John Huston and the Maltese Falcon
1973; Salisbury University; Volume: 1; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoHuston's reputation has declined in recent years, chiefly because of Adrian Messenger. Casino Royale, and The Bible, but also because of critics who have attacked him in order to praise Minnelli or Hawks. He is often described as an adapter rather than an auteur (his public statements about his craft tend to justify this description), and even his earliest success has been subtly damned. Thus Andrew Sarris describes The Maltese Falcon as an actor's picture, owing more to coups than to directorial acumen. The film, he says, is an uncanny matchup of Dashiell Hammett's literary characters with their doubles: Mary Astor, Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Elisha Cook, Jr. Only Stendahl's Julien Sorel in search of Gerard Philipe can match Falcon's Pirandellian equation (The American Cinema, p. 156). First let me say I have deep respect for Sarris. [He] is remarkably fine critic, greatly responsible for our serious interest in American popular cinema; but in this case he is in error. Even if his remarks were true, he should give Huston more credit for assembling such presences. In fact, however, actors can hardly be regarded as visual doubles for people in novel. Consider Hammett's opening paragraph: Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin jutting ? under more flexible ? of his mouth. His yellow-gray eyes were horizontal. The ? motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down - from high flat temples - in point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like blond satan. Clearly Humphrey Bogart is opposite of Hammett's Sam Spade. Spade, Hammett tells us, is tall man with an conical body. When he takes off his shirt, the sag of his big rounded shoulders makes him resemble a bear. Bogart's slight, swarthy appearance, his menacing smile, to say nothing of his famed low-life New York accent (he calls falcon black boid) evoke an altogether different personality. In less absolute sense, same point can be made about casting of every actor in film. Sidney Greenstreet, in beautifully restrained performance, is not so flabby or bombastic as Gutman of novel, and he lacks dark ringlets of hair. Peter Lorre is properly Levantine, but less effeminate and less bejeweled than Hammett's Joel Cairo. Elisha Cook, Jr., has right stature for boy Wilmur, but he seems always to have had pinched face of an old man. Most unusual of all is Huston's choice of Mary Astor, who far from being double, is actually cast against grain of her character. Hammett's Brigid O'Shaunnessy is little more than sexy dame; indeed, one problem with book is that it gives us no good reason why Spade should be in love with Brigid. She is wonderful to sleep with, but she is obviously not to be trusted, her only quality besides good looks being her transparent deceitfulness. Mary Astor, on other hand, has lovely but almost matronly face and build, and she brings sophistication to role that is entirely lacking in novel. She fits nicely Raymond Durgnat's description of Maggie Smith: blend of brimming feminine sensitivity, of superior intelligence, and of something mockingly autonomous (Films and Feelings, p. 149). Like character in novel she is tease, but she is tease of distinctly upper-class sort. Perhaps that is why she never became great star. In any case, scenes between her and Bogart have humor and intelligence that seem to run beneath surface of words, so that lines Hammett wrote flatly and seriously gain new dimension. When Astor tosses her head back on soft couch, gazes up at ceiling, and gives description of Floyd Thursby (He never went to sleep without covering floor around his bed with crumpled newspaper so nobody could come silently into his room. …
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