When sitting down with popcorn, soda and some jujubes to view the splendor of a film entitled “The Maltese Falcon”, it may quickly become apparent that the film really isn’t jujube material. More appropriate perhaps, is a scotch on the rocks. This film has something to say about humanity, and it isn’t all rainbows and jujubes. Director John Huston’s 1941 directorial debut takes the audience on a series of twists and turns that even the sharpest of minds could not foresee.
Main character and ultimate cool guy Samuel Spade (Humprey Bogart) has an air about him that must be vigilantly followed from beginning to end. His dynamic personality makes him irresistible to women in any era, and idolized by men just the same. His unpredictability allows the audience to get lost in his story, and immediately we are obsessed to see how the story will unfold.
At first, there is not much complexity to this private eye. He and his partner seem nothing more than your average pair of cliché private eyes, willing to help any damsel in distress that throws cash their way. However, when Spade’s partner Archer (Jerome Cowan) is murdered in cold-blood, something in Sam’s demeanor is off. His partner just died, and he is oddly unemotional. He received the early morning phone call, and reacted as though he were called to the crime scene of a stranger. This particular lack of emotion begs the viewer to find out what exactly Det. Spade is up to.
As the story of the falcon begins to unravel, on opposing sides of this highly prized relic appears femme fatale Ms. Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) and Mr. Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre). The long, overcast shadows that seem to linger in their presence suggest that something odd is going on with both of these chara...
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...ut the frightening ease in which its characters fall to the power of the unattainable. They all seek to be in control, and fail miserably. When Sam answer’s the cops question about the maltese falcon, the answer is as haunting as Sam’s expression. He replies, full of insight, “It’s the stuff dreams are made of.” Every one of these criminals had acted on the idea of the falcon, only for it to turn out to be a fake. What’s truly being said for humanity is that we all fall under the ideals unspeakable fortune represents. Power corrupts. Money corrupts. But truth, now that’s something truly beautiful, something worth fighting for. Sam may have walked away broke, but he was rich with the knowledge he had brought his partner’s murderer to light. A thought he may take little comfort in on the loneliest of nights, sobbing in his tear-streaked glass of scotch, on the rocks.
The almighty American dream, commonly misconceived as the property of those who reap great materialistic wealth, has been analyzed and sought after through generations. However, this dream, “could come from anywhere and be anything you want in this country” (Goldberg), and the numerous success stories of impoverished beings proves this. This subjectiveness stems from the great diversity within human nature and the variation of goals and pleasures. The characters in novels such as The Glass Castle, To Kill a Mockingbird and the play, The Crucible, act to portray several attempts towards achieving this dream. Ultimately, the almighty American Dream manifests itself through the novels as the desire to accomplish stability and content within one’s
Bateman has no interest in the music he listens to, and even goes on page long monologues discussing the discography of Whitney Houston or Genesis, all of which sound as if they were taken straight from a review out of a New York Times article. Bateman constantly talks of how he loves the popular commercial music, how he obtains reservations at luxurious restaurants, how he has hundreds of Armani suits, and ironically enough delivers a liberal speech stressing how equal rights for women and minorities should be implemented into society, a quite funny contradiction. Bateman masks himself as a typical yuppie in a successful attempt to fit into society, though it is redundant. Bateman does not even need to fabricate his taste, he blatantly talks of “dissecting girls” “Stabbing you (a woman) to death then playing around with [her] blood” and needing to commit many other murderous
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is a satiric comedy about the quest of King Arthur. The movie starts out with Arthur, King of the Britons, looking for knights to sit with him at Camelot. He finds many knights including Sir Galahad the pure, Sir Lancelot the brave, the quiet Sir Bedevere, and Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Lancelot. Through satire and parody of certain events in history (witch trials, the black plague) they find Camelot, but after literally a quick song and dance they decide that they do not want to go there. While walking away, God (who seems to be grumpy) come to them from a cloud and tells them to find the Holy Grail. They agree and begin their search. While they search for the Grail, scenes of the knight's tales appear and the reasons behind their names. Throughout their search, they meet interesting people and knights along the way. Most of the characters die; some through a killer rabbit (which they defeat with the holy hand grenade), others from not answering a question right from the bridge of Death, or die some other ridiculous way. In the end, King Arthur and Sir Bedevere are left and find the Castle Arrrghhh where the Holy Grail is. They are met by some French soldiers who taunted them earlier in the film and were not able to get into the castle. The movie ends with both King Arthur and Sir Bedevere being arrested for killing a real-life man who was a historian.
The Pacific coast port city of San Francisco, California provides a distinctively mysterious backdrop in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Unlike many other detective stories that are anchored in well-known metropolises such as Los Angeles or New York City, Hammett opted to place the events of his text in the lesser-known, yet similarly exotic cultural confines of San Francisco. Hammett used his own intricate knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area - coupled with details collected during a stint as a detective for the now defunct Pinkerton Agency - to craft a distinctive brand of detective fiction that thrived on such an original setting (Paul 93). By examining the setting of 1920’s San Francisco in The Maltese Falcon, it becomes apparent that one of Hammett’s literary strengths was his exceptional ability to intertwine non-fictional places with a fictional plot and characters in order to produce a logical and exceedingly believable detective mystery.
These characters, however different they lie on the morality scale, all share the sinful trait of greed. They all ask, and take too much, ruining what the good that they had in their lives. Understanding their mistakes offers its useful readers a lesson, not to demand too much of the things we are offered. The characters struggle with their desires, each of them succombing to their passions.
...y. These factors, coupled with the incorporation of the heart-melting cheekbones of ‘Marlon Brando’ at his prime are more likely to have screamed ‘power’ in the eyes of a 1950’s audience, let alone the viewer of today. Also, the fact that ‘On the Waterfront’ mirrors Elia Kazan’s real-life decision to testify to the HUAC magnifies its validity to human nature and overall potency.
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
The Godfather is the “dark-side of the American dream story” (Turan, pp2). The film follows the practices of a fictional Italian mafia family, the Corleone’s. Though most Americans do not condone the practices of the Italian mafia, they cannot deny that Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is a cinematic masterpiece. This film gave insight to a mysterious way of life that the average person does not have knowledge of. As the audience is educated about the mafia they also are introduced to many stereotypes.
The first character that we read or see is Sam Spade. In the book he is written as being tall and lanky with blond hair, and a recurring v-motif that makes him out to be what Hammett describes as a ?blond Satan.? With these descriptions, we can easily make out a powerful image of what Sam Spade must look like in our heads. When we have an image of what something is going to be like and it turns out to not at all be what we expected, we are often let down, disappointed.This is due to the casting of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. His hair is brown, and his, round, soft face is the farthest a face can come from having a satanic v-motif. Although Humphrey Bogart?s acting was very good, it was intruded by my perception of what Sam Spade was supposed to look like.
Sam Spade isn’t exactly the typical (stereotypical?) main character or rather a detective character (I think for any main character.) By his looks/appearance, “He [Spade] looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan” (p. 3). Suggesting he is not angelic looking like lets say Humphrey Bogard (an indication that the movie isn’t true to the novel). The film ruined the ironic un-charming hero concept the novel have and so do I as one of my first example of the “things-are-not-what-they-seemed-theory-for-Hammett’s message.” Spade is callous, avaricious, and shares a similarity with Mike from ‘The House of Games.’ Why I think Mike and Spade are similar? For one thing Brigid O’Shaughnessy gave Spade a talk/speech about him using her pretty much the same thing Ford asked Mike in the airport. Brigid’s comment (p. 211-212) “You’ve been playing with me? Only pretending you cared-to trap me like this? You didn’t-care at all? You didn’t-don’t-I-love-me?” Ford’s “You used me...” speech is strikingly similar to Brigid’s including the reaction from Mike/Spade. The two men both refused to show sympathy and they did both had sex with their respective victims ...er women except Mike ends up dead and Brigid ends up in jail. Ford and Mike and Spade and Brigid share many similarities from the two women being used and the men conning these women. We know what Mike did already and Spade used his devilish charm to get Brigid to solve the case. He conned her into giving him money, win his trust, and played with her feelings. The comparison between Mike and Spade is to show that Spade is more of a con men than a detective which I hope are (usually) depicted as law-abiding, straight-arrow, gentlemen. Spade is a proto-badass character. I think Hammett is trying to convey that heroes aren’t always good.
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald portrays a society full of people who have corrupted the true meaning of the American Dream. Fitzgerald portrays the ultimate failure of the American Dream through individuals who believed that wealth is everything. His novel suggests that wealth and materialistic gain are all that concerns people. Some people are born into wealth and others have to work their way through life to gain it. This novel portraits an entire nation of people who are willing to throw everything away just to attempt to achieve an unattainable dream.
It subtly exposes the tragedies that people with instinct of self-interest could control their own fate in the unpredictable future, while others who paralyzed in past success and unrealistic fantasies could not. It also shows how those who were unable to update themselves from 1.0 finally became the prey of those 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and so on. It is a story about self-interest is the winner.
Film Noir was extremely trendy during the 1940’s. People were captivated by the way it expresses a mood of disillusionment and indistinctness between good and evil. Film Noir have key elements; crime, mystery, an anti-hero, femme fatale, and chiaroscuro lighting and camera angles. The Maltese Falcon is an example of film noir because of the usage of camera angles, lighting and ominous settings, as well as sinister characters as Samuel Spade, the anti-hero on a quest for meaning, who encounters the death of his partner but does not show any signs of remorse but instead for his greed for riches.