The Maltese Falcon Film Treatment - Movie Review Example

SYNOPSIS When bad seed beauty Brigid OShaughnessy gets involved with hard-boiled detective Sam Spade, somebody’s heart is doomed to be broken. As Spade half-heartedly pursues the clues to his partner’s murder and OShaughnessy tries to get the better of her former partners, the two lovers engage in a game of dangerous double-crossing that will either end them up in paradise — or in hell. CAST OF CHARACTERS Brigid OShaughnessy is no good, and she knows it. By turns jittery, seductive, confused and cheating, she’s ultimately dangerous to herself and to the people around her. She’s as hard as nails, and she lies more easily than she tells the truth. When her former partner gets in her way, she’s not above doing whatever she needs to do to get him out of it. She’s slim and pretty in an obviously sexy way. Sam Spade is a detective who goes through women like Kleenex. His only healthy relationship with a woman is the one he has with his secretary Effie; otherwise, he views women as dangerous playthings. His biggest interest is his own self-preservation, and he has a convenient talent for turning an event’s moral meaning into the one that best suits his needs at the time. He’s not handsome, but he has the battered good looks and implicit violence that make him attractive to women. Iva Archer, Spade’s murdered partner’s wife, is a bored housewife looking for a few thrills to make her feel alive. She’s been having an affair with Spade, whose violence and cruelty she finds appealing. Effie Perine is Spade’s loyal secretary, pretty, wholesome girl who knows that she’s always going to play second fiddle in a man’s world unless she’s willing to sacrifice her morals. She admires Spade because he’s morally flexible in a way that she can’t be, and she admires the way he can dispatch a situation without being emotionally attached to it. Joel Cairo is an effeminate, ineffective gangster without the physical toughness to back up his intimidation techniques. He’s peculiarly precise. He has curly hair and smells like gardenias. Wilmer Cook, an aspiring gangster, has found a father figure in underworld bigshot Casper Gutman. He’s as ineffective as a punk as Cairo is as a gangster. Casper Gutman, or “G,” is the leader of the crime syndicate that OShaughnessy used to work for and that Cairo and Cook work for now. He’s a brutal man who tortures his own daughter and who is willing to sacrifice any of his loyal followers for his own interests. He is intelligent, resourceful and unscrupulous. He is also enormously fat, weighing more than 300 pounds. SETTING This film takes place in the city of San Francisco. The city itself plays an important role in the story, as all the characters are shaped by the city in which they live. SCENES 1: Sam Spade is in his office, telling Iva Archer that he’s not interested in finding out who killed her husband. He throws her out, and Effie tells Sam that Floyd Thursby has been found murdered. She asks Sam if that wasn’t the case Archer was working on when he was killed, the one with the pretty girl. 2: Sam tracks down “the pretty girl:” Brigid OShaughnessy. She admits she made up the case she came to them about and lied to them about her name. She tells Sam she’s no good and he shouldn’t trust anything she says. They begin an affair. 3: Joel Cairo comes to visit Sam at his office and offers him $5,000 to help him recover the statue of a black bird that has gone missing. Sam pretends he knows what Cairo is talking about. 4: Sam tells Brigid about the meeting with Cairo; she is visibly distressed. She asks Sam to arrange for a meeting with Cairo. 5: Brigid and Cairo meet with Sam and talk cryptically about the black bird. Cairo asks where it is, and Brigid says she doesn’t have it at the moment. They argue; the police arrive to question Sam about Archer’s death and take Cairo away for questioning. 6: Sam asks Brigid to talk to him; she says she and Cairo used to work together but they never liked each other. 7: On his way home, Sam drops Brigid off with Effie. He is followed by Wilmer Cook, who does a bad job of trailing him. Sam tells Wilmer to tell his boss that he’s going to have to deal with him sooner or later. 8: Sam gets a call from Casper Gutman, asking for a meeting. 9: Sam meets with Gutman, who tells him OShaughnessy stole the falcon statue that she was supposed to be stealing for him. Beneath the statue’s black paint, it is crusted with a fortune in jewels. Gutman has drugged Sam, who passes out before he can ask any questions. 10: Sam wakes up in his office where someone is pounding on the door. He opens it to find an injured man clutching a package. The man collapses on the floor. Sam opens the package and finds the statue. He looks up to see Brigid standing in the doorway. 11: Sam and Brigid are sitting in Sam’s office with Gutman, Cairo and Cook. Sam says he’s willing to trade the bird for $10,000, but only if they come up with a plan for a fall guy so the police will get off his back. He suggests Cook, and Gutman agrees. Sam asks Effie to bring in the statue. Gutman takes it eagerly but quickly realizes it’s a fake. Sam says he’s going to keep $1,000 anyway. 12: As soon as they leave, Sam calls the police, tells them Cook is guilty and sends them after the three crooks. 13: Brigid smiles and says he did it. They kiss. He pulls away and asks her why she kills Archer. 14: She pretends to be shocked and hurt for a minute, but he pushes, and she admits that she killed him because she wanted to frame Thursby. When he turned up dead, she knew Gutman would come after her next, so she turned to Sam for help. She says it doesn’t matter anyway because the police will arrest Gutman and his crew and she and Sam will be free to be together. 15: Sam says that might have been true if she’d had the real falcon, but since it’s fake, he has to turn her in, too; otherwise the police will finger him since Gutman has plenty of evidence against her. Anyway, he says, he can’t trust her, even if he loves her. 16: The police come and take Brigid down in the elevator. Sam looks up when the elevator doors open again to see Iva Archer coming through them, smiling at him. SETS & LIGHTING Overall, the lighting should be very high and sharp, not shadowy like film noir. It should be clear that there is black and white, there should be few shadows. Though the characters in this film will try to argue that morals are ambiguous, the stark lighting should make it clear that they are fooling themselves. 1: Sam’s office is scruffy and full of cheap, mismatched battered furniture. The windows are painted black. His name is stenciled on the door in elegant Roman letters that belie the rest of the office. Efflie has a bunch of carnations on her desk. 2: Brigid’s place is all soft and creamy. Her enormous, curtained bed is the focal point of the room, a symbol of her seductive secretiveness. 3: The streets of the city are sharp and modern, almost always empty with bright lights — street lamps, neon lights, etc. — keeping the darkness away. 4: Gutman’s office is elegant and expensive with walls of books and posh furnishings, There are fine paintings and pieces of art. COMMENTARY The cinematography should be documentary-ish, very observational without a lot of close-ups or reaction shots. The camera should be like the storyteller, observant and uncompromising. There should be almost no background noise. The characters have created an artificial world where right and wrong are blurred, and the artificiality of that world should be made clear by an unnatural silence. Since Effie is on the edge of that world, she might bring noises with her: percolating coffee, a scratchy pen, coughing. The rest of the noise in the film should be hard and mechanical. Read More