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Film Noir Reader

The document discusses the non-heroic protagonist that is common in film noir. It analyzes Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon as one of the least typical noir heroes because he is the least vulnerable. It describes Spade as an existentialist based on a parable he tells, seeing life as random. While the film conclusion mitigates Spade's bleak isolation, he maintains a "demonic" nature through Bogart's sinister persona. Spade's ability to dismiss the falcon shows his detached stance, emulated but rarely equaled by tough guy actors of the period like Bogart, Ladd, O'Brien, Mitchum, Ryan, Lancaster and Douglas.

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Dupeyras Romain
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398 views1 page

Film Noir Reader

The document discusses the non-heroic protagonist that is common in film noir. It analyzes Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon as one of the least typical noir heroes because he is the least vulnerable. It describes Spade as an existentialist based on a parable he tells, seeing life as random. While the film conclusion mitigates Spade's bleak isolation, he maintains a "demonic" nature through Bogart's sinister persona. Spade's ability to dismiss the falcon shows his detached stance, emulated but rarely equaled by tough guy actors of the period like Bogart, Ladd, O'Brien, Mitchum, Ryan, Lancaster and Douglas.

Uploaded by

Dupeyras Romain
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir

Robert G. Oirfirio

The Non-heroic Hero

Page 83
The word « hero » never seems to fit the noir protagonist, for his world is devoid of the moral
framework necessary to produce the traditional hero. He has been wrenched from familiar
moorings, and is a hero only in the modern sense in which that word has been progressively
redefined to fit the existential bias of contemporary fiction. For the past fifty years we have groped
for some term that would more aptly describe such a protagonist: the Hemingway hero; the anti-
hero; the rebel hero; the non-hero.

Page 84
In one respect the Sam Spade of Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941), as portrayed by Humphrey
Bogart is the least typical noir hero since he is the least vulnerable. The film's one unfortunate
omission is the Flitcraft parable Spade tells Brigid O'Shaughnessy, for this is our only chance to
peep into Spade's interior life. And what it reveals is that Spade is by nature an existentialist, with a
strong conception of the randomness of existence. Robert Edenbaum sees Spade as representative of
Hammett's « daemonic » tough guy. « … He is free of sentiment, of the fear of death, of the
temptations of money and sex. He is what Albert Camus calls 'a man without memory,' free of the
burden of the past. He is capable of any action, without regard to conventional morality, and thus is
apparently as amoral … as his antagonists. His refusal to submit to the trammels which limit
ordinary mortals results in a godlike immunity and independence, beyond the power of his enemies
… [but] the price he pays for his power is to be cut off behind his own self-imposed masks, in an
isolation that no criminal, in a community of crime, has to face.» (« The Poetics of the Private
Eyes, » in Tough Guy Writers of the thirties, edited by David Madden, Illinois, 1968)

In the film's conclusion mitigates a little the bleak isolation of Hammett's Spade, it maintains the «
demonic » qualities of his nature through the sinister aspect of Bogart's persona, so apparent in his
final confrontation with Brigid (Mary Astor) in Huston's ending. Spade's ability to dismiss the
falcon, the one object of « faith » in the story, as « the stuff that dreams are made of » shows him to
be more detached than almost any Hemingway hero. This stoic stance would be emulated, but
seldom equalled, by many of the actors who dominated the period : by Bogart himself (Dead
Reckoning, Dark Passage), followed in rapid successsion by Alan Ladd (This Gun for Hire, The
Glass Key) and a veritable army of tough guys - Edmond O'Brien, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan,
Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas. By their physical make-up, their vocal qualities and their dress, as
well as by the dialogue given them, these actors defined the tough guy regardless of wether they
played detective or criminal. They also suggested varying degrees of vulnerability

Critics have reminded us t-ha

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