the, the female lead. And I thought there was [00:12:00] a really clever shot where they have a light shining through the window. And it puts the shadow of spade and archer on the floor, which I thought was kind of clever.

That’s cool. There was really, so it was shot in almost a square aspect ratio. It was really quite square and narrow. So there was a lot of kind of one take and it looked like because people would be cut off on the frame. And reading the trivia, it said that Houston was given a tight budget and told if he went over, he would never work again.

So I could see perhaps that contributed to old one take Houston, but there was one particular shot when Bridget like Sam first visits Bridget in wherever she’s staying that had so much panning because they were. It was tight on the actors, but it was a narrow frame. So when she would move, they would have to pan.

And then in the middle of the panning, they even dollied. It was amazing how how much camera [00:13:00] moved that they did. And, and they did keep the focus going, but I did notice there was one shot where this is fascinating. Just like half a second before the cut, the color timing changes. And so it was almost like they probably changed.

Like Film canisters. I have no idea what it is, but it was just like a brief flash. I’m like, Whoa, what happened there? And it was, I mean, if it was digital, I’d say somebody forgot when they were dragging the filter, you know, to go the whole, whole length of, of the, of the clip that was kind of fascinating to me.

Christi: I noticed that Sam early on took a couple phone calls and we don’t hear the other side. We hear like, yeah. And he didn’t really even fill in a ton of expos, I mean, he did kind of like, it wasn’t super obvious, like, so you say.

But but I just found that interesting. I was like, Oh, we’re just going to figure out [00:14:00] based on, I guess, like context or whatever, what they’re saying.

Mike: Yeah. I did make an, a note that you don’t hear the other side of the phone call, whereas now we do. Like, you can’t ever understand it, but you can hear like Charlie Brown trombone almost.

Christi: No, but I, I feel like, or they would cut to that other person.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. And then of course, you

Christi: do hear the other side

Mike: in like the fifties, they would do the split screen. . And the other thing to note is it seems a little anachronistic, but. It was actually accurate. He had the old, what they call the candlestick phone, the super old timey phone in his apartment.

And they said that because back then it was the Monopoly, it was Ma Bell, you didn’t buy the phone. So when you got the phone line, they brought one out and installed it and they would basically never replace it. Because what it will cost them money, right? So you’ve got whatever phone you got and that was what you lived with

Christi: Houston really prepared for this. [00:15:00] I wonder if this is like a first time director thing or if like you said, it’s because they threatened to you know, take away his privileges if he spent too much money, but he planned each second of the film to the last detail, tailoring the screenplay with instructions for himself.

He did a shot by shot set up with sketches for every scene. So that filming could go fluently and professionally and he was adamant that the film be methodically planned thus ensuring that the production maintained a tight schedule within their budget and so I found that interesting. I wonder was it the budget that drove that decision or was that just the type of person he was that maybe he just liked to plan things out?

What was your sense from like trivia you read or?

Mike: I think the budgetary restrictions were a big part of it, but I would also think it’s probably how he was as a person, and that seems natural and normal to me to [00:16:00] Maybe not over planned, but yeah, wouldn’t you, I mean, so it said he’s storyboarded and I’m like, of course you would storyboard you’d want to, you know, sketch out what do I, how do I see this shot going?

How do I see the scene playing out? And you, otherwise the chuckleheads you hire might not get what you want. And then you’re in the edit bay and you don’t have what you need. So to me, it’s like, well, yeah, of course you would do that.

Christi: You say that, but famously, I think it’s. It’s like I’m going to get my directors mixed up, but I think Scorsese doesn’t storyboard.

Mike: Yes, some don’t I I don’t know how you would possibly look like Now perhaps they have it in their head. I guess. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me

Christi: Well, I would think somebody on the level of a Scorsese. He’s done enough movies that he knows what he needs and So yeah, he may

Mike: may perhaps write down a shot shot I guess you could describe it in text, but it just seems to me that it’s Like to, to tell the story, it’s a visual medium.

Wouldn’t you [00:17:00] want to envision what the film’s looking like? And then you would make note of that. So you could share it with the rest of the crew. So they get you what you had envisioned in your head. Now, maybe again, if you are. Doing your own camera work, you’re shooting at yourself and editing yourself, maybe you don’t need to.

Mm-Hmm, . But I would think once you start working with other people, it would be handy to be able to point at a picture and say, see, this is what I want to play. This is what I want.

Christi: Any other like plot or directing or character development that you wanna discuss?

Mike: Well, it’s very interesting. I read a lot of trivia that explained things about the character that I don’t think you could know from the film.

So perhaps it’s from the book or reading other books or somehow, but one thing is, for example, Sam knows that it’s a particular kind of revolver that was used to shoot his partner. And it turns out that particular revolver had a zigzag groove on the cylinder. So I would buy that. He would recognize that, but he [00:18:00] knew it was the 45, not the 38.

And that to me is very difficult to tell from a distance, the difference between that. So, but he was supposed to, I guess, that character, no. Guns very well and perhaps maybe even like served in the war or something So that was the thing that it stuck in my mind. I was like, how would he know that but then the other thing is He’s so casual like so Cairo pulls this little pistol on him and he takes away from him and then Cairo says Can I have it back and he just hands it to him and Cairo immediately sticks him up again

Christi: I was surprised by that too.

Mike: And, but and this is part of what I consider to be the, the noir from the writing. He has a great line in here that my, my buddy Joe really would love. When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it. And he was so, I mean that to me, that, that classic and, and he was, you know, maybe not quite as respectful of the [00:19:00] secretary as he could “put the pot on angel”.

But He was so kind of, we didn’t see him drinking so much, but he was so rough, like a tough guy. And I felt like that was very much part of the noir, that was part of that shtick, and this guy, and he’s kind of a little bit on the, The edge of, of whether it’s legal or not. And he even says something in there about like, well, I’m going to get it back for you in a completely legal and upright manner.

Right? Like this is a thing that’s in question that we need to address. Right. Yet then there’s a part where he says something, they said, well, don’t you have a gun? Hd he’s like, I don’t like him, which is kind of a little against type for, I think that character. Then we see that Wilmer, he’s got a couple pistols with him at all times.

Yeah, Cairo has the little gun. And so it, it, that was a little bit different, but I felt like it kept with the genre of that being a very Like violent [00:20:00] time, like people get shot over stuff, which now, I mean, that just seems ridiculous that like, and then it was like, Oh, I was a detective and my partner got shot and like, he immediately calls the guy in to redo the signage on the windows.

Christi: I know he tells his secretary. It was so cold, like the way he delivered it, like, well, better call in and have him remove so and so’s name off the door.

Mike: And then it was like, well, aren’t you gonna, you know, Like talk to his wife. He was like, ah, she’ll be fine. You know,

Christi: She’ll figure it out through the gossip mill.

Mike: Yeah. It was just, you know, like I said, I think it’s of a type with the movie, but it was kind of a rough character.

Christi: Right. Exactly. Yeah. I have under the head drama, it’s your slap and you’ll take, you’ll take it and you’ll like it.

Mike: I know that was just amazing. When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it like, Oh boy.

Yikes.

Christi: So apparently Humphrey Bogart supplied his own wardrobe and this was a common practice. [00:21:00] So, I mean, we do that in our indie filmmaking. We have purchased costumes for actors before, but if, if it’s something that we are pretty sure they would have we do ask them to just wear their own.

So, Hey, we’re right up there with the Warner brothers. And it was the way the studios saved money..

Mike: And to be fair, we have sent actors home with their wardrobe after filming. But yes it would kind of fit, you would think. But maybe not, right? That’s the thing. Did they tailor it? Did he bring it in and then they zhuzhed it up a little bit?

I don’t know. I don’t need that. But yeah, I thought that was a great way to save money. Good job, Warner Brothers. Yeah, .

Christi: And then kind of hanging, like you said, a lamb shade on it. Several of the 11 and a half inch tall falcon props that were made for the film. One of the falcons was actually given to the actor William Conrad by Studio Chief Jack Warner, and it was auctioned off in December of 1994 for [00:22:00] $398,500.

The highest price. paid for a film prop at that time, a 45 pound metal prop that appeared in the film was sold at auction in 2013 for over 4 million. And you found out a little tidbit about a couple of them and what they were made of

Mike: . Yeah, I read that they had four made out of resin, but two made out of lead.

So if they were solid gold, they’d be about 75 pounds, but the lead ones were 55. And Mary Astor dropped one on Humphrey’s foot. Ouch. That’ll break it. Now I want to back up a little bit. Why did they give it to William Conrad? He had nothing to do with this film. Apparent, I don’t know. And so is it just like, we found a chubby actor, so since Sydney’s not around we’re going to give this guy the statuette?

Christi: No one’s going to remember this, but I was trying to make a connection between maybe Jack knocked the battery off his shoulder, or

Mike: [00:23:00] That’s nice. That’s I think Robert Conrad. Oh, but it’s even funnier.

Christi: Oh, well, who’s William? It says actor.

Mike: Yeah.

Christi: Yeah. How do we have a William and a Robert Conrad?

Mike: I know. I always got them confused as a child.

Christi: Now I’m going to have to look them up.

Mike: They don’t look at all like, but so I had like about four degrees of separation, I guess, from. Robert Conrad, the actor who is on Black Sheep Squadron. He was in an air show at the time when he was filming that airplane. A kid I went to school with, older brother, was in high school, he was super into airplanes.

He confronted Mr. Conrad at the urinal. And I’m sure Mr. Conrad was Was not happy that he chose that opportunity like just son. Wait a minute Let me finish before you ask for my autograph So that he didn’t hit the young boy But I just feel like as a gent you probably aren’t expecting people to come up and ask for things when you’re at the [00:24:00] urinal

Christi: I’ve bet a lot of celebrities though have been

Mike: I bet now that you say that they probably do have a lot of stories about horribly inappropriate times that people ask for autographs.

Christi: Yeah. Yeah Alright, was there any, besides the slap that famously we know of, was there any other head trauma?

Mike: There’s quite a bit of head trauma. So Sam punches Cairo in his office, I guess as you would. Bridget slaps Cairo in Sam’s place, and then she pistol whips him and kicks him while he’s down.

Wow. So not necessarily to the head, but a lot of violence there. The lieutenant of detectives, that’s actually credited, he’s the lieutenant, he throat punches Sam. Which is maybe the first throat punch in movie history. I’ll have to look that one up. Sam hits his head when he passes out after getting Mickey’d in Gutman’s suite, and then Wilmer kicks him in the head, literally while he’s down.

And which is actually, by the way one of the tropes of detective movies is they get kicked or pistol whipped in the head with no long term lasting damage, which is actually not true. If [00:25:00] somebody hits you in the head with a, with a big statue, you, you can either die or you may never recover. So that was one of those where he, like, Wilmer kicks him in the head pretty hard.

A person would have. He would not get up anytime soon. And then lastly Sam punches Wilmer to disarm him. And so there’s, yeah, a lot of punching, kicking head trauma. A rough one. It’s a detective business. It’s a tough, tough, tough world. Tough milieu.

Christi: How about some romance?

Mike: Smoochie, smoochie, smoochie.

Christi: So I believe a noir is supposed to have a little bit of romance. It does.

Mike: And we have some smoochies. This gets into kind of some of the problematic parts of the film. Consent was not a big thing for detectives.

Christi: Come on, darling. What are you talking about?

Mike: So when Bridget asks him to help, and says something to the effect of, you know Why would you help me?

He grabs her and kisses her as payment. So that was a little rough. And then later, he kisses her right before he surrenders her to the [00:26:00] cops. Kind of as a farewell. Listen, Trix.

Christi: And a driving review.

Mike: So there wasn’t a whole lot of driving in this one. They at one point he takes a taxi and it’s a 1939 Buick special.

It’s a pretty nice car for a taxi, right? We think of the checker cabs and they’re more industrial. And then at one point I think it’s Archer’s wife is staking them out and she’s in a 1941 Chevrolet Special Deluxe Convertible. And I thought, isn’t that fascinating to have a convertible in San Francisco?

They get enough weather that I don’t know if convertibles are the best choice. As well as when you’re trying to, to hide, do you really want a convertible? I think you’d want something with a hard top, real low, not a lot of lighting.

Christi: Let’s blend in. Generally, convertibles are a little bit of an eye catcher.

Mike: Yeah, so, but maybe her husband was the detective and she wasn’t. Didn’t have that skill set.

Christi: That’s [00:27:00] hilarious. Shall we go to the numbers?

Mike: Let’s go to the numbers.

Christi: All right. This film made in 1941 had a budget of $375,000 and it made domestically 1. 8 million. So big hit. I know. And that’s dollars from back then.

So. You know,

Mike: That’s 41. That’s what 40 million today’s dollars.

Christi: Yeah. Yeah. So good job, Mr. Houston. It gets an eight out of 10 on IMDb. 99 percent of critics absolutely love this movie and audiences. Pretty well close at 91%. It’s an hour and 40 minutes. How is that for the Morrow line?

Mike: That’s a little past the Morrow line, but it’s competitive.

Yeah, not much. Okay,

Christi: So pretty good timing.

Mike: Yeah Yeah, and I felt paced well.

Christi: Yes, I agree. This was before they enacted the ratings so it gets an [00:28:00] approved and I remember I think I heard on one of the videos that John Huston was very careful and he kind of sanitized it a little bit from the book in order to get that approval rating.

It’s a crime film noir mystery as listed on IMDb. And like we said, it’s a Warner Brothers Pictures. It won five awards and four nominations. Mary Astor and Bogart won. Best actor from the national board of review in 1942 won best performances of the month at the photo play awards. And for the 14th annual academy awards, it was nominated for best picture.

Greenstreet, Sydney Greenstreet was nominated for best supporting actor and Houston for best adapted screenplay. So, he is a an accomplished writer, that John Huston. Alright, shall we see what we’re gonna watch next week? Let’s see.

Oh, it’s one of your [00:29:00] faves.

Point Break .

Mike: I am a movie podcaster.

Christi: very good. But never forget

Mike: Dodges. Never stop. And neither do the movies.

Brennan: Thanks for listening to Dodge Movie podcast with Christi and Mike Dodge of Dodge Media Productions. To find out more about this podcast than what we do, go to dodge Media productions.com, subscribe, share, leave a comment, and tell us what we should watch next.

Dodges never stop. And neither do the movies.