I have always found it strange when a writer or director returns to something they have published previously. I understand the argument for going back to older material that might seem underdeveloped or raw, but the rough edges are often what makes art charming. George Lucas and Stephen King may be the most notorious (and richest) examples of revising their own history, but it's always been around, from Walt Whitman to the current Hollywood reboot craze. I was surprised when I learned that legendary director Alfred Hitchcock remade one of his movies, The Man Who Knew Too Much; I was even more surprised when I realized that the original film wasn't silent. Why would a director with such good instincts want to revise his own film? Well, there's one way to find out, right?
Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks) and his wife, Jill (Edna Best) are vacationing with their daughter, Betty, in what appears to be the Swiss Alps. Why only "appears"? Well, watch this opening scene and tell me how much of it you believe:
That sure is a...um...convincing ski accident, Hitch. And by "convincing," I of course mean "insultingly idiotic." How old is that girl supposed to be? I think you learn at a pretty young age to not put your life and the lives of others in danger and then laugh about it. I am not one to advocate child abuse, but if there is an argument for it, Betty could be it.
Anyway, that scene shows the Lawrences laughing it up with Mr. Can't Ski, AKA Louis (Pierre Fresnay) and sharing a few laughs with the sinister (not in this scene, though) Abbott (Peter Lorre). Not long after the skiing accident, Jill and Louis are sharing a dance when he is assassinated by a sniper's bullet. With his dying words, he urges Jill to find an important secret in his room, and pass it on to the British consulate. Naturally, since Jill is a delicate woman (who is a champion skeet shooter...?), Bob takes over. In Louis' bedroom, he finds a shaving brush, and inside that brush --- apparently he had the Rambo survival knife of brushes --- there is a note.
Of course! This explains...um...nothing?
Bob returns to Jill, where she is being comforted/questioned by the police. As he prepares to share the message with everyone, the Lawrences receive a phone call; if they want to see stupid little Betty again, they had better not talk to the cops!
"We'll consider it. Don't call us, we'll call you. Maybe."
Since they opt to try and keep their daughter alive, the Lawrences are left without many attractive options. They know something bad is going to happen, and it is implied that this bad thing could be as significant to world politics as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. What can this married couple do? Well, Bill can go out and try to single-handedly try to save his daughter. Jill...well, she can sit out most of this one.
Hitchcock movies are not particularly famous for having great acting parts; he's a master director, and the plot usually supersedes the actors involved. Such is the case with The Man Who Knew Too Much. I found Edna Best to be fairly vapid in the lead female role. Hitchcock generally had pretty strong female parts in his films, but Best appeared genuinely helpless, even when she was taking action.
Her lines are written on her palm
Leslie Banks seemed ill-suited for his role, too. I have never seen either actor in anything else, but I was not impressed by their dramatic chops here. Banks, in particular, seemed better suited for a romantic comedy than a thriller. Peter Lorre, though, is quite memorable here as the evil mastermind, Abbott. Lorre is usually good, but he is what lifts this picture up; sure, he's an evil mastermind, but he also has a sense of humor --- and that makes his character far more rounded than most of the cast.
"Well...I'm only mostly evil."
In all fairness, the cast wasn't working with much. The script is not very clever and many parts of it are just stupid (like the ski jump scene or the chair-throwing battle). Alfred Hitchcock's direction --- which I assumed would be great --- is shockingly poor. It's not awful, just mediocre, which is "shockingly poor" for a master. I thought the story was edited together (and written) poorly; this is a bit of a mess from a plot standpoint. I'm still not entirely sure what was going on here --- I think the Lawrence child was kidnapped to prevent the Lawrence parents from showing the police a note that would lead them to...a dentist? That can't be right. Hitchcock does show flashes of his future brilliance, with many of Lorre's scenes being filmed impeccably and some of the transitions between scenes were inspired, but there is just too much mediocrity in this film --- acting, script, plot, and occasional stupidity --- to give him a pass. I was very surprised when I realized that I didn't like this movie. Normally, I can enjoy a Hitchcock film because the story is entertaining. In this instance, I'm still not sure when Bob becomes a Man Who Knows Too Much; for most of the film, he appears to be half-cocked and mostly clueless. I also thought some of the story elements were handled clumsily; was there really a doubt how the film would end when Jill's skeet-shooting nemesis turns out to be a bad guy? My biggest complaint is that this is a suspense/thriller movie with neither suspense nor thrills. The story is too incoherent to effectively build tension, despite nearly non-stop action. Is this Alfred Hitchcock's dumb action movie? I think it is. No wonder he wanted a second crack at this one.
Writing this review made me want to look up photos of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but I instead stumbled across music videos for the band Franz Ferdinand instead. I had no idea that a Scottish band inadvertently started World War I.
Why does Bogart have a different haircut in this movie than he has on this poster?
Who says remakes are always a bad idea? The Maltese Falcon is the third film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's classic novel of the same name, and the third time is definitely the charm. I haven't seen the other two versions (one has the same title and the other is a comedy, titled Satan Met a Lady), but only this one is widely regarded as a timeless classic, so I think it's safe to assume that this is the best version to date.
I'm going to be completely honest with you right now. I am a huge fan of Dashiell Hammett's hard-boiled novels and am a fan of any movie that chooses to adapt his work. I am also a big fan of Humphry Bogart, at least in part because I've only seen him in his classic roles; I'm sure the man made some flops in his time, but history tends to gloss over those mistakes in favor of his more famous work. I am also a big supporter of director John Huston. And if none of that convinces you that this is going to be a great viewing experience, it was in the inaugural class of movies chosen for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. If you're still hesitant to check out this movie because it's black-and-white or because it's old or because you only like movies with talking animals in them, my advice is simple. Man up and get some culture. It is significantly awesome.
The private detective firm of Spade and Archer consists of three people: the secretary, Effie (Lee Patrick), Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). One day, a new client hires them to track down her sister, who has run away from home with an undesirable man named Thursby. The client, Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor), doesn't tell a very convincing tale, but she waves around a lot of money, and that's enough for the detectives to take her case. Liking the looks of his sexy new client, Miles offers to be her proverbial white knight, boubie, and track down this Thursby himself.
Did Miles Archer influence the character of Ellis from Die Hard? Surprisingly, they're pretty close.
That night, Miles is shot and killed. Sam gets the call, heads to the crime scene, and promptly leaves to clear his head. When he gets home a few hours later, the police are right behind him; Thursby had just been gunned down in the streets, so the cops naturally assume that Sam killed the man who killed his partner. He didn't, but his alibi is basically "wandering around aimlessly in the streets," so Sam Spade has to solve the case to clear his name. Besides, it's good business to avenge the death of your partner. Sam quickly finds himself in complex web of lies and deceit as he tries to discover...well, I suppose he's trying to solve the murder of his partner and simultaneously cover his own ass, but he doesn't seem to concerned about that. Instead, Sam seems to genuinely enjoy the game of deception as he and three other interested parties converge on the object that ultimately caused all this trouble, the Maltese Falcon.
Bogart, about three seconds away from giving you a facial burn for laughing at his toy bird.
Admittedly, the story isn't terribly special. A detective manages to get entangled in a mess of lies? You could pick my jaw up off the floor. It's handled very well, though. The pace is brisk, the plot is murky enough to keep you guessing while Sam Spade puts all the pieces together, and the ending scenes are great, appealing to many demographics (romantic, cynical, heart of stone, tough guy, etc.) and somehow never losing its bad-ass edge.
The acting and directing are nearly flawless. This is one of the two films that helped Bogart become a star in 1941 (the other was High Sierra) and was his first significant non-gangster role. What can I say? The man was born to play tough guy detectives. His timing with dialogue is perfect here, managing to be funny, witty, and sadistic --- sometimes in all in the same line. As someone who has read dozens of hard-boiled novels and seen many film noirs, I can state that Bogart's portrayal here is the archetypal noir hero. That might seem like a "no duh" in retrospect, but consider just how many classic actors from Hollywood's golden age tried similar roles; it's a great performance, but it's even more impressive when you realize how many other actors fail to live up to it.
So that's where they got the hair idea for There's Something About Mary...
The supporting cast was nearly as good as Bogart. Mary Astor's femme fatale, while a little melodramatic by modern standards, still holds up pretty well today. She's mean and nasty, but vulnerable and magnetic, the very epitome of a dangerous lady. The other women in the film play their parts pretty well, but Gladys George (Archer's wife) and Lee Patrick can't hold a candle to Astor's performance. Peter Lorre does a great job as an effeminate criminal; the interactions between him and Bogart amuse me so much, especially when Bogart is mocking an armed Lorre.
Well...that's phallic.
This was Sydney Greenstreet's film debut (and the first of nine movies with Peter Lorre) and his performance is especially impressive for a rookie; as the main villain in the film, he managed to be sneaky, powerful, and humble in quick succession. Perhaps my favorite supporting performance in the film (although it is hard to beat Lorre) comes from Elisha Cook, Jr. and his part as the gun-toting arm of Greenstreet. I've always liked the idea of a character that plays tougher than they truly are, but I think Cook really nailed that idea on the head with his performance.
The writing gave these performers a lot of great lines, but John Huston did a wonderful job directing them all. The timing in each scene was impeccable, the pace is fast but you never get lost in the details; these are important elements in any crime story, but are essential when the dialogue needs to crackle with wit. Huston also did a good job with the cinematography; there is a lot of symbolism in this movie and there are a lot of interesting (and, thankfully, meaningful) camera angles used. Even though this was his first film, it must have been apparent from the start that John Huston was a master director.
When you add all that up, what do you get? In short, probably my favorite movie of all time (although Raiders of the Lost Ark is another good choice). It has great direction, a better script and a delightful cast. Is this an action-packed movie? No, but the story moves quickly enough to make you think otherwise. That might be the key to this film's longevity; even though times have changed, everyone loves the guy who outsmarts the competition and mocks his enemies. It's the American Way in (a slightly cynical) film format. In other words, in a genre --- this is vintage film noir, in case you hadn't realized it --- of tough men, dangerous women, and hazy morality, there is nothing better than The Maltese Falcon.
For a while, I have been putting off watching M because I viewed it as a historical film, and little more. This was director Fritz Lang's first "talkie," it was Peter Lorre's big break, it was the first police procedural, and it was the first serial killer movie. There are other historical aspects to this 1931 film (the first time a character has been associated with music, or a leitmotif), but those are generally the ones that people talk about. And by "people," I mean "film critics." I've had access to the movie for a while, but after my last historical viewing (Nosferatu) failed to entertain me, I was hesitant to give this one a go. Once again, the joke is on me; while it is certainly an old (and German!) movie, it still stands up.
In an unnamed German city, a child murderer is on the loose. At least four children have been found murdered in the past year, with an implication that more have gone missing. As some working class mothers discuss the murders and prepare for their children to come home from school, we see the back of a man's head and hear him whistle a song from Edvard Grieg's music for the play Peer Gynt:
The man then follows a little girl. We see the mother get annoyed, and increasingly frantic, when her daughter doesn't arrive home with the other children; meanwhile, we see shots of the man giving the girl some candy and buying a balloon for her from a blind street vendor. The mother instinctively knows that something is wrong, and her cries for her child echo in all the innocent places she could be; the whistling stops and the camera follows her balloon drifting to the sky and getting tangled in some phone wires.
Right off the bat, we know who the killer is. We have not seen his face yet or heard the name Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) yet, but there is no mistaking that the whistling man, and that he killed that girl. The public is justifiably upset over the murder and gets more so when the killer writes a letter to a newspaper, implying that the police have been holding out on the press on this case. The public get hysterical; one scene shows a man being kind to a child and getting attacked by a mob and being accused of murder. The obvious next step for the police is to crack down on all criminals and see if they can find any leads on the murderer. This ruins business for the criminals, so the heads of the various semi-unionized criminal career paths (safecrackers, thieves, beggars, etc.) decide that they will comb the city for the killer, too, if only to get the police off their backs. Eventually, through the use of psychology, the police stumble upon Beckert's apartment and find some telling clues that he wrote the letter to the newspaper. Meanwhile, as Beckert prepares to entice and murder another child, he passes by the same blind balloon vendor from before, whistling again; being a semi-unionized beggar, he and his friends are on the lookout for the killer and the blind man pieces together the timing of the last girl's death with the whistling he hears now. The blind man gets another to trail Beckert; to do this better, the man writes "M" (for morder, or murder) on his hand in chalk and makes up an excuse to put his hand on Beckert's jacket. So now, both the police and the criminal element know that Beckert is the killer. The question is who will find him first, and what will they do?
In his first leading role, Peter Lorre doesn't really get a whole lot of screen time in M. The movie is clearly about him, but even when he is on screen, he is often silent or has his back turned toward the camera. Once he realizes that he has been marked and is being followed, Lorre does a good job playing a desperate man. With his normally hooded eyes, when Lorre opens them wide, he really looks terrified. He only has one opportunity to explain his character, and he does so in a (surprisingly good, for the times) monologue near the film's close. And yet, the film is not sympathetic to his character. It's an interesting balance, and you can argue that this film is without a protagonist. Lang uses visual cues (smoke, anonymous meeting rooms, insincere smiles) to draw parallels between the police officials and the criminal leaders. Neither the police leader, Inspector Lohman (Otto Wernicke), nor the criminal leader, The Safecracker (Gustaf Grundgens), are particularly likable. M kind of feels like an episode of Law and (Dis)Order, with the police doing their part and the criminals doing theirs; the story is not about either of them, so much as it is about the case itself. I guess that makes sense, then, that this film gave birth to the police procedural genre.
Fritz Lang's direction is probably what sticks out to me most about this film. In some ways, what he was doing was clearly very innovative, like his frequent use of windows and mirrors to show Beckert's emotions. Giving the killer his own musical theme, which is common now, was a first back then, too. What stuck out most to me were the moments that had no soundtrack at all. There weren't many of these, maybe two or three stretches of a few minutes of silence, that just felt odd to me. There were also some unusual camera angles that were clearly making a point (like the extreme low angle, looking up at Inspector Lohman's crotch), but I have absolutely no idea what. This was 1931 Germany, so I suppose it could have something to do with Nazis, but I couldn't begin to guess what exactly a policeman's crotch has to do with Hitler.
This definitely feels like an old movie. Many of the shots look like they could be accompanied by ragtime piano, like silent films, and there are other action shots that might have been played back in fast-forward. Many of the supporting characters are bland and their performances are usually just one-note. This movie does show flashes of inspired filmmaking and Peter Lorre's desperate monologue is very good. The use of Freudian psychology in the film is interesting, as it on the one hand helps condemn him (a handwriting analysis shows the killer to be a "sexual deviant," which implies pedophilia --- edgy now, but in 1931? Fuggedaboutit!) but on the other hand helps excuse him (should a compulsion be punished?); these are both surprisingly complex ideas, ones that I don't think Hollywood tackled for another fifteen or twenty years.
I suppose the question that a viewing of M brings up is, "Is it worth seeing?" Definitely. I always enjoy Peter Lorre and his disturbed performance is interesting to watch. I don't know how good the English dubbed version is (I know the actors did dub dialogue, but I also know that Lorre couldn't speak English fluently until after 1934), but the cleaned up Criterion edition of the film has good picture quality and (from my limited grasp of German) good subtitles, so I would recommend that one. This is the oldest film I have watched that actually felt like a modern movie, and it's interesting to see film history unfolding before you. Yes, it has aged, and a lot of the story elements are predictable, now that they've been rehashed a few dozen times, but that's not the point. If it wasn't engaging, it would still be educational, and Lorre's performance is worth checking out.
Heeey...you can find other opinions on M at the Noir-a-Thon page
