Last night I got the bright idea of working on a Powerpoint presentation for work while playing an old movie that I'd seen before on the TV as visual background music. So I put on THE MALTESE FALCON. The problem was that in the interval since I last saw it, my sieve-like brain had pretty much forgotten all the plot details; so I ended up watching the flick again.
It deserves its status as a classic, but it left me with three questions:
1. Was there any purpose for the crawl at the beginning of the film, which tells the background story of the Falcon? Sidney Greenstreet conveys the very same information -- better -- in the middle of the film; and we really don't need it before then to understand the story.
2. Elisha Cook, Jr. may be one of the best character actors of 20th century film, but did anyone expect us to buy that he's a "kid" who looks about 20, as the folks in the film describe his character, Wilmer? Cook was 37 or 38 when the film was made, and looks it.
3. Since the John Huston version of this film was the third movie adaptation of the novel, has anyone ever thought of making another remake, this one actually depicting the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK backstory in Europe that the characters simply describe via exposition?
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