The Maltese Falon

Introduction:

Today, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about Film Noir and the film I watched is The Maltese Falcon. It was published on 18 October 1941 in United State and it is directed and written by John Huston which is an American film director. This film is based on Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel of the same name.

Theory Discussion:

Film Noir is a type of film but not a genre thematically is a hard-boiled hero, tales of criminal motives, corrupted character, cynical, pessimism and dark. The word ‘Noir’ in French means ‘dark’ or ‘black’ (Ebert, 1995). This type of films is different from the others which different perspective of a protagonist and it also known as Anti-hero (Dirks, 2016). The protagonist is usually corrupted by greed, lust, ambition and drench of fear. They have their own motives either is in the area of black or white even grey. Film noir is normally featuring about the reality of the society which with criminals, darkness and violence. As film noir is a crime-related film, murders, robbing, rape and other crime actions would happen throughout the film. In fact, film noir intended to show the realistic world with full of fear, doom, and betrayal.

After World War II, French saw an influx of American crime thriller film. Those crime genre films were normally detection and investigation films which very different from the films in 1940s. In fact, it was emerged from 1941-1958 from a period of political instability, the time of World War II and the Cold War in United State. Film noir basically portray all people are bad, none of the human beings is pure good which attracted filmmakers to reveal this reality world into movies (Hayward, 2013).

Synopsis:

Sam Spade and Miles Archer is a detective, both of them are partners in the detective agency. One day, a woman named Miss Wonderly who walks into their office and asking them to look for her missing sister. After that, Sam received a call and tells him Miles was dead and they believe the murder followed by Thursby. Then, Sam notices that he was suspected by the police and putting him into a dangerous situation of crime. Besides that, Sam gives protection to Miss Wonderly from a group of dangerous man. In the process of discovering the truth, everyone is lust for a statuette called the Maltese Falcon.

Film Analysis:

In film noir, most of the characters are bad people. Like the theme of this movie, the content is related to crime and detective. Although Sam seems like helping O’Shaughnessy all the time, but what he was done is just for money. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was handover by Sam to the police at the end although the relationship between both of them is no longer client-detective. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy is a bad character in this film because she had planned Thursby to death so she can own all the profit from selling Maltese Falcon herself.

Besides that, Sam is the anti-hero in this film. He is a smart and honored man and he also loves money. He also is the one who gives a lesson to femme fatale in the end of the film. In addition, femme fatale was involved in this film. For example, the representation of the femme fatale in this film goes to the character of Miss Wonderly and Miss O'Shaughnessy even they are the same person and she had betrayed Sam by not telling the truth to him. In order to accomplish their goal, Miss Wonderly act like a weak woman and seeking for help and gain trust from others. There is another example for showing female fatale in this film, the scene where Sam holds her back to the apartment while she claiming herself dizzies when she is walking. The is another scene to show female fatale is Sam reach to her place to help her out when she called Sam and said that she is in trouble and screams voice heard over the phone. 

In this film, the filmmakers often used high contrast lighting to create the shadows and night cinematography in film noir because it is one of the characteristics of film noir. For example, the director of photography uses many night scenes to bring out the foggy feel in San Francisco scene with the shadow and darkness of crime. Other than that, film noir uses distinctive camera angles to create the tension and mood in the movie. For example, the scene where Sam visits Gutman's hotel room, they use low angle shot to emphasize both of them.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, film noir is used to reflect the reality of the societies during that particular period.  Besides that, people were sarcastic in film noir because most of the people in the film are not good like nobody can be trusted in this world anymore.