PillowRock
Regular
So last night I ended up watching about the last half of Dangerous Female (which is the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon). I had never seen any part of that before.
Don't ever let anyone claim that casting directors don't have a vitally important job.
This is the same story, and for a lot of it virtually word-for-word the same dialog as in the Bogart version. However, this one isn't just not as good; it is truly horrible. This whole cast was just bad. Part of it was that it was made so close (in time) to the silent era that some of the physical over-emoting acting style from the silents can still be seen. Most of it is just that none of them can carry off the roles or deliver the lines. There is a lot of subtlety required in the acting to pull off being as flip and/or greedy as those characters often are and still keep them believable, interesting, and even likable. The Bogart / Greenstreet / Lory cast did it brilliantly. This 1931 cast did not (and that is the relative kind way of putting it).
The director also made some choices that I didn't think worked as well (even apart from the performances not supporting it).
S P O I L E R S
A H E A D . F O R
B O T H . V E R S I O N S
They had a scene with Spade visiting the woman in jail after her conviction (and tells her that is now the head investigator for the DA's office; Sam Spade? WTF?), which just felt very anti-climatic. The condensed Spade's two visits to Guttman's suite into one visit with Guttman being called out of the room in the middle to talk to Cairo. They show that discussion in which Guttman learns about the ship coming in from Hong Kong. The scene toward the end between Spade and the girl, where he is explaining that he is about to turn her in and why is also *much* shorter (and barely touches on the "why"). That last one might be more the screen writer than the director, though. There were a few other, less severe, directorial choices like that.
E N D
S P O I L E R S
Overall, between the performances and the director's decisions, Spade and Guttman both come across as idiots and Spade's secretary is a ditz. I liked it *much* better in the later version where the two main male characters come across as being pretty smart and the secretary is cool and competent.
There was one scene that was handled differently that made me curious. I was wondering how it was handled in the original book (which I obviously haven't read) and whether the change was entirely due to the Hayes Code being established in between the two productions.
Don't ever let anyone claim that casting directors don't have a vitally important job.
This is the same story, and for a lot of it virtually word-for-word the same dialog as in the Bogart version. However, this one isn't just not as good; it is truly horrible. This whole cast was just bad. Part of it was that it was made so close (in time) to the silent era that some of the physical over-emoting acting style from the silents can still be seen. Most of it is just that none of them can carry off the roles or deliver the lines. There is a lot of subtlety required in the acting to pull off being as flip and/or greedy as those characters often are and still keep them believable, interesting, and even likable. The Bogart / Greenstreet / Lory cast did it brilliantly. This 1931 cast did not (and that is the relative kind way of putting it).
The director also made some choices that I didn't think worked as well (even apart from the performances not supporting it).
S P O I L E R S
A H E A D . F O R
B O T H . V E R S I O N S
They had a scene with Spade visiting the woman in jail after her conviction (and tells her that is now the head investigator for the DA's office; Sam Spade? WTF?), which just felt very anti-climatic. The condensed Spade's two visits to Guttman's suite into one visit with Guttman being called out of the room in the middle to talk to Cairo. They show that discussion in which Guttman learns about the ship coming in from Hong Kong. The scene toward the end between Spade and the girl, where he is explaining that he is about to turn her in and why is also *much* shorter (and barely touches on the "why"). That last one might be more the screen writer than the director, though. There were a few other, less severe, directorial choices like that.
E N D
S P O I L E R S
Overall, between the performances and the director's decisions, Spade and Guttman both come across as idiots and Spade's secretary is a ditz. I liked it *much* better in the later version where the two main male characters come across as being pretty smart and the secretary is cool and competent.
There was one scene that was handled differently that made me curious. I was wondering how it was handled in the original book (which I obviously haven't read) and whether the change was entirely due to the Hayes Code being established in between the two productions.