THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) *** The reference the Knights Templar in the prologue should immediately tip you off that there's more going on here that meets the eye. And then they aren't mentioned at all in the script! What's really missing?! The Falcon is a lost gift from the Templars, it is delivered by the director's father, Walter Huston, it all has something to do with restless women and fat British guys who retain their cool at all times and burning ships and...San Francisco? Ah, I give up, I had enough trouble following the well-conceived plot-ain't no way I'm gonna access a subterranean metaphor thrice removed. So, it's good that it works so well as a film! John Huston maintains a torrid pace by abruptly cutting scenes, suggesting that we've always got to get on to something even more important. The faces and eyballs and room numbers and glasses and streets are shot with a haughty sinister urgency. Humphrey Bogart nails the delivery and timing of his many classic lines, of course, but it's somehow his smile that makes him so appealing, that so ingratiates him to the viewer. Here is a courageous man taking chances on a minute to minute basis as he juggles enough issues to confound five supereme courts for seven terms, and he still has enough left to appreciate irony. I still can't help wondering on the metaphorical implications of the grandeur of the bird being obscured in alabaster...I mean, is this maybe something like when Kierkegaard accused organized religion of "turning the wine into water?"
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