Sam Hoffman

THE (MALTESE) BIRDS

by

Sam Hoffman

based on the novel

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

and inspired by

Alfred Hitchcock

FADE IN:

INT. JAIL - CONSTANTINOPLE – EARLY MORNING

Man is led down a hall to a bare, dusty cell. Guards shove him in and lock the door. Man turns his face toward the camera – it’s JOEL CAIRO. Looks terribly frightened and out of place. He sits on the edge of the mattress. His face turns red with anger.

EXT. JAIL – EARLY MORNING

BRIGID and THURSBY look up at the prison windows. Thursby has a curious package under his arm...

BRIGID

Come on Floyd. We’re going to miss our flight.

She wraps herself around his arm and the two walk off toward the plane. Camera centers on her face.

MATCH CUT TO:

INT. OFFICES OF SPADE & ARCHER – DAY

Brigid walks up to mirror, fixes her hair. Turns and opens door to Spade & Archer anteroom.

EFFIE

Hi, Honey. You here to see Mr. Spade?

BRIGID

(smiles timidly)

Yes, my name’s Wonderly.

EFFIE

Well, you just wait right there a second, would you?

Effie knocks and enters Spade’s office.

SPADE

Yes, sweetheart?

EFFIE

There’s a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.

SPADE

A customer?

EFFIE

I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a knockout.

SPADE

Shoo her in, darling. Shoo her in.

Effie goes back into the room and holds the door open for Brigid (Miss Wonderly).

EFFIE

Will you come in, Miss Wonderly?

BRIGID

Thank you.

Effie closes the door behind her.

Spade rises and gestures for Brigid to sit.

BRIGID

Thank you.

SPADE

Now what can I do for you, Miss Wonderly?

BRIGID

Could you—? I thought—I—that is—

SPADE

Suppose you tell me about it, from the beginning, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can.

BRIGID

That was New York.

SPADE

Yes.

Brigid takes a breath and begins her carefully rehearsed tale—

FADE OUT

BACK OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

MILES ARCHER whistles to himself as he walks down the hall to his office. He also stops to slick his hair back before opening the door.

ARCHER

Hullo, Effie.

He winks at Effie and walks straight toward his office. Effie looks up—

EFFIE

He’s with a cl—

But Archer already opened the door.

ARCHER

Oh, excuse me!

He turns to leave—

SPADE

It’s all right, Miles. Come in. Miss Wonderly, this is Mr. Archer, my partner.

—but stays instead. He smiles at Miss Wonderly.

SPADE (cont’d)

Miss Wonderly’s sister ran away from New York with a fellow named Floyd Thursby. They’re here. Miss Wonderly has seen Thursby and has a date with him tonight. Maybe he’ll bring the sister with him. The chances are he won’t. Miss Wonderly wants us to find the sister and get her away from him and back home.

(to Brigid)

Right?

BRIGID

Yes.

Archer looks greedily at Miss Wonderly, liking what he sees.

SPADE

We shouldn’t have any trouble with it. It’s simply a matter of having a man at the hotel this evening to shadow him away when he leaves, and shadow him...

(MORE)

SPADE (CONT’D)

until he leads us to your sister. If she comes with him, and you persuade her to return with you, so much the better. Otherwise—if she doesn’t want to leave him after we’ve found her—well, we’ll find a way of managing that.

ARCHER

Yeh.

SPADE

All right, Miss Wonderly, we’ll have a man there. It’ll help if—

BRIGID

Mr. Spade, could either you or Mr. Archer? Could either of you look after it personally? I don’t mean that he man you’d send wouldn’t be capable, but—oh!—I’m so afraid of what might happen to Corinne. I’m afraid of him. Could you? I’d be—I’d expect to be charged more, of course.

(takes out TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS)

Would that be enough?

ARCHER

Yeh, and I’ll look after it myself.

BRIGID

(standing up)

Thank you! Thank you!

(to Spade)

Thank you!

SPADE

Not at all. Glad to. It’ll help some if you either meet Thursby downstairs or let yourself be seen in the lobby with him at some time.

BRIGID

I will. Thank you.

ARCHER

And don’t look for me. I’ll see you all right.

As Spade shows Miss Wonderly out, Archer picks up the hundred dollar bills and plays with them. Spade returns.

ARCHER

They’re right enough. And they had brothers in her bag.

Archer puts one in his vest-pocket, leaving the other for Spade.

SPADE

Well, don’t dynamite her too much. What do you think of her?

ARCHER

Sweet! And you telling me not to dynamite her. Maybe you saw her first, Sam, but I spoke first.

SPADE

You’ll play hell with her, you will. You’ve got brains, yes you have.

FADE OUT

INT. ST. MARK HOTEL – EVENING

Archer is sitting on the opposite side of the lobby from Brigid. Floyd Thursby walks in, he and Brigid talk briefly and then move into a different room. Archer follows them.

CUT TO:

Brigid and Floyd sit down at a bar. Archer is in the background examining a bookshelf; too far away to hear.

BRIGID

(quietly)

That man, by the bookshelf, I think he’s following us. Do you recognize him?

THURSBY

Come now, you’re being paranoid, darling. We don’t have any enemies here.

BRIGID

No, no, he’s following us, I’m sure. I saw him yesterday too. What about that gambler you told me about? You told me you had to leave the States because of that trouble. Maybe they found you?

THURSBY

Nah, he’s not the type. Look, I’m beat. I’m going to my room.

He stands up to leave but Brigid grabs his arm.

BRIGID

Fine, but give me your gun, Floyd. I’m scared. It makes me feel safer.

THURSBY

Fine, take it. Just don’t go shooting yourself with it.

He hands her the gun under the bar and she puts it in her bag. Thursby leaves and Archer begins to follow but Brigid runs up to him.

BRIGID

Miles, wait. Don’t follow him. He told me where she is, but I’m still afraid. Meet me on Burritt Street in half an hour and we can bring her back together.

Archer looked her up and down and licked his lips and smiled.

ARCHER

Sure thing, sweetheart. I’ll be there.

EXT. BURRITT STREET – NIGHT

Archer waits resting on a fence with his hands in his pockets. Footsteps in the distance become louder. A figure approaches, steps into the light—it’s Brigid.

BRIGID

Sorry, Miles.

She shoots him once in the chest. He falls, breaking the fence, and rolls down the hill.

Camera remains on Archer. After a second, red and blue lights reflect in the puddle and the shot widens to show police officers on the scene. TOM POLHAUS climbs up the hill to the alley as Sam Spade approaches.

TOM

Hello, Sam. I figured you’d want to see it before we took him away.

SPADE

          Thanks, Tom. What happened?

TOM

          Got him right through the pump—with this

The detective shows Spade a muddy revolver

SPADE

Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. Thirty-eight, eight shot. They don’t make them any more. How many gone out of it?

TOM

One pill. The blast burnt his coat. Coming down for a look at him before he’s moved?

SPADE

          No. You’ve seen him. You’d see everything I could.

TOM

His gun was tucked away on his hip. It hadn’t been fired. His overcoat was buttoned. There’s a hundred and sixty-some bucks in his clothes. Was he working, Sam?

SPADE

He was supposed to be tailing a fellow named Floyd Thursby. Don’t crowd me. I’m going out to break the news to Miles’s wife.

Tom watches perplexedly as Spade turns and heads back up the alley.

FADE OUT

Works Cited

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

ANALYSIS:

Sam C. Hoffman

Christina Black

ENGL 1147-101

16 December 2013

The (Maltese) Birds: A Retelling of The Maltese Falcon using Hitchcockian Suspense

            I started this project with the goal of using Alfred Hitchcock’s advice on suspense to retell the story of The Maltese Falcon, or at least part of it. Hitchcock’s advice is relatively simple: “whenever possible, the public must be informed” (Truffaut). He gives an enlightening example:

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. (Truffaut)

In other words, suspense is built by letting the audience in on the secret that the character doesn’t know.

In The Maltese Falcon, there isn’t much suspense. Spade, and the reader, spends most of the time in the dark about the plot, slowly piecing together the mystery. And then, at the end, the characters all gather in one room and the truth comes out. Yes, there is danger in that characters threaten Spade but not with the intention of killing him. When he is hurt (knocked out by Cairo, drugged by Gutman), it comes without warning, and is therefore surprising, but not particularly suspenseful.

            At the beginning, the biggest “secret” that Spade doesn’t know is that Brigid was partners with Thursby, double-crossed Cairo and Gutman, and knew where the Falcon was. By Hitchcock’s logic, then, the audience must be informed and so I wanted the first scene to show all three of these secrets succinctly. Cutting straight from an angry, out-of-place Cairo, to a satisfied Brigid and Thursby forms a connection between the two, implying that Brigid and Thursby double-crossed or in some way caused Cairo to be imprisoned and that the two of them are working together. We also see that Thursby is carrying what appears to be the Falcon showing that only the two of them know where it is.

At the end of the scene Brigid literally controls Thursby by leading him by the arm, demonstrating that she is in control and introducing her proclivity for manipulation. By match cutting, that is, by cutting between two shots of Brigid’s face in a similar position, the two scenes are established to be connected and therefore the idea of manipulation follows through and is reinforced by her fixing her hair in the mirror. Now when Brigid walks into the office of Spade & Archer, the audience knows she is lying, manipulating, or in some way going to cause trouble for the detectives.

I skip over most of the conversation between “Miss Wonderly” and Spade because most of it is no longer necessary since it would only become obvious that she was lying once she mentioned Floyd Thursby. Unlike when reading the novel, the audience is not concerned with learning along with Sam Spade; they already know what he doesn’t. This is what causes suspense, which is a different type of intrigue than was present in the book.

Since the story no longer revolves around uncovering the mystery, it is not restricted to Sam Spade’s perspective; in fact, the screenplay, for the most part, switches between tracking Brigid and Archer so far. Suspense elicits an emotion in the audience toward the character in danger and in this case, the character in danger was Archer, not Spade. However, Spade is still the main character and protagonist and therefore it would not make sense to tell the story from entirely other perspectives as I had originally planned to do. It would defeat the purpose of suspense if the audience were not emotionally attached to Spade. For the opening few scenes though, the focus is not on Spade; it only begins to be at the end when he walks away from the crime scene.

In order to skip the dialogue between Brigid and Spade, the camera cuts to Archer who is walking down the hall to his office. I take this opportunity to highlight Miles Archer a little more; a character who I thought was underdeveloped in the novel. He thinks of himself as quite the ladykiller and so of course he would check his hair compulsively. I think to call him ignorantly arrogant would be apt, if a little harsh. Spade often remarks that Archer was stupid and I think what he meant was that Archer never understood that he overestimated his self-importance. This is further demonstrated by his clumsy entrance to the office; Archer doesn’t stop to think he could be interrupting something.

Miles’s entrance also provides a neat opportunity to recap the conversation that happened off-screen. Thursby is mentioned immediately which tells the audience that Brigid is manipulating the detectives somehow. By introducing that information after Archer walks in, it also more directly connects him with the danger; because the camera has been following Archer, the audience feels the suspense in relation to his character. If the camera had not cut to Archer and instead had stayed with Brigid and Spade, the suspense would have built up with the audience expecting Spade to be in danger but instead, Archer comes in and takes the job.

In Hitchcock’s example on the other hand, the mundane conversation is shown in its entirety which seems to contradict my choice. In this case however, the conversation is more akin to the setting of the bomb than its ticking. The next scene in the hotel is when the bomb is set and the clock is running down. The audience knows that something bad is going to happen to Miles because Brigid points him out to Thursby. The “innocuous conversation” in this case is Archer examining the bookshelf. He is visible in the background while his fate is decided in the foreground.

In the novel, the reader only learns of Brigid’s culpability in Archer’s death and her attempts to pit Thursby against him at the end. By explicitly showing her doing both of these things from the beginning, the story again gains suspense. Every time Spade meets with Brigid from then on, the audience will know she killed Archer and therefore be more engaged to the story.

The last scene adds another piece of suspense that was present in the novel as well. Spade’s curious behavior at the crime scene combined with the later information that Thursby was killed makes Detective Polhaus suspicious of Spade. The audience, both reader and viewer, is aware that this is not the case but the situation does still present some danger to Spade if he can’t come up with the real culprit quickly.

            Adding suspense to The Maltese Falcon according to Hitchcock’s definition changes the story in not-so-subtle ways but also makes it better suited as a film. The mystery story works better in written form but few can argue with Alfred Hitchcock about suspense in film. By changing perspective, the audience can know more about the mystery than the detective and thereby create suspense. The resulting story, however, is very different from the original and is not necessarily better or worse. I think both versions have their place and they both engage the audience effectively but in separate ways.

Works Cited

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Truffaut, Francois, and Alfred Hitchcock.  Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster: 1967.