8.3 | / 10 |
Users | 4.6 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
A gallery of high-living lowlifes will stop at nothing to get their sweaty hands on a jewel-encrusted falcon. Detective Sam Spade wants to find out why—and who will take the fall for his partner's murder.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Barton MacLaneFilm-Noir | 100% |
Mystery | 42% |
Crime | 24% |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: Dolby Digital Mono
Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
English SDH, French, German SDH, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Hollywood took that adage to heart, if perhaps not for purely honorable reasons, as it attempted to adapt Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon for the screen. A 1931 version was rather faithful to Hammett’s vision, if a bit faster and looser than Hammett’s typically “hard boiled” detective fiction usually was. The film nonetheless was not a huge box office hit, perhaps due to its somewhat less than charismatic stars, Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels. One thing the 1931 version had going for it was its frank and often overt sexuality, courtesy of being pre-Code. That meant when Warner went to re-release the film some years later, once the Code had been imposed upon all the majors, they found their 1931 Falcon was unreleasable. (In fact it became next to impossible to see the original unedited 1931 Falcon for decades after its initial release). That led to the second version of Hammett’s iconic story to hit the screen, the sad debacle known as Satan Met a Lady. Though Bette Davis might seem the perfect femme fatale, at least from the scheming if not from the sexually alluring side, and in fact does rather well in the film, Satan is an often devilishly dull film that never really makes a great deal of sense, even as it slightly twists several events in Hammett’s original conception. And that of course brings us to the hallowed ground of John Huston’s 1941 adaptation, a film that supposedly jump started both the noir genre (questionable at the very least) and Humphrey Bogart’s post-gangster role career (inarguable, at least according to Bogie himself). Though 1939 is often cited as the apex of the Hollywood studio system, convincing argument can really be made for any subsequent year, at least through 1943 or 1944, so ubiquitous are the classics which seemingly spilled from the major studios on a weekly basis. 1941 was no exception, with a laundry list of films which still top most critics’ all-time classics list (Citizen Kane, anyone?), and Huston’s version of The Maltese Falcon is certainly among the top two or three films released that year, which certainly places it at or near any reasonable film fan’s all time greatest compendium.
Editor's Note: the Blu-ray release of 'The Maltese Falcon' is presented at its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1. The images included in this review are not representative of the disc's quality.
OK, I'm ready for it, I'm probably going to take some heat for this, but I was a little disappointed with this Blu-ray of The Maltese Falcon, though perhaps not for the reasons you might think. Delivered via an VC-1 codec, in 1080p and the film's original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, the film looks pretty darned wonderful on Blu-ray, with a nice uptick in sharpness, contrast and detail from the previously released SD-DVD. So why the disappointment? Because I, along with so many others, have been so incredibly spoiled by the lavish restorations and gorgeous hi-def re-do's that Warner has regularly given us for the past few years. While The Maltese Falcon looks good, even great, I couldn't help but wish it looked even better. My main complaints, as relatively picayune as they probably seem to most of you, have to do with the film's sharpness and, to a lesser extent, the black levels. There just isn't that razor sharp clarity that Warner has brought to other films of this vintage. While detail is often exceptional, there's just a slight (very slight, in fact) gauziness to a lot of the imagery that I found bothersome. Grain is quite evident throughout the film, so you DNR-phobes have nothing to be concerned about, and black levels are good, if again not quite as robust as I, in my curmudgeonly mode, would have wanted. That said, some of the darker segments of the film now bristle with detail that wasn't clearly visible in previous home video releases. Note for example the background where Spade visits the death scene of Archer. In previous releases it was often a murky, muddy black mass; here on the Blu-ray you can actually make out walls and individual bricks. The bottom line is, The Maltese Falcon looks very, very good indeed on Blu-ray, and if we hadn't been so regularly spoiled by Warner with so many other lustrous releases, I daresay I'd be saying it looks incredible. So take this all in that context, knowing that there's little doubt this is a significant upgrade in image quality from the SD-DVD.
Before I deal with the generally superb lossless rendering this film receives in its original English language soundtrack courtesy of the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix, I refer you to one of the foreign language tracks also included on the film. Just toggle over to the German Dolby Digital mono mix (make sure to do so either before the film starts or at the very latest by the Warner Brothers logo) and please tell me, if you can (or dare), what the frell is going on. I won't spoil the "surprise" for you, other than to say I'm virtually certain Adolph Deutsch is rapidly de-composing in his grave. (Sorry, little musical joke there).
OK, now on to the matter at hand. The Maltese Falcon's lossless mono track sounds very spry for its age, though hiss is more than evident for the bulk of the film's running time. Dialogue is extremely crisp and clear, and Deutsch's cues (at least on everything but the German track) are amazingly forceful (listen at the 13 minute mark, for example), with abundant fidelity through all ranges. While highs are a bit buried underneath the hiss, overall this is a very pleasing sonic experience, one which doesn't sound overly boxy or tinny and which gives a little extra "oomph" to the lows especially courtesy of the lossless audio.
Almost all of the supplements of the great three disc Collector's Edition SD-DVD have been ported over to this Blu-ray. Sadly, the inclusion of the two previous versions of the film has not. Otherwise, you get:
The Maltese Falcon is simply as good as it gets in virtually every department. Bogart has never been better, the supporting cast is terrific, and the film teeters just on the edge of some very depraved behavior, making it a fascinatingly provocative feature for the relatively prim world of 1941. John Huston became a titan overnight with the release of this film, and it's still easy to see why 70 years later. While I have some minor quibbles with this Blu-ray, more reasonable souls out there probably won't. Very highly recommended.
Warner Archive Collection
1946
1945
4K Restoration
1973
1995
1944
1958
2006
1946
1946
Fox Studio Classics
1944
1997
1974
Warner Archive Collection
1944
1955
Warner Archive Collection
1947
1945
Limited Edition of 2000
1963
1944
1942
2004