The Maltese Falcon (1941)

“You... you imbecile. You bloated idiot. You stupid fat-head, you."

This film may be a remake, and I may have a policy of not seeing remakes before originals, but you have to draw the line somewhere; the original version of this is ancient and obscure, and in any case I’d say both are just different adaptations of the same novel so the argument doesn’t apply.

This film is, I hope you’re not surprised to read, jaw-droppingly good. I’m well-verses with the works of Raymond Chandler, but less so with Dashiell Hammett whom I haven’t read at all. The genre, and Spade himself, feel very much straight out of the splendid novels of Chandler, though; femme fatales; a jaded, cynical, witty but secretly moral hero; people trying to get along in an imperfect and sinful world; hats and/or cigarettes everywhere. And at the centre of it all is the sublime Humphrey Bogart. To my shame, this is the first film of his that I’ve seen. It won’t be the last.  And the entire cast is superb.

The film is brilliantly shot, too, by the young John Huston; there are some particularly brilliant shots. I noticed that when Sam picks up the phone to hear of Archer’s death we first see only the phone, then his hand. Only later do we see Sam’s face.

The plot is complex but clearly told and engaging; the dialogue is amazing; the characters gripping; the conclusion deeply satisfying. This is a movie everyone should see.

Suspicion (1941)

"What did you think I was trying to do? Kill you?"

In hindsight it's easy to see why this isn't one of Hitchcock's most well-known films. Oh, Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant are their usual charismatic selves and the direction is, as one might expect, superb. Except that the story upon which the film is based is both not that good and somewhat lacking in suspense. Essentially, rich heiress Lina marries gambling ne'er-do-well Johnnie, who is irresponsible but has a good heart, ad the film comes up with unconvincing and contrived reasons for her to suspect him of trying to kill her for her money. Even the idea that he might be a killer is broached late in the film, never seems convincing even with Hitchcock;s bag of tricks as a result of the script failing to establish him as a potential threat, and the frantic ending just feels odd and at variance with the rest of the film.

It's notable how very posh the milieu of the film appears to be, just as there doesn't seem to be a war on; our couple honeymoon in Paris, Monaco and Italy- in 1941. It's engaging for much of its length, and both Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant are obviously watchable. Just... don't necessarily make this the only Hitchcock film you ever see.

Citizen Kane (1941)

"If I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a great man."

At the age of 38 I've finally seen this film, and feel a little bit more cultured than I was. It's far too dense with signifiers and crammed with meaning to add much to the decades of critical discussion after just one viewing, yes, but at least I can say what I thought. Essentially, it's exactly as good as people say it is. Sometimes you can go into a film with sky-high expectations and end up a little deflated that it turns out to be merely excellent rather than sublime. I suspect my expectations were lowered a little by the fact that Citizen Kane no longer tends to sit at the top of all these "Top 100" lists as it used to but, well, it should. 

Yes, the whole "rosebud" thing turns out to be a fairly facile revelation about the loss of childhood innocence, but there's a lot more going on than that. Plus the direction is incredible courtesy of a young Orson Welles, and his performance as Charles Foster Kane is spellbinding: a man of depth, wit and charisma and who never quite lets you in. 

The script, too, is as philosophical as a nineteenth century novel, with a line on memory that's redolent of Proust and a clever examination of the newspaper industry's loss of innocence, paralleling Kane's own. Most clever, though, is that Kane is only ever seen through the memories of others, never on his own terms; perhaps we have the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator.

Oh, and at last I get the references in the White Stripes' "The Union Forever".

This is a truly great film and worthy of far more than a hurried blog post written on the 16.09 from Birmingham New Street to Coleshill Parkway. If you haven't seen it, you should bloody well do so.

The Wolf Man (1941)

“All astronomers are amateurs. When it comes to the heavens, there's only one professional.”

It’s very obvious that this was made about ten years after the Universal horrors I’ve seen so far- it’s so much slicker and pacier, and of course the cars and the fashions are very different, especially Evelyn Ankers’ very 1940s hairdo. One thing is very odd, though; this story is set in Britain, and appears to be in the present day (1941). So why is there no indication of there being a war on?

The whole thing looks great, with plenty of misty, stylised forest scenes, and it runs along at a decent pace, but I’m not sure about the wolf make-up- it looks a bit generic and half-arsed to me. It certainly doesn’t make Lon Chaney Jr look anything like a wolf, just like a hairy bloke with sharp teeth. I have to admit, though, that the set-piece transformation scene, with its foot fetish, is very well-shot, as is the whole movie. Visually, the whole movie is strong enough to survive a bit of lacklustre make-up.

Chaney is superb as the nice-but-dim Larry Talbot, but to put the focus on a character like that- simple, honest and straightforward- seems a little odd in the context of what the film seems to be about. We’re told, blatantly enough and often enough for the word “subtext” to be thoroughly inappropriate, that lycanthropy here is a metaphor for the “duality” of human nature between good, evil, and the shades of grey that lie in-between. Except that none of this applies to Larry, a simple soul who appears to be carrying no mental baggage and whose only character flaw is to unwittingly flirt with a woman who’s engaged.

Claude Rains is also great as Sir John, a superficially jovial and caring father whose great flaw lies in his snobbery, and his obsession with his family name. Larry, to him, is important not as a beloved son but as someone who will ensure another generation of Talbots. He’s not as nice as he seems, and in the end it’s appropriate that it should be him who kills his son. The fact that Larry calls his father “Sir” should probably tell us that this isn’t really as cosy a father / son relationship as it appears.

And then there are the gypsies. They are presented with all the casual racism that might be expected, with a dig at their allegedly “pagan” religious practices, and generally treated as an exotic “other”. Bela Lugosi gets an arse-clenchingly embarrassing cameo as the imaginatively named “Bela the Gypsy” because, of course, it’s perfectly normal for a British gypsy to have a Hungarian name.

The plot’s a bit par for the course and rather blah blah, but there are a couple of rather interesting scenes early on, after Larry uses the telescope to spy on the villagers and things start to go all Rear Window. Not only does he use the telescope to perv on Gwen through her bedroom window, but he later admits that to her! And I can’t understand how she can not be freaked out by this weird stalker chatting her up in the shop and pretty much forcing her to go on a date with him. I can’t understand how Larry is not immediately arrested for the murder of Bela the Gypsy, either, but I’m beginning to notice that the police not suspecting the hero of an obvious crime is something of a trope when it comes to old horror films.

The film has style, I suppose, and noticeably so when compared to some earlier Universal horrors, but ultimately it’s style over substance.