The Maltese Falcon

Moving on to the appearance of detective genre on the screen, Maloney claims that filming in the early 1900s was rather basic, as of being almost dependent on images and visual elements. The actors had to rely on their costumes, facial expressions and the set to be able to get the message across to the audience. After 1903 and 1906 the film industry flourished, describes Maloney, and new techniques and equipment such as the mobile camera, the close-up and the editing of the films was introduced.…

The settings portrayed in City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, a novel by Elmore Leonard, and The Maltese Falcon, a detective novel by Dashiell Hammet were closely related while occurring in two cities on complete opposite sides of the country. Both Raymond Cruz and Sam Spade are sharp, old fashioned, and gritty characters. When it comes to the descriptions of these characters and the correlation between them and their respective cities in which they reside, the authors are able to produce…

relatability of the time, and the movies showing the skewed truth beneath the films features. In the beginning Film Noir’s popularity grew exponentially in the years of 1940’s -60’s. Some of the early movies from this time period are, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Frank Tuttle’s This Gun for Hire (1942), Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944), and Edward Dmitry’s Murder, My Sweet (1944). The Nickname ‘Film Noir’, translates to black film, was given this nickname by Nino Frank in a 1946 news…

According to Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish, the Panopticon is a prison designed to establish power and control of one individual over the prisoners through observation. This observation is achieved through the prison’s annular structure, with the prisoners in confined cells facing the center, and the supervisor in a central tower (Foucault 200). The ring-like structure and the central tower allow the supervisor to see all inmates while simultaneously prohibiting them from…

Evolution In a murky windy city of San Francisco, A tall, handsome man named Sam Spade is multitasking his desires and job while solving the biggest Mystery; finding the Maltese Falcon. Arthur, Dashiell Hammett wrote the book in third-person point of view making it interesting as the story made us the detective as well, unraveling and putting the puzzles together for the offenses. Realistically, in a 21-century investigation, there are different morals and aspects when pursuing a case.…

Think there is corruption in your town? Does it really grind your gears? Wish there was something you could do about it. Dashiel Hammett’s Red Harvest is just that, the safe way to immerse yourself in action of revenge to those low down crooks that have done you wrong. Set in the grime and greed of the 1930’s, Hammett’s Red Harvest, is worded in the vernacular of the times which brings out the Al Capone gangster out of every reader. The theme is a righteous blood bath staring a detective…

Movies such as the Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity both depict femme fatale as a woman who is in fact dangerous and manipulative. To further understand the evolution of the character of femme fatale, it is imperative to analyze the character of Evelyn Mulwray from the last true film noir, Roman Polanskis’ Chinatown. Evelyn Mulwray is the ‘femme fatale’ movie and is played by actress Faye Dunaway. The movie was released in 1974, and therefore, present a different time. It was released almost…

The literary giants of the era included F. Scott Fitzgerald, JRR Tolkien, John Steinbeck, and Margaret Mitchell. John Steinbeck was the champion of Depression-era literature. His masterpieces include The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. His books tend to be about the poor, working class, an obvious reflection of the financial turmoil in the United States of the time. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. His emotional style was popular with his readers and it allowed him to…

The movie The Big Sleep is a great tale and produced in classic film noir style that is full of twist and trickery as crime stories go, and the lead character shares a kinship to the anti-hero detective Sam Spade featured in The Maltese Falcon (1941) five years earlier, not just because it was played by the…

Although V.I.'s motives are not made clear, it does hint to the ideas of corruption and incompetence within the legal institution. In terms of the problematic issue of the legal institution, this can be found in the novel by the criminals getting exempt from their true punishment due to their right of having a lawyer. This is why Sergio's sentence went from ten years to two years and he still remains a criminal leader. In addition, this is why Dick represents Dieter due to Dieter's secret…