Review of The Maltese Falcon

I have seen this version of Maltese Falcon three times, from off-the-air taping. Of course, it follows the same basic plot line of the 1941 film, but that early film noir classic becomes more like a morality play, with relatively little emotion. From the start, Sam Spade is portrayed as a ladies man: an approach validated by the smooth good looks of Ricardo Cortez and his urbane manner. It is difficult to imagine a first shot of a woman's legs coming out of Sam's office as the first shot of the 1941 film, in light of Bogart's understated performance. Moreover, one gets a strong impression that there is a real attraction between Cortez and Daniels, conveyed not so much by the scene in Sam's apartment with its bathtub scene and her stripping in his bedroom, where she has spent the night; rather, in the last scene where Sam is visiting her in her prison cell (instead of turning her over to the police with no regrets, as in 1941) and tells the matron to provide her with every luxury she wants, and we see her alone in the cell, weeping and bitterly commenting on (their?) love. There are other interesting features. Whereas in 1941 a homosexual relationship between Greenstreet and Lorre lay beneath the surface, in this film Gutman strokes Wilmer as "my own son" and seems truly troubled at the thought of giving him up as the "fall guy". Dwight Frye as Wilmer has only a few lines, but gives his usual expressive performance of mental unbalance, without the hardness of Elisha Cook, Jr. in 1941. It's interesting for me to speculate how I would have evaluated the 1941 film if I had seen this one first, and used it as the basis for comparison.