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The maltese falcon 19306/23/2023 Spade, a seemingly amoral private detective who nevertheless still abides by some kind of code, becomes even more of an enigma in Bogart’s performance. Humphrey Bogart stepped into the role of Sam Spade as though the character were a tailored suit. The film is a tightly constructed, perfect example of film noir, possibly the first film noir. Here’s what I don’t do: I don’t make them watch the brilliant 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston. And finally I get to situate the formal analysis in a wider context–the novel appeared in 1930 shortly after the start of the Great Depression–which usually generates some befuddled conversation about why such a genre would be developed at that point in time and what that does for our understanding of the novel. The process of formal analysis also allows me to point out that the novel offers a striking example of a MacGuffin–a plot device that catches the reader’s and the characters’ attention but is unimportant in itself except as a means of driving the plot forward. It enables me to push the students on their formal analysis because I get to introduce a new genre: the hard-boiled detective novel. The novel allows me to make any number of observations that develop the larger themes of the course. One my favorite parts of the course is discussing Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Each year I teach an upper-level undergraduate course on U.S.
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