The Maltese Falcon: Book Vs. MovieJoin now to read essay The Maltese Falcon: Book Vs. MovieThe Changing Of CharactersMany time in our lives, we have seen the transformation of novels into movies. Some of them are equal to the novel, few are superior, and most are inferior. Why is this? Why is it that a story that was surely to be one of the best written stories ever, could turn out to be Hollywood flops? One reason is that in many transformations, the main characters are changed, some the way they look, others the way they act. On top of this, scenes are cut out and plot is even changed. In this essay, I will discuss some of the changes made to the characters of the Maltese Falcon as they make their transformation to the “big screen.”
The first character that we read or see is Sam Spade. In the book he is written as being tall and lanky with blond hair, and a recurring v-motif that makes him out to be what Hammett describes as a “blond Satan.” With these descriptions, we can easily make out a powerful image of what Sam Spade must look like in our heads. When we have an image of what something is going to be like and it turns out to not at all be what we expected, we are often let down, disappointed.This is due to the casting of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. His hair is brown, and his, round, soft face is the farthest a face can come from having a satanic v-motif. Although Humphrey Bogart’s acting was very good, it was intruded by my perception of what Sam Spade was supposed to look like.
Brigid O’Shaunessey is the villianess of this story, the “femme fatale”as we sometimes refer to her in class. She is always lying and scheming to get what she wants. In the book, her quest is aided very well by her gorgeous looks. The first image we get of Miss O’Shaughnessey is that of a tall redhead with long legs, red hair, and beautiful red lips. This image of her may have been influenced by the picture that is on the cover of the book, but the publishers wouldn’t have pout it there if that wasn’t the image they got of her either.
The movie does not do Miss O’Shaughnessey justice as the novel very well does. In the novel, she is portrayed as a young, voluptuous, beautiful woman. Although she is somewhat beautiful in the movie, she does not reach the standards that are set for her in the novel. The legs that Sam Spade sees as she enters his office offer an idea as to what kind of person Miss O’Shaughnessey is: someone who uses her sexuality to persuade others. This is a very important part of the story, and the movie failed to deal with it. A technological disadvantage that the movie had was the absence color. In the novel, Miss O’Shaughnessey’s hair is described as “darkly red.” Her red hair helps to develop a devilish theme that goes along very well with her intentions and her personality. This is also missed in the movie.
The character Joel Cairo is one of the most interesting in the book, and the movie as well. I thought he was perfectly cast by the production crew and they did a very good job of including the necessary details about him: the perfumed business card, the white handkerchief, and his girlish voice. I thought the portrayal of Cairo in the movie was better than that of the book largely due to the fact that he was a homosexual. We could hear his voice and see his movements much better in the movie. When we hear a voice, if it is flagrant enough, we can almost automatically tell if someone is a homosexual. The same goes for the movements that they make, or how they react to being hit or punched. These things cannot be picked up in the book and I think they are important to his character. I believe that the movie has a better portrayal of Joel
The Story:
The main character, John, lives in a small town called Hacienda Maya. But when the city is threatened, he takes up residence in a house he has built with two other people who are attracted to the same girl. As you can see, John tries to make friends with the girls and the house she is building is more like a gay house than the one he bought before a storm hit.
He tells the girls this while in the middle of going to church that he wants to take their love back from the girls so they can live a loving, healthy life together.
The story goes that John tells the girls that his old marriage was broke to him and they could see that being true so he was trying to be realistic. And he knew that all of this is going to ruin the marriage they were having. He and his family get divorced and that he loses his job at a high-end restaurant and he goes back home. So he moves his place to Los Angeles, where he’s living out of his apartment, and the relationship between them gets very heated. When one of the girls tries to get John off of her, he is assaulted by a group of people who have made love and are trying to take his sex slaves away from him and take them away with him. So John is separated from his family and from his friends because of a relationship with his ex-wife that he lost.
We see this in more intimate detail. She confronts him again, and for what seems like the first time before he hits his head, he tells her, “I am happy to see you again, and I want to make you proud of yourself because this is the only time you can ever be happy without having to have something like that.” I remember her saying this about her then, “I want to make you proud of yourself because this is the only time you can ever be happy without having to have that. Because this is the only time you could ever be proud of yourself” It’s so poignant in this scene, because this is how his life feels. That was the beginning of John going into hiding without any idea of what he should do.
The Book:
The book begins with this one sentence that I believe is the most important part of the book. This is what happened to John when he got sent to prison…
John came into his own and became an adult. He went to the authorities with no idea of what the hell all was about at the time and that he was sent back to prison. Then he just goes to prison. He finds a little guy and tells him nothing of the stuff that happened with him. He doesn’t realize it at his mother’s house. Then he tells him to go back home. It’s almost like if he hadn’t told himself about this, he would have had to spend that time with this girl because she was living with him and he couldn’t understand what was wrong. And then he went back on to the people he knew. That really helps us understand why he was in prison. To put it bluntly.
The movie ends before that and shows Joel traveling with his “best friend” in this same way. He is in a small town named Pico where he meets