Despite spectacle, stories and vaguer entities such as lighting attributes, it’s a comfort that the biggest pull in cinema is that vague quantity known as ‘star quality’.  It’s star quality that makes a film noir classic like The Maltese Falcon watchable, even when the plot is failing.  There’s a section about 40 – 50 minutes into The Maltese Falcon in which the story widens out — suddenly there are more adventurers revealed, and a whole lot more in terms of characters and detail — and historically, this is the moment many switch off.  If it weren’t for Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, and the vile duplicty portrayed by Mary Astor, they may even not switch back on again.

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Did women ever like this sort of approach?

The Maltese Falcon was the first directorial work of John Huston, who made many films now seen as classics, from his crime works Key Largo (1948) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), to others like The African Queen (1951) which he made before moving to Ireland in 1952, angry with the HUAC.  The opening scenes of the film — my favourite — which deal with the death of Spade’s partner Archer, have a strange resonance with America’s deliberation over joining the world war that was raging in Europe and elsewhere.  Consider these two lines from Bogart as Sam Spade:

‘When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it.  It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him.’

And

‘Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be.  That kind of reputation might be good business — bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy.’

Sam Spade always seems to know what is going on, and crucially controls his own destiny, meaning that The Maltese Falcon does teeter on the edge of noir.  Yes, it’s uncluttered visually and digs deep into the nastier sides of the city, but even the fact that Bogart’s Sam Spade doesn’t trust the Mary Astor character at all, means that there isn’t even room within its walls for a proper femme fatale.

For collectors, George Segal played Sam Spade Jnr in a 1975 spoof called The Black Bird, which is notable for return performances from Lee Patrick and Elisha Cook Jnr.  And Elisha Cook Jnr is certainly a noir staple, turning up all over the place, looking panicky and very often playing some kind of victim.  Here he’s a hood, but not a very good one, and of all the failures of character in The Maltese Falcon, it’s his that hurts the most.  Like everyone who comes up against Sam Spade, Cook’s character just isn’t cut out for the job.

Mary Astor - she plays miserable, she plays mean, and she plays pure damned ruthless.  A star.