"The Maltese Falcon" Analysis

The 1941 film noir “The Maltese Falcon” outlines a hardboiled private detective’s swift efforts to determine who murdered his business partner. Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) immediately launches an investigation when he discovers that his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cohan) has been shot and killed during a routine investigation. After a little digging, he discovers that the man Miles had been tailing the night he died, Floyd Thursby, was killed shortly after Miles. The woman who requested that Miles follow Thursby, Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), admits to Sam that her initial story was false and that Thursby was actually her business partner and a dangerous man. She pays Sam to investigate the circumstances surrounding Thursby’s death. Sam then comes into contact with Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), who cryptically refers to an apparently valuable bird. He eventually discovers that a rich socialite, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) is searching for “the Maltese falcon.” Gutman ultimately reveals to him that the Maltese falcon is a very valuable jewel-encrusted bird covered in black lacquer, and offers to pay Sam if he locates it. In the end, Sam ends up with the bird that Gutman believes to be the Maltese falcon. He uses it as a bargaining chip against Gutman, only to discover that Brigid has been lying about her involvement in the hunt for the falcon. She and Thursby were hired by Gutman to procure the bird, but Brigid had resolved to keep the bird for herself and therefore tried to evade Thursby by hiring Miles to intimidate him. However, when she realized that Thursby could not be intimidated, she killed Miles in hopes of framing Thursby. Thereafter, Gutman hired someone to kill Thursby to scare Brigid into returning the falcon. As it turns out, the falcon that Sam has is fake, so Gutman and Cairo set out to continue to search for the real falcon. In spite of his budding romance with Brigid, Sam decides to turn her in to the police.

Although Sam is clearly depicted as the protagonist of the film, he exhibits numerous harrowing qualities. For example, he does not appear particularly grief-stricken when he first learns that Miles was murdered. Although one might reason that Sam instead translates his pain into a desperate search to find Miles’ killer, the idea that Sam simply did not care about Miles is further supported by the fact that he had been having an affair with Miles’ wife before he died. Moreover, although Sam claimed to love Brigid, he coldly turns her in to the police at the end of the movie. Overall, Sam appears to be an indifferent and calculated—qualities that do not customarily characterize a movie’s protagonist. Perhaps Sam’s withdrawn personality is intended to reflect his masculinity. He is firm and composed while Brigid can’t keep her story straight and acts overly emotional. This would certainly seem consistent with film noir’s attempts to depict women harshly.