Brush up your Shakespeare

The Maltese Falcon

(1941)

Fun with numbers: long before I started blogging flicks I watch at home (you know: back when I considered that too obsessive and self-involved even for me), I adopted a simple scheme involving colored labels to let me see to the nearest month when I last watched a film I own. Because of that system, I could be astonished tonight to discover that it had been nearly 4 years since I last screened this. Part of the astonishment, I guess, was probably because I watched the 1931 version six months ago, so the action was even more vivid in my memory than it always is, but most of it was just because how could I go that long?

Fun with numbers, part 2: 27 minutes. That's how long the final scene continues, and except for some nosing into the other rooms by Gutman after Wilmer's disappearance, and the final exit to the hallway, that's all in a single room, with little going on but talk, talk, talk. But do you ever hear anybody refer to this as a talky movie? Do you ever think of it as a talky movie? Me neither.