The Maltese Falcon – Film Noir

            Film noir is a term coined by French critics, Nino Frank, in 1946. It is a type of American films that “invaded” French cinemas after World War II. Film noir emerged from a period of political instability, which is around 1941 – 1958, the time of WWII and the Cold War in United States. This was a time of represents insecurity as the Americans question their national identity.

The term of noir means dark and black. So film noir is generally refer to dark film or black film. It features a world of criminals, dark and violence with characters’ central motives are usually greed, lust, ambition and drench in fear. The film shots in black and white. Visually, film noir looks dark with lots of shadows. It has high contrast lighting or we called as low key lighting. It also consists German expressionistic which we can see the oblique vertical and horizontal lines in film. The scenes in film noir are usually lit for night. It always has some locations like alleyways, cramped corridors and etc. to create the sense of distorted, silence and oppression. The setting normally is city-bound, comprising of rain-washed roads and dimly-lit interiors. On the other hand, about the thematic of film noir, it usually looks dark, cynical and pessimism. The film usually features a narration with corrupted characters, fatalistic themes, hopeless tones, blurred morals and intellect. It is a tales of criminal motives or we should call it “crime film”. There are some main characters normally appear in film, the femmes fatales, doomed heroes or anti-heroes, and detectives who tough, smart and cynical. Time flies, film noir also evolved. This movement has changed into a genre lately. We called as post noir or neo noir. Slowly some neo noirs are shot in colour and began to change the trends of the characters and treatments, incorporate more iconic and thematic development especially the female anti-heroes and femme fatales. But film noir slowly decays due to the technological advancement in colour film stock, the public’s fascination of sensational crime stories and noir sensibility among contemporary filmmakers. These reduce the number of audience that interested in film noir.

            The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir directed by John Huston based on the same name novel by Dashiell Hammet. The story takes place in San Francisco in 1941, a private investigators Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer meet their client Ruth Wonderly. She claims that she is looking for her sister who run with a man named Floyd Thursby, whom she is to meet. Archer decides to follow her that night and help to get her sister back after they received a substantial retainer from her. Unfortunately, Archer has been killed that night. Spade has no choice but to find out who is the murderer or else he will become the target of police. Then he slowly finds out that truth of the Maltese Falcon. Wonderly is actually men of the fat man, Kasper Gutman. She wants to kill her partner after they found the Maltese Falcon so that she can pockets it by her own. In order not to be reported to the police, she also pretends weak to win Spade sympathy. But Spade, despite his feelings for her, and turn her over to the police because she is the one who kills Archer.

           This film, the Maltese Falcon, has clearly interpret the ugliness of human nature, people will do anything to achieve their goals no matter good or bad. It is a good example of film noir that features the darkness of world and reality. For example, Sam Spade. Sam Spade is not a totally good kind as a private investigator. He is a typical businessman. He just does somethings that will get advantages. This shows when Ruth Wonderly (Brigid O'Shaughnessy) pays him a substantial retainer so that he can help to look for her sister. He also did not help his partner, Archer to find the murderer at first, he does so because he is being suspect by the police. In order to save himself, he needs to find out the truth. Another example is Spade’s secretary, Effie Perine. She follows Spade’s instructions blindly, do not care about the truth. She helps Spade to lie to the police officers. This shows when Effie receives the phone call from Brigid, but Spade asked her to tell the police that is Spade receives the call instead of her. This is not the truth.

            For visually technique application in this film, there is high contrast lighting or low key lighting in film. This create the sense of mystery for the film as the environment looks dark with lots of shadows. We also can see in the angle that everyone has a dark shadow, means that everyone has a dark side. German expressionistic shows in this film as well. We can see the oblique vertical and horizontal lines in the design of mise-en-scene. For example, in Ruth Wonderly’s room, she wears a cloth with vertical line and the background shows the shadow of window frames in horizontal. Same concept, the scene when Spade wears a blazer with vertical lines and the background shows brick walls with horizontal lines.

            In thematically, the setting of this film looks dark and there is suspicious anywhere. Every characters have their own intention, you can trust no one. A pure good character will not exist in film noir. The narrative diegesis of this film full with corrupted characters, fatalistic themes and blurred morals. For example, the character of protagonist, Spade and femme fatale, O'Shaughnessy. Spade is often side-lighted to enhance the profile from one side and leaving the other half of face in dark, thus pointing to the moral ambiguity of this main character who is neither a good person nor completely bad. O'Shaughnessy is active and smart. She knows how to use her sexuality benefits as a woman to get what she wants. In order to achieve her aims for the Maltese Falcon, she does not hesitate to deceive anyone include Spade, she even killed Archer. But usually such femme fatale character will pay for what they have done before either through death or submission to the patriarchal system. In this case, O'Shaughnessy is caught by police as Spade gives her up.

            As a conclusion, we can see how film noir articulated the repressed needs of America culture. It is real in portraying human fears and desires because it shows the truth of darkness of the society. Audience can identify the issues of corruption, redemption, and loyalty of people easily.