Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon

By all accounts, this movie reflects and highlights this interplay that exists between film and American Culture. As the world was riddled with battles and darkness, the movies of this time period reflected this sinister reality. Death was a major reality during this time period in America and it was no less a reality in The Maltese Falcon. The audience watches as the main character, Sam Spade, becomes involved in a grand scheme surrounding a priceless statue. Same Spade and his partner Miles Archer, both private investigators, meet a seductive and secretive woman named Ruth Wonderly who claims she is looking for her missing sister who is mixed up with a man named Floyd Thursby. As the movie continues, Spade receives news that Archer was murdered and is later accosted by a man who demands that he locate an irreplaceable statue (the Maltese Falcon). The story unfolds as Spade finds himself entangled in a dark and dangerous web of crime in which his only option is to find the Maltese Falcon, which is one thing they all seem to want. A dark and realistic outlook and mise-en-scene is not the only thing that linked this movie to the respective time period however. Also reflective of the time period is film noir’s dark, sexual, and seductive portrayal of

Film Noir was extremely trendy during the 1940’s. People were captivated by the way it expresses a mood of disillusionment and indistinctness between good and evil. Film Noir have key elements; crime, mystery, an anti-hero, femme fatale, and chiaroscuro lighting and camera angles. The Maltese Falcon is an example of film noir because of the usage of camera angles, lighting and ominous settings, as well as sinister characters as Samuel Spade, the anti-hero on a quest for meaning, who encounters the death of his partner but does not show any signs of remorse but instead for his greed for riches.

The island in William Golding’s novel, Lord Of The Flies, is one of wonder and a great deal of natural resources. However what develops on this oasis is war, bloodshed and cruelty. This could also be said for Earth, as the same traits occur in the global society as well. Therefor, the island symbolises the entire outside world in three key ways, social relationships, war, and politics.

In the novels Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, both protagonists; Victor Frankenstein and Amir, share similar characteristics and how their characteristics effect their lives and the lives around them. Both V. Frankenstein and Amir act as cowards in many dilemmas which affect their lives and the people they know tremendously. As well both characters are very ambitious, they use their ambition to try and reach their goals; some of which seem outrageous. Both males are also very selfish which reasons for their decisions they make in their lives. V. Frankenstein and Amir exhibit very similar characteristics which impact their lives and the lives around them severely.

Laws and rules are what set people apart from savagery. Leaders are what keep a group alive in times of crisis. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, Piggy is the only character who remains civil and does not turn to savagery. The boys notice his appearance more than his brain which blinds them from seeing his intelligence, patience, and rationality.

     Many time in our lives, we have seen the transformation of novels into movies. Some of them are equal to the novel, few are superior, and most are inferior. Why is this? Why is it that a story that was surely to be one of the best written stories ever, could turn out to be Hollywood flops? One reason is that in many transformations, the main characters are changed, some the way they look, others the way they act. On top of this, scenes are cut out and plot is even changed. In this essay, I will discuss some of the changes made to the characters of the Maltese Falcon as they make their transformation to the ?big screen.?

In the film and the literary versions of The Maltese Falcon, cops are portrayed differently because of the distinct tools available to each media. The written descriptions of the novel give people on the police force a personality, so that they are humanized. On the other side, the film creates a cynical depiction of cops, where policemen are less complex humans than the criminals of the world, so this portrayal makes the film’s world appears grimmer than the literary world. In lieu of written description, the lighting of Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) causes the policemen to lack some of the depth that they had in Hammett’s novel of The Maltese Falcon (1929) because the lighting creates fewer contrasting shadows

Lord of the Flies tells a story about a group of school boys who are twelve and younger. They crash on an unknown island whilst they are being evacuated at the dawn of the next world war. Ralph, who is the protagonist of the story, struggles to maintain vestiges of civilization against the call of human nature and savagery. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a hero’s story because Ralph, the elected leader of the boys, portrays the archetypal hero, he faces a road of trails like all heroes do, and, he gains gifts from his journey.

The Maltese Falcon is a novel written by Dashiell Hammett in 1929. It was originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1930. Readers and critics see this book as one of the best detective novels ever written, but they also see it as a great piece of literature. With 217 pages, it is an easy read but is a stimulating story.

The film of the Maltese Falcon and the novel of the Maltese Falcon share some stark differences along with certain similarities that the film and novel hold. John Huston who directed the film of the Maltese Falcon shows Sam Spade a little differently as to how Dashiell Hammett portrays him. Both do share some commonalities between them, yet we see a greater split from novel to film in the final scene of the Maltese Falcon. The film portrays Spade as this stoic, cold-hearted detective. Yet, the novel displays Spade as a more dominate grabbing man that needs answers now. The film differs from the novel as we see Spade portrayed in the film as a cold and stoic character as we see him in the novel as a more dominate and persistent character.

The inability to discern Sam’s true intentions can be best described by Christianson’s interpretation of ambiguity in film noir, “[film noir] is expressed through unconventional characterization as well as innovative and excessive visual and narrative techniques. Through all of the gaps and unanswered questions film noir poses, viewers are engaged in an intellectually demanding process” (519). This intellectually demanding process Christianson describes is the way in which the audience is forced to rip through Huston’s entanglement of the characters in convoluted situations that obscure their true motives, which is exemplified in the words of Sam himself, “You’ll never understand me” (Huston). The way in which Huston blurs the lines of the word disloyalty is something that can be seen in society in the struggle to do what is right or to protect one’s relationships; this blurring is exemplified in Sam having to decide whether or not he should do the right thing to avenge his partner, or to protect the woman, Huston leads the audience to believe he loves.

Charles Lindbergh led an amazing long life that was full of danger, bravery and mechanical genius. He dodged death all through life, starting with a fire at three to flying zero’s of the Second World War. Charles knew he wanted to fly from the age of ten and followed his dreams after realizing his heart wasn 't in graduating from college and he started work at an airplane factory,where he learned to fly after that he started the practice of barnstorming, or wing-walking and parachuting. Everyone of that day and age viewed him as suicidal for doing that but he had done the acts in exchange of piloting lessons. He once said “If I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary

Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, is a hard-boiled detective novel; a subset of the mystery genre. Before the appearance of this sub-genre, mystery novels were mainly dominated by unrealistic cases and detectives like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. As Malmgren states, “The murders in these stories are implausibly motivated, the plots completely artificial, and the characters pathetically two-dimensional, puppets and cardboard lovers, and paper mache villains and detectives of exquisite and impossible gentility.” (Malmgren, 371) On the other hand, Hammett tried to write realistic mystery fiction – the “hard-boiled” genre. In the Maltese Falcon, Hammett uses language, symbolism, and characterization to bring the story closer to

According to our text book The Maltese falcon is considered one of the first hard-boiled noir films, although it doesn’t have the artistic, noirish lighting that later films develop. Film noir is typically dark, morally, and cinematically, with a male protagonist in conflict with criminals, and usually a femme fatale, as an antagonist. This movie wasn’t easy to follow, but after the third viewing, I think I figured it out. There are many twists and turns, but Sam Spade manages to stay one step ahead of the king pin, Gutman, and the others who are after the falcon. At first, I thought that Spade was all in for the money, however, he was giving the police just enough info to keep them involved, and out of the way, but nothing about the bird.

On a day to day basis, an individual is faced with an obstacle they must overcome, ultimately defining their morals and values. In the literature perspective, the novel The Kite Runner delivers multiple thematic ideas that portray the struggles of characters in their ordinary lives. Khaled Hosseini, author and physician, released his debut novel The Kite Runner in the year of 2003. This novel is written in the first person narration of Amir, a Pashtun boy that lives with his father whom he addresses as “Baba” in a large estate in Kabul, Afghanistan. Hassan and his father, Ali, are servants that works for Amir’s father