Sam turns everyone in, gives away illegal money Nobody has the bird - it’s on the boat from Hong Kong Gutman reveals the bird’s story then drugs Sam Police investigate partner’s murder - Sam could be a suspect Not what the audience sees or knows at a given moment, but what really happens on and off the screen during the story’s progression.įor reference, here’s a quick list of the story events in the order that they really happened. The most important step to take when analyzing a mystery like The Maltese Falcon, is to unravel it all in order to understand what is really going on. But after some serious searching and a shot of insight from Sandy Stone we found another goal that seemed to fit the story better. Obviously then, this has to be the Goal of the Story, right? That’s what we thought too when we first started our analysis. What are all the characters concerned with? Finding the Maltese Falcon, of course. “With things set up this way, this is how everything went and naturally leads to this one and only conclusion.” Objective Story Throughline and Goal As we’ll see when we go over the story events, it is very much about “this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and then it was over.” Not at all what a Dramatica story seeks to show: The Maltese Falcon was more of a tale than a story. This was why I couldn’t keep my eyes open (and why many today may find the film boring). The emphasis in this film was so much more about the deceptions and the storytelling that 3 of the four throughlines were left to interpretation. There was some sort of integrity/trust issue that Sam was dealing with personally, but was barely touched upon. Further, the Main Character Throughline, while easy to distinguish, was also hard to accurately define. The Maltese Falcon had a weak Influence Character and an almost non-existent Relationship Story, thus making it close to impossible to find an accurate storyform for it. If you want it to be timeless, you’ll need to make sure that you give your audience everything. This is fine if you’re in tune with your audience and you don’t mind your film losing most of it’s meaning down the road.
The audience of the 40s probably assumed that Sam and Brigid were in love and therefore filled in the blanks themselves. Perhaps back then it was assumed that if you put a man and a woman in a room together they automatically must have some sort of romantic relationship. Our culture has developed significantly since 1941. I wish there had been more of that earlier.” Staying Awake I recall during my first viewing-one I had to fight to keep my eyes open-that I thought to myself, “Well that was a great scene. The only problem is that to audiences nowadays, it seemed to come out of nowhere. The last scene, the famous one with the line “it’s the stuff that dreams are made of” is obviously an attempt at wrapping up their Subjective Story. The Maltese Falcon fell in the latter category.Īs best as we could tell there was supposed to be a romantic relationship between Brigid (Mary Astor) and Sam. Sometimes this is fairly easy and straightforward ( Star Wars or The Matrix) and other times it can be simply a game of Best Guess. When analyzing a film with Dramatica what we are trying to figure out is Author’s Intent. No better example of audience empathy than this! But that was about as easy as it was going to get. It was fairly obvious, but of note was the example given for why he was the Main Character: when he gets drugged, we as an audience are drugged and pass out. The first thing we agreed on turned out to be the easiest of the night: Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) was the Main Character. Sad thought, isn’t it? Why else do we slave over characters and plot and theme if not to have some chance at immortality? Don’t our words last forever? The Maltese Falcon is a prime example of a story that, while important in its day, is lost on the current generation. In 60 years, the story you’re writing could be completely meaningless.
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