The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir that directed by John Huston. The hero staring by Humphrey Bogart. This film about a San Francisco private detective and his dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers, all of whom are competing to obtain a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette. First of all, I think that this film very hard to attract me and also grab my attention to watch. Because the colour of the film is black and white, so Im very hard to concentrate while watching this film. Film noir is not a genre but it is a style of a film. We define film noir in many aspect which is visual, character and narrative. We also call film noir as black film.

       Firm noir is a type of American films that ‘invaded’ French cinemas after World War II. Film noir refers to mystery and crime dramas produced from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. The features in this film noir is the whole film colour used black and white to present. The featured stories also involving femme fatales, doomed heroes or anti-heroes, and tough, cynical detectives. It is first applied to Hollywood film by French critics defined the category retrospectively. In this film noir, all characters is bad, pure evil. If they pure good, that must be something wrong. It because of features a world of criminals of darkness and violence. This features reflect how a character’s central motives are usually greed, lust and ambition, drench in fear. Another history context is when WWII occurs, all the men must go to the war. Women force to go out to work. When men come back from war, the women already can earn money better than men. Through this incident, social change with liberation for women. Women not only can stay at home, they also can go out work to earn money.

       The visually of the film noir can defined by many ways. In film noir, all this is dark with a lot of shadows. The lighting is low key which can show high contrast lighting in a film. The shadow of the lines is purpose to enhance the characters. Usually, mostly scene is lit for night. They always have location such as alleyways, cramped corridors, etc. The setting of the city is city-bound, comprising of rain-washed roads and dimly-lit interiors.The syntax or thematically in film noir is cynical, pessimism and dark. It include corrupted characters, fatalistic themes, hopeless tones, blurred morals and intellect. Next is hard boiled antihero versus femme fatale, tales of criminal motives and usually features a narration. The femme fatale also play important role in film noir. Film noir is about power of relations and sexual identity. Film noir gives a very central role to the femme fatale and privileges her as active, intelligent, powerful, dominant and in charge of her own sexuality. Women also become the central to the intrigue. Therefore, she who becomes the object of the male’s investigation. Women also usually makes the mystery in a film.

       In The Maltese Falcon, the black and white totally applied in this film. All the scene was used low key which is high contrast. So the lighting show a lot of shadow for the main character Sam Spade. When Sam walk in the room, we can notice that the shadow of him. This lighting can enhance the Sam is a hero and mystery man. The shadow of line also applied in the room to bring out the mystery situation. 

Next is the beginning of the film, Brigid O’Shaughnessy come to the office and meet Sam. Miles Archer, assistant of Sam tried to get relationship with her. So when Miles want to meet her at night but dead after a mystery guy shot him. Miss Shaughnessy become the central of the intrigue. Miss Shaughnessy use women characteristic to make Miles go into this trap. Miss Shaughnessy also pretend she is very weak and trap Sam go Cairo’s place. We can see that women able to do anything instead of stay at come take care family. Women also can do the work more good than men. Because men easy trap by women, so men not really every times win women. A lot of scene use low angle when Sam walking and communicate with another people. It show the symbolic of paranoid. During that time, men always paranoid to women. But after the men return from the war, they shocked because women give them money.

       In film noir, all character is bad. They will do anything to accomplish goal. Even a hero also not pure good at all in a film. In our real life also same, we not pure bad and pure good. We are middle, so this is balance of the life.