Best Villain in "The Maltese Falcon"

lorre

Mangled Cook and his character's names. Whatever. When I say shove off, I mean shove off.

Astor almost seems like the only villian; Lorre and Greenstreet are just too funny. Nevertheless, Greenstreet. I'm a man who likes voting for a man who likes to vote. Or something like that.

by gad sir, you are a character.

they're all great, but i love greenstreet's affable immorality.

It's close but I have to go with Lorre over Greenstreet.

the whole 'You... you imbecile. You bloated idiot. You stupid fat-head you.' makes my dad giggle uncontrollably so... lorre.

I always heard that line as the obvious inspiration for Ren of "Ren & Stimpy"

Greenstreet but it's close.

Greenstreet but Lorre is a very close 2nd.

"Ren & Stimpy"--yes! I never really watched the show, but when I did stumble over it and would hear Ren, I'd always think "Wow, they're doing Peter Lorre from The Maltese Falcon." It was a much more accurate approximation than Chief Wiggum doing Edward G. Robinson.

according to john kricfalusi, ren was at least partly based on kirk douglas!

i like the david thomson line somewhere in one of his books where he says he finds it hard not to believe that greenstreet isn't still out there somewhere, looking for the falcon.

Lorre

Am I the only one who'll rep for Mary Astor? She's the only one of the crew who's legitimately dangerous.

Sure but does her dialogue compare to any of the others really?

Well, most of her stuff consists of straight lines. She only gets one gem of an acerbic exchange: with Cairo ("You'll get him around like you did that boy in Istanbul, Joel...").

Part of what makes Astor such great casting is that, unlike every one of her film noir villainess heirs, she projects such patrician hauteur. Her character is slumming, and she knows it.

I like how she tries to play the soft centre towards the end of the movie but you're in no doubt that it's fake and she's a stone cold killer.

"You're not gonna start rearranging the curtains and poking at the fire again, are ya?"

I don't see how you can argue Brigid isn't the ultimate villain. However, Astor's performance is not as beloved as Joel & the Fat Man bcz she's not as florid.

Greenstreet is phenomenal, but Lorre's performances in this & M give him all-time cinema villain status imo.

and The Man Who Knew Too Much?

Question isn't "ultimate" or "evilest" villain tho, it's "best", and Greenstreet/Lorre/Cook are really enjoyable performances.

yeah, definitely. It is too bad he didn't do more work with Hitchcock b/c it seems like they probably had overlapping sensibilities.

I did not know this (from wiki): Peter Lorre was unable to speak English at the time of filming (a Jew, he had only recently fled from Nazi Germany) and learned his lines phonetically.

xp

One of the best things about The Maltese Falcon is discovering that almost all the film's dialogue was lifted straight out of the novel without alteration.

It's Greenstreet.

Not sure Bogart shouldn't be in here as an option.

Immediate reaction is Greenstreet. Paused, worked round it for a bit (excellent arguments for everyone above). Thought again. Still Greenstreet. 'Affable immorality' indeed. Said before, will say it again, it's the lyingest film I've ever seen. Brilliant.

There's something so fucking quixotic about him (Greenstreet). Criminal enterprise as philosophical approach.

Brigid is the central figure in the plot, but Mary Astor isn't really allowed to do the role full justice ... her oscillations between damsel-in-distress and man-eater are softened by Hays Office constraints. She's still damn good.

tons o love for Lorre (he used to live upstairs from my grandma in Berlin, after M came out people would avoid him on the streets), but Greenstreet giving up Wilmer is so cold.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ha. Saw the following cryptic clue yesterday in an old E.R. Galli and Richard Maltby, Jr. puzzle:
He played Robin- and Joel Cairo in comeback? (5)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Poor Wilmer -- always destined to get framed.

Darn, I was thinking of voting for him.

But Alfred is right- I'm always surprised that his character emerges unscathed on the one Star Trek episode he was one.

a crippled newsie stole wilmer's votes

Haha.

Saw this last night at the local beer theater. I had forgotten how much Peter Lorre's character was set-up/shown to be gay from before he was even introduced in a shot.

"gardenias?"

"When you're slapped you'll take it and like it"

Isn't there some lavender reference to Joel Cairo?

His card, maybe?

Yes. IN WITH HIM, DARLING.

Also Astor's catty remark: "You'll get him around like you did that boy in Istanbul, Joel..."

"When you're slapped you'll take it and like it!"

xxpost

there is a lot of homo-villainy in MF - spade implies that gutman and wilmer are in a relationship too. the original 1931 movie got into hot water because of lewd content including homosexual references.

The first thing we put in our new apartment when we bought it was a replica of the Maltese falcon.

Not so sure that Wilmer isn't gay, too.

"gunsel" is homo slang

i remember that from the other ilx thread about the movie, yeah

tons o love for Lorre (he used to live upstairs from my grandma in Berlin, after M came out people would avoid him on the streets), but Greenstreet giving up Wilmer is so cold.

― clotpoll, Monday, 30 August 2010 15:45 (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

0_o

It's true, he was very nice from what I heard (third-hand information, sadly, but I'm inclined to believe it).

he was a complicated guy, persistent health and drug problems (excellent full length bio is The Lost One)

It still blows my mind that his daughter was almost murdered by the Hillside Stranglers.

Of all the movies in the world, this is the one I have returned to the most often. The only minor flaw in it is Mary Astor's wardrobe, which is a shade too elegant and tasteful when it ought to a shade more brazen and alluring.

i woulda voted Greenstreet to tie this up btw

Not sure Bogart shouldn't be in here as an option.

― k¸ (darraghmac), Monday, August 30, 2010 11:44 AM (5 years ago)

i agree w/ this. basically every character in this movie is a villain, except for spade's secretary and his murdered partner.

"well, if you lose a son, it's always possible to get another..."

ok, i need to see it again - it's been too long. didn't i see something about a theatrical re-issue?

― Fizzles, Thursday, February 25, 2016 12:35 PM (6 hours ago)

yeah it's been rereleased for the 75th anniversary, i saw it the other night. perfect, except that the theater played the sound way too low (unfortunately typical for old movie showings in my experience) so it was harder to ignore the morons in front of me who kept snickering at what they obviously considered "lame old movie stuff" (while not laughing at the actual funny bits).

came in here to post bogart challop

The only minor flaw in it is Mary Astor's wardrobe...

and her hair

P Kael was right that the music is a bit oppressive at the climax

Astor was a big star, she was not gonna look slummy

i woulda voted Greenstreet to tie this up btw

― ulysses, Thursday, February 25, 2016 1:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too! so greenstreet wins.

re: dialogue and chess-move manipulation - - - is this a noir thing generally? i don't know the genre very well but it seems to fit this universe of hard-boiled and cynical characters trading beats and on some level appreciating the wit and tone even of the people they're trying to beat... even setting aside that they are all going to be liars as part of the plot. there's something similarly arch about a lot of the big sleep for example, i think.

The only minor flaw in it is Mary Astor's wardrobe, which is a shade too elegant and tasteful when it ought to a shade more brazen and alluring.

for me the point of Brigid is that she pretends to be classy ("This isn't the spot for the school girl act!").

this is pre- or proto-noir. No noir proper til '45/46 (officially). Plenty of hardboiled crime lit in '20s-WW2, obviously, including Hammett.

Lorre did a repeated gag on the set where he would duck into Astor's empty dressing room when there were visitors, and emerge zipping up his pants.

btw Astor said she got the Supporting Actress that year "really" for the Falcon, not entertaining soaper The Great Lie.

the big sleep has "hard-boiled" dialogue that does things w subtext that make you laugh (horses etc), and marlowe is cool and ironic, but he is also a kind of saint, or sacrifice, a contrast to the rest of his shadowy world, which is why he's summoned more than once (including lebowski + inherent vice here as well as long goodbye) to be incompatible all over again with the wicked values of other times. spade is an asshole.

I like the closeup of a horrified Effie when Spade squeezes her arm tightly after opening the package ("We got it, angel, we got it!").

like, it finally dawns on her that her would-be tough line earlier in the movie ("Look at me. You worry me.") was true.

main argument aside from era vs the film being a noir is ~90-95% is people talking in rooms. Cinematography is as good as it has to be, no baroque stuff.

Huston didnt shoot last chapter of book, where Effie completely realizes Sam is an asshole.

she pretends to be classy

Exactly! She's an adventuress who tries to be classy. The difficulty is that she dresses and acts the part far too primly and perfectly.

The problem here is that her too-perfectly upper class role playing makes her a bad adventuress, because she is too self-contained and a bit of a cold fish, whereas an adventuress needs to attract and hold her male targets and the bait for that is sexuality, not propriety.

hmmm, Astor had a pretty sexy reputation....

spoiler alert here

rewatching the film i couldn't help but wonder when spade figured out that brigid was a murderer. did he figure it out right away and was he just stringing her along, or does he really just figure it out while talking out loud at the end of the movie?

He realizes it as she establishes a pattern of lies and he realizes the Black Bird isn't another.

didn't Astor write in her memoir that she and John Barrymore splacked all day?

considering his waterlogged reputation it's a wonder he was awake through it.

xp Much of the suspense comes from the question of how much of a crook Spade will turn out to be. That ambiguity gets tidied up in the movie ("Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be"). At the end of the novel, Effie's reaction shows that he's not a good guy pretending to be bad, but a bad guy cautious and calculating enough to stay within the law.

and Huston builds suspense by fooling the audience into thinking Spade will keep the money Gutman gave him.

I love it when Kaspar decides to sell out Wilmer down the river and gives him that callous line about how although he is like a son to him, you can always get another son.

Yeah that's the coldest,much more illustrative, believable and affecting that bogeys big heart wrench act at the end for me

i just assumed that the sex w/ Brigid was really great

there's a good story in the new VF about all the various claims on the "original" Falcon statuette/s

“You're not going to go around poking at the fire and straightening up the room again, are you?”

You posted the exact same quote upthread nine years ago.

Not that I can throw stones at glass keys.

You will take, say, one hundred dollars?

I won’t play the sap for you.

Ages ago, when I was new to teaching, another teacher and I would send this one kid in grade 3, Andrel Wisdom, back and forth between our two classrooms to recite movie lines we liked. One of them was "I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." There'd be a knock on my door, Andrel would come in and announce "I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." We were probably being a little irresponsible, but Andrel seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

Mary Astor is pretty great in most roles with any juice to 'em

I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.

The problem here is that her too-perfectly upper class role playing makes her a bad adventuress, because she is too self-contained and a bit of a cold fish, whereas an adventuress needs to attract and hold her male targets and the bait for that is sexuality, not propriety.

See Bebe Daniels in the 1931 The Maltese Falcon (and for good measure, Bette Davis in 1936's Satan Met a Lady). I've seen Mary Astor bring the heat on other occasions, but as Brigid she seems a little too much like a schoolmarm trying to play a bad girl, rather than the other way around.

The problem here is that her too-perfectly upper class role playing makes her a bad adventuress, because she is too self-contained and a bit of a cold fish, whereas an adventuress needs to attract and hold her male targets and the bait for that is sexuality, not propriety.

this is a weird take because Astor and Huston emphasize her piss-elegance: the corsage, the stoles, etc. And the point is that Spade falls for neither her sexuality nor her propriety; he isn't fooled for an instant, unlike, say, poor dead Miles.

My students disliked it, I think.

That's on them

Did you tell them what gunsel means?

Explaining who was gay and why genuinely surprised them.

Oh bless

Just tell them they'll take it and like it

Timely revival; the "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it" line was in my head earlier this a.m.