The Maltese Falcon

Film Noir

What makes us to have the interest to watch a movie normally? Before we watch a movie, we will go through some of the details parts of the movie. For instance, we will go through the genre, synopsis and others details parts on itself that make us to watch it. There are diverse kind of movies and they targeted different kind of target audience based on what their needs and what their expectation on the movie itself. Besides that, we also look at some terms on it for example film noir. To further understand the film noir, the best film to show it is the movie "The Maltese Falcon".

Film noir is a term coined bu French film critics in 1946. Film noir is style of filmmaking characterized by elements such as cynical heroes, stark lighting effects, frequent use of flashbacks, intricate plots, and an underlying existentialist philosophy. The genre was prevalent mostly in American crime dramas of the post-World War II era. Film noir is a type of American thriller film, normally is more about investigation cases in film. Before film noir, character in storyline is pure good, bad, or emo before thid. But in film noir, all characters are bad, no pure good people in this world.Film noir is a style of cinematography that emphasizes the impression of night-time photography with high contrast lighting, and occasional low key lighting. It creates deep shadows and oblique angles to create a sense of anxiety. It features a world of criminals of darkness and shadows to enhance the story and characters.

The synopsis of "The Maltese Falcon" is about two detectives, Sam Spade and Miles Archer that are hired by Miss Wonderly  to follow a man. Spade and Archer take the assignment because she offers them good money, but Spade suspects she may be up to no good. When Spade receives a phone call telling him that Archer is dead twp police officers visit hi and inquire about his recent whereabouts, and say that Thursby was also killed and that Spade is a suspect. They have no evidence against Spade, but tell him that they will be conducting an investigation into the matter. Later, Spade visited by Joel Cairo, who offers Spade $5,000 if he can retrieve a figurine of a black falcon that has recently arrived in San Francisco. He later receives a call from Casper Gutman, who wishes to meet him. Gutman says he will pay handsomely for the black bird.

In the "Maltese Falcon", the filmmakers used low key lighting Film noir means that the shadows and night cinematography are the characteristics on it. For example, Sam Spade doesn't exactly keep banker's hours, the director of photography use many night scenes to bring out the foggy San Francisco scene and the shadow and darkness of crime. In addition, film noir camera angles is distinctive camera angles to make the tension and mood higher in a movie. Such as the scene where Spade visits Gutman's hotel room, the director and dop uses a low angle shot to emphasize both of them.

Other than that, film noir is about the power relations and sexual identity. The power of femme fatale exerts over the hero is his own doing, because he has over-invested in his construction of her sexuality at the expense of his own subjectivity (Hayward.S, 2006).  The femme fatale character of Brigid O’Shaughnessy in this story. O’Shaughnessy’s unrelenting lies and wicked mind earned her an image of dangerous lady capable of overthrowing a man of power.The adaptation of American literary works is one of the telling characteristics of film noir in the 1940s with most of the stories released in the succeeding years under this genre were based on best-selling detective novels, pulp fiction. In The Maltese Falcon, Huston managed to relate the story to the experiences of the audience, appeal to their emotion, and ultimately appeal to reason with the timely release of his film, when the norms of the society seemed sympathetic to this storyline.

Last but not least, it is a great black and white film that full of mysterious but it might not get the interest by everyone.