Maltese Falcon

A detailed Summary of Maltese Falcon

The Portrayal of the Characters in the Maltesse Falcon suffers from transistion to the Huston film.

Spade is portrayed to have much more power in the Huston film than in the book. He seems to have more control over Brigid and the whole on going situation.

First we see this when we enter the apartment of Spade. In the book we have the feeling that Spade's apartment was small, "In his bedroom that was his living-room now the wall bed was up,"(Pg. 61), this tells us that Spade was living in a bachelor room. Spades room seemed to have an image of simplicity for example no pictures no designs etc. As one of the main images, I got the impression that his room was rented. As we see here, Spade was represented in a small rented room because it some ways it shows instability but this is balanced with the coldness and the plainness of the room which shows strength. This in ways gives us a distrusting side of Spade because it seems he has a duo personality. While in the movie, Spade room seemed warmer with drapes and lanterns. He had many expensive couches. It seemed bigger than what I expected and they represented his place as a permanent resistance because he had pictures of horses on the wall. Overall, Spade seemed to

When we get the shot of the newspaper, in the movie, it zoom in on "Thursby's and Archers murders linked, Private Detective was shadowing Thursby" This in a way eliminates suspicion off Brigid. In the book, in Brigid room, Brigid makes a long speech on Pg. 35; this shows that she is very well prepared which shows a sense of motive. Also she was on her knees while saying this she was kneeling, so she was trying to portray herself as being innocent but we get another impression. In the movie, she does not say a long speech, so this takes away are suspicions of being prepared and she is sitting down faintly, which shows sadness and stress. Again we get the impression that she is innocent and insecure.

Brigid is portrayed to be more innocent in the Huston film than in the book of The Maltese Falcon. Innocents is portrayed of having less power than Spade, also it eliminates suspicion toward Brigid character of any wrong doing.

In conclusion, we see that Brigid is portrayed to be more innocent in the film, than in the movie. Maybe the reason John Huston did this was to create s big shock at the end of the movie. So by doing this he had to make other characters more suspicious.

In the book, when Spade is looking through Cairo wallet, he only finds one passport. In the movie, we see that Cairo has 3 passports, this shows that he is a professional and we wonder why he would need so many passports. Again this creates a suspicious look at Cairo.

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Approximate Word count = 1675
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English