In my opinion, The Maltese Falcon is the best example of the detective story of the early years of XX century, which was followed by the creation of movie. Written in 1930, The Maltese Falcon creates its own rules and style for detective fiction. It was a groundbreaking book, offering up a style of writing that most had not seen before. Hammett wrote as if everyone wanted to talk: smooth, assured, and witty. He wrote with a graceful masculinity that made being bad beautiful. He created a world where cigarette and gun smoke mixed and through the cloud, so that you could see dames packing and menacing thugs on street corners. It was from this writing that was produced one of the first film noir movies.
Film noir films (often in black and white) showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism. Expressionistic lighting, odd camera angles, circling cigarette smoke, and unbalanced compositions mark film noir. Settings are often interiors with low lighting, Venetian-blinded windows, and dark and gloomy appearances. Exteriors are often night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and again, low lighting. Story locations are often in murky and dark streets, dimly lit apartments and hotel rooms of big cities. It was an atmosphere of menace, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong. Narratives are frequently complex and convoluted, typically with flashbacks or voice-over narration. Revelations regarding the hero are made to explain/justify the heros own cynical perspective on life. The Maltese Falcon meets all of these standards and more, becoming the grandfather of film noir.
The Essay on Power and Greed in the Film “Wall Street”
Power is an important issue in interpersonal communication. Power can shape a relationship by influencing what you do, when you do it, with whom you do it, etc. Experts identify six bases of power. These bases include referent power, legitimate power, expert power, information or persuasion power, reward power, and coercive power. Referent power is a power usually held over others when the ...
The movie is in black and white, actually, more black and gray than white, for the entire film, save the scenes in Miss O’Shaughnessys apartment, seems to be set in shadow, as if it were always night or the sky were about to fall in. The setting is San Francisco, surely a big city, but not the northeastern metropolises we are used to in our detective fiction. There were plenty of odd angles, especially during fight scenes, and scenes with Gutman and Cairo. Usually the tilts were used to draw the eye to a specific character, or to note that something is not right, off center. Since most of the characters in the movie smoke, there is always a halo of smoke hanging about. We are held captivate throughout by the voice of Sam Spade, the ever cool, deep, voice that always knows what to say.
Cairo You always have a very smooth explanation ready, huh? Spade What do you want me to do? Learn to stutter? Snippets like these run throughout the movie that turn the movie into the masterpiece that it is. The Maltese Falcon starts out with Sam Spade, who is a private detective in San Francisco in the late nineteen twenties, sitting at his desk in his office when a Miss Wonderly came in. She said that she came from New York looking for her sister who possibly was kidnapped and is probably somewhere in the San Francisco area. Miss Wonderly said she met a man named Thursby at a parcel office who supposedly had her sister. While Miss Wonderly was telling the story, Spades partner Miles Archer came in. Miss Wonderly said she had a meeting with the man that night and that she wanted to follow him afterwards to find her sister. Spade asked if she could describe the man, and she gave Spade some assistance, but it was too little for Spade though.
Miss Wonderly offered two hundred dollars (a long while ago it was not a bad money) for the job and Archer quickly grabbed a hundred and said he would do it. After Miss Wonderly left, Spade told Archer to watch his back..
