The Power of Movies and Images, Such as The Maltese Falcon
by John Aquino on 10/14/14
I have always loved films. I'm not obsessed with them. I believe film is an art form. I take it seriously. But I primarily enjoy it for its entertainment value.
When people ask me what my favorite film is, I shrug because I know what they are expecting. I admire Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, Frederico Fellini's La Strada and Il Bidone and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. But for my tastes they are not for casual viewing. If' I'm flipping through the channels and Casablanca, The Magnificent Seven or The Guns of Navarone is on, even if it's half way through, I can drip in and enjoy.
There is admittedly a duality here. I most enjoy the entertainment value of films, but I also take them seriously. I am in awe sometimes at the way movies come together--the script, the performances, the cinematography, the set design, the music score that it is usually not written until the shooting is done.
I remember a number of years ago I was editor of a music publication and had worked with one of the editors of the Saturday Review on a collaborative article. A few months later, I read a review in the magazine of the Barbara Streisand remake of A Star is Born. The reviewer wrote that the original 1937 movie had been based on the life and death of John Gilbert who actually did die by walking into the sea. I wrote the editor personally and stated that Gilbert had not committed suicide by walking into the sea, that the incident was based on the death of a lesser known actor, John Bowers. The editor wrote me and said, "Okay, we'll give the write a demerit for making a mistake about a moooovie!"
He obviously did not take movies seriously.
I think that the amount of talent that goes into moviemaking produces a depth that is often overlooked.
For example, I was watching a 1955 movie titled Illegal, which was released by Warner Bros. and starred Edward G. Robinson. Robinson was a big star for Warner in the 1930s, primarily as a gangster, although he could also play good guys. In the 1940s, he slipped into character roles in such films as Double Indemnity, Our Vines Have Grapes, and The Stranger, with a memorable return to gangster roles in Key Largo in 1948. Robinson was called before the UnAmerican Activities Committee, as were many actors who had espoused liberal causes, and, while he was never blacklisted, his film offers dried up. He was also getting older and the studio system was crumbling. In the 1950s, he went back to the stage and starred in an occasional B movie like Illegal.
In Illegal, which was based on a 1910 play called The Mouthpiece that had been filmed for Warner in 1932 starring Warren Williams, Robinson plays a well-known district attorney who gets a murder conviction of a man. Later, he is called to the hospital on the night the man is to be executed to receive the death bed confession to the murder from another man. Robinson calls the prison demanding to speak to the warden but as the guard gets up to find the warden the lights in the prison dim, which is movie shorthand that the man has been electrocuted, that it is too late, that an innocent man was executed.
Robinson resigns amid all the newspaper stories about his mistake, becomes a drunk, ends up in jail, and there finds opportunities to become a criminal defense attorney, ultimately working for gangsters.
In one scene, he walks into the the office of the new district attorney and there on the book shelf in plain view is the Maltese Falcon, the statute of the "black bird" from the 1941 John Huston movie of the same name. In that movie, criminals search and search for the statue, which is supposed to be covered with jewels under black enamel, only to find that the statue is a fake.
One explanation as to why the statue is on the D.A.'s shelf in Illegal is that the set designers needed books and other things that would appear in a district attorney's office and simply took the Maltese Falcon from the prop room and put it on the shelf without thinking about it.
Possibly. But then there are other explanations. The Maltese Falcon was a film noir, possibly the first and best film noir. Illegal is a later film noir. The dark bird connected with an earlier, famous mystery might have appeared a fitting piece to decorate Illegal's set.
You can almost invent a back story for this. The plot of the Maltese Falcon takes place in San Francisco. The location of Illegal is never mentioned by name. Robinson calls "the state prison." Some writers have suggested that Robinson is a Manhattan D.A. But the location shooting shows streetcars, and streetcars were taken off the streets in Manhattan in the 1930s. In the 1950s, there were still streetcars on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The courthouse shown in the movie is the Criminal Courts Building on West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles. It could just be stock footage used without any intention of designating that the action takes place in Los Angeles. But there appears to be a west coast connection.
Whether the film takes place in Los Angeles or San Francisco, one can imagine that the Maltese Falcon statue, worthless, as the characters in that movie discovered, was taken by district attorney at the time of that movie as a memento, placed in his office, and inherited by his successors. If the story takes place in San Francisco, that makes sense. Even if it takes place in L.A., one of that district attorney's successors could have taken the D.A. job in L.A. and brought the statue that had been in his office with him.
It's interesting the power a movie image has, whether by intention or by accident.
Copyright 2014 by John T. Aquino
