Plot summary (with spoilers): Private dick Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer work in their agency in San Francisco and spend the day smoking and wearing nice suits and speaking unnaturally and having their Gal Friday run errands and such.
Into the office walks Ruth Wonderly, a ritzy dame with gams that go all the way up to her unmentionables. She's got an assignment for them. Her sister's missing, see. She's been seeing this man Floyd Thursby, see, and suddenly she's gone like the Lindbergh Baby. Ruth wants Sam and Miles to track her down. She gives 'em a hundred clams and Archer says he'll tail Thursby that night.
Later, at home, Sam gets a call from the black and whites. They say Archer's been killed, and his body's in some alleyway. Sam goes to the location and gets some heat from the fuzz, who wonder if he's involved. There's been rumors, see. Rumors that Sam's sweet on Archer's broad, Iva. They also tell Sam that nearby another nogoodnick by the name of Floyd Thursby has been found dead, too. Shot, just like Archer. Sam makes like he knows nothing, and when they finally tell him to scram, he rings up Ruth at her hotel, but they say she's checked out. (Of the hotel. Not like, dead or anything).
The next morning, Sam's back at his office, and in walks Ruth Wonderly again. Except now she says her name's Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Sam says he knew her first story was nothing but a boondoggle, and she better fess up now. Brigid says there's no sister, and Floyd was her partner. They're tracking down something. Some MacGuffin type thing, and she thought maybe Floyd got it already, because he disappeared without so much as a how's-your-father a few weeks back. She thinks Floyd probably spotted Archer and killed him, but has no idea who killed Floyd. She gives Sam another 100 greenbacks to take on the case.
She makes like a pier and leafs, and right away in walks some nelly with scented business cards and a phallic cane that he shoves in his mouth mid-conversation. His name's Cairo, and he pulls a gun on Sam and tells him to empty his pockets, and open all his desk drawers. But Sam gets the drop on him, and punches him in the mug and knocks him out cold. He goes through Cairo's stuff and then Cairo wakes up and tries another way to skin a cat. He offers Sam 5,000 to help him find a fake "black bird". Sam says he'll take the job.
That night, Brigid shows up at his house and Sam tells her about Cairo's visit. She claims she doesn't know nothin' about that, but soon after Cairo shows up too, and the two fight like a couple of hens. Brigid tells Cairo that the "Fat Man" is here in San Francisco, too. Then the fuzz show up, but Sam manages to give'em the brush off.
When they're alone, Sam tells Brigid he's on her side and playing Cairo for a sap, then later tells Cairo the same about Brigid.
The next day, he goes to Cairo's hotel, and is held up by a mook named Wilmer. Sam disarms the chump pretty easy, but instead of getting while the getting's good, Sam follows him anyway. He finds Gutman, the Fat Man. The Fat Man offers Sam a drink, then gives him the crib notes straight up. They're looking for a gold falcon statue that was made in the 1500's for the Duke of Malta and stolen by some pirates and probably magic wizards. At some point, someone French put black paint on it to disguise its value, and then it got lost for a time in Middle Earth, and now the Fat Man has tracked it to San Francisco. Cairo, Floyd, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy are all competing with The Fat Man to get their hands on the precious bird. He offers Sam 250,000 to help him find it. Sam sits a bit and tries to make sense of all the tales he's been told, when suddenly things go tits up, and he goes under. Fat Man slipped him a mickey, see. Then Cairo and Wilmer come out of the side room and they take off.
Sam wakes up a bit later, and goes searching through the room. He finds a newspaper with the name of a freighter circled. He makes tracks to the docks finds the arriving boat on fire. The firemen tell him everyone got out okay.
He goes back to his office and asks his Gal Friday if she's heard from anyone. She tells him no dice. But then some man carrying a brown paper package staggers in and then immediately bites the big one. Sam takes the package and skips, and tells his gal he's going to put the package in a safe deposit box and to bring it to him only if he calls her and asks her for it. Oh yeah, and to report the dead body to the coppers, but don't mention the package.
He goes home and finds Brigid standing in his doorway. He takes her upstairs and inside his place is the Fat Man, Wilmer, and Cairo. He tells them all that he's got the falcon. But he won't share until he gets his cheddar. The Fat Man offers him 10 grand now, and Sam says the offer was 250 before, but the Fat Man says they need to sell it first. Sam has another condition. They need a rube to take the fall. Someone has to go down for the murders of Floyd and Archer and that other guy in his office. The Fat Man explains that the other guy was the boat captain who showed up that day with the falcon on his freighter. Wilmer plugged him, but he got away from them. Then when they tried to search the boat, Wilmer tried to light a candle and accidentally burned the boat up. (Um...okay).
Sam says Wilmer should take the fall for all three murders, because he's not gonna get jammed up by the coppers for this. Cairo and The Fat Man say deal, then Sam punches Wilmer out. He calls his Gal Friday, who real quick-like brings the package. They open it up, and it's the black Maltese falcon. Everybody grins like a shyster lawyer on payday, and the Fat Man scrapes at the black paint to see the gold underneath. And he scrapes. And he scrapes.
But it's a phony. A three dollar bill. Cairo screams like a fruit and the Fat Man sulks. Wilmer wakes up, and the Fat Man says they're taking heel to toe to Istanbul, their next lead. Everyone scrams but Brigid and Sam.
When they go, Sam calls the coppers and says the plan worked. He tells them where to arrest the others. Then, since the movie's almost over, he tells dollface a thing or three. He knows she's the one who killed his partner Archer. She confesses, says that she hired them to follow Floyd and scare him away. She wanted the falcon all to herself. But things went sideways and Floyd wasn't scared of Archer, so she iced Floyd, but Archer saw her, so she had to do him too. She begs Sam not to turn stool pigeon. He tells her no dice. Even though she's a swell dame and they're in love (WHAT?!) he won't be played for a fool like those other chumps. The cops show up and Sam tells them she's confessed. They take her away.
A detective sees the black bird and asks Sam what it is.
"Frankly my dear, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, stinking badges".
Review: It's not my favorite genre, but it has its charms. The writing is all plotplotplottyplot and you really need to engage to keep track of all the twists and turns and deceptions and absurd convolutions, many many of which I left out above and were total red herrings. That's fun for awhile, but at a certain point what tends to happen in con movies is that you shutdown and refuse to believe anything that's happening onscreen, not willing to trust that it's real. I was pretty engaged until about the forty-five minute mark, then started to zone out a bit. The ending was pretty strong, though. Although it was ridiculous that suddenly we were expected to believe Sam and Brigid were in love and he was greatly conflicted and in pain over turning her in. There was none of that onscreen. None. Also, Sam just totally randomly figures everything out at the end for no reason other than the running time was almost up. The movie was basically a glorified, especially twisty episode of Law and Order. And while Law and Order is entertaining and basically the TV equivalent of chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers on a rainy day, no one puts chicken noodle soup on their Top 100 Foods List. Did I just brutally leave that metaphor for dead? Perhaps.
A much much better take on the noir film is Brick, with stronger writing and a story that simultaneously takes its characters seriously and pokes fun at the noir genre. It's really pretty great. Stream it.
Stars: Three and a half out of five.
Next, "Apocalypse Now", and then "Double Indemnity", which is about contract fraud, maybe?
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