The Maltese Falcon
So I finally finished reading Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh) that I'd been reading for an inordinate amount of time and then.... well basically I was in shock for a while. Yes. The book was horrifying in the most ordinary way and so i followed it up by watching the film. While the film was jarring and visually assaults the audience attempting to do justice to the novel, the monstrous images that grow in your mind from the words you are forced to read cannot be visually portrayed because everyone knows somebody like what is described, or has heard of someone like whose story you're witnessing, in real life. But everyone knows Begbie to look differently. Everyone has heard of a Mark but he doesn't necessarily look like Ewan McGregor....Next adventure: The Maltese Falcon. The path I took to discover this mystery novel was a little odd and took many months to get there though i didn't know i was going there at the time. I re-purposed my super movie watching mission and added several more films to the list- one of which was the movie Brick (2005). I loved the style of the film so much that i went to the director's site to learn more about his inspiration and reason for stylizing it the way he chose. Then through a forum, I was led to more reviews and more discussions of this film. Which led me to the vocabulary words "film noir," "hammett," "chandler," and a few others that I have chosen to study a bit of. Researching "hammett" in conjunction with "film noir" led me to "Sam Spade" which led me to "The Maltese Falcon" which happens to be on my Ultimate Reading List as WELL as one of the additional lists of films to be watched and categorized. Bam and bam, wheeeee!!
As you can imagine, i've been knocking several things off of many lists and that makes me abundantly happy (see "wheeeee" above).
What does not make me happy is that The Maltese Falcon story was very much less exciting than I had hoped it would be based on my exciting and fruitful journey that led me to that end. Perhaps it is that being written in 1930, and I being of very late 1980's, I just expect a different kind of mystery novel. However I will say this I have never read a mystery novel that has so much mystery and such precise development and plot revelation as this novel. There were so many details that just never led anywhere and i guess having details like "i'll ring the bell four times long short long short" and then not ever having it occur or come to light is what confuses me. I've read most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries and I've been spoiled by the champ at tying up every loose end and seemingly detached detail. This novel seemed a little loosely created and very quickly twisted to come to a clean ending where Sam Spade is bad ass private detective of the century.
And boy is he!
When I finished reading The Maltese Falcon the next logical step was obviously to track down the original film rendition of the novel and hellooooooooooooooo Humphrey Bogart :)
Well. The film was no different. Which speaks volume of the film for being so true to novel without making a mockery of film or novel. But the sense of unfinishedness and "wtf" was also still there from the novel. And Humphrey Bogart was very bad ass as Sam Spade although.... kind of short? Strange. Either way watching this film some deem the first of the film noir era and watching the novel come to life in a time that I have never seen for myself was definitely something for a Sunday afternoon.
