The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 film noir that was directed by John Huston and it follows a private detective called Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart ) and it follows his attempts to locate the titular Maltese Falcon , he is impeded by several characters , like Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) , who is the stereotypical femme fatal and Joel Cairo ( Peter Lorre) and the main villain of the film , Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) – they all want the Falcon for themselves and they all have competing motives for wanting to posses the statue. A major theme in film noir is the duplicity of individuals and this is reflected in the way that all of the principle characters manipulate and double cross each other. Furthermore , Spade’s actions and general demeanor reflect the way that film noir “… created the “tough” a cynical way of acting and thinking which separated one from the world of everyday emotions “(Notes on Film Noir , Schrader) and Spade conforms to the ideals that men were expected to uphold in that time period : he is the epitome of cool and collected and he does not allow his emotions to get in the way of any of his decisions , and this is clearly demonstrated when he gives Brigid O’Shaughnessy up to the police at the end of the film.
The historical contexts that The Maltese Falcon and Blade Runner were made in were completely different – The Maltese Falcon was released in 1941 , at the beginning of the Second World War and this influenced the way that the characters in the film were presented , the characters are shown to have duality and things are not as they seem. This chaos reflects the feelings of confusion and disillusionment that was felt by many Americans at the outbreak of the Second World War. On the other hand , Blade Runner was made in 1982 , near the end of the Cold War and it is set in a distopian world where nature has been completely destroyed and this is a reflection with America’s preoccupation with the fear of nuclear war and the deeply held anxiety that it inspired. Both of the films are about social fears that the American people had at that particular point in time.
Blade Runner (1982 , directed by Ridley Scott) is similar to The Maltese Falcon in many respects – it is part of the Neo – Noir movement that rose to prominence in the 1970’s and 1980’s and this movement involved films that payed homage to the classic film noir movement of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Firstly , both Sam Spade and Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) have a cynical outlook on the world and they both quit the police force in disgust due to the corrupt elements in the force – and both characters communicate their thoughts to us through the means of an internal monologue that takes the form of a voice over and “the narration creates a mood of temps perdu : an irretrievable past , a predetermined fate and an all – enveloping hopelessness”(Notes On Film Noir, Schrader) and this also gives us a special insight into what the characters are actually thinking and at times this technique creates a disconnect between what the protagonists are thinking and what they are doing – this is particularly evident in the scene where Deckard first sits down with Bryant ( who is a sleazy and underhanded police officer – this is a reference to the archetypes of film noir) , the police chief , his face is outwardly passive but his interior monologue tells the audience in no uncertain terms , that he holds nothing but contempt for him.
In The Maltese Falcon, Brigid O’Shaughnessy fits squarely into the archetype of the femme fatal , who is a woman who uses her beauty and feminine wiles in order to achieve a hidden goal – this is often done at the expense of the male protagonist and in The Maltese Falcon , she uses her sexual allure in order to manipulate Spade so that she can achieve her own goals , this is seen when she blatantly lies to Spade about her motives in order to get her to help him – she wants The Falcon for herself and her motivations are purely self – serving , according to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey , the femme fatal fits into the archetype of ‘Woman As Temptress” as she tries to tempt Spade away from his goal but in film noir the femme fatale often leads men to their destruction.
Furthermore , Rachael (Sean Young) is initially the archetypal femme fatale , but unlike Brigid O’Shaughnessy in the Maltese Falcon , she turns out to be a good person and she is not the villain in this instance but we do not know that fact initially and in classical film noir , the true motivations of the characters are not immediately obvious and the fact that Scott decided to make Rachael a heroine instead of a villain is a subtle subversion of the trope of the femme fatale – instead of being evil , she is an individual who needs to be protected instead of a villain who needs to be stopped.
In addition , one of the biggest things that differentiates Blade Runner from The Maltese Falcon , if the fact that Blade Runner is a genre hybrid between sci – fi and neo – noir and Steve Neale says that all genres “contain instances of repetition and difference, difference is essential to the to the economy of the genre.” and we have an example of this in the way that Blade Runner cleverly combines the standard plot of a film noir film with high – concept science fiction and this creates something new that the audience wouldn’t expect and this helps to engage the audience with the film. On the other hand , The Maltese Falcon was made by Warner Brothers and it was a studio film that was mass – produced and this film was not unique at the time and it was released at the point that film noir was at its peak of popularity with audiences – it was considered to be cliched by the standards of the time , while Blade Runner takes the old film noir aesthetic and places it into a new context.
