The Story of the Maltese Falcon (Situational Irony)
The title card after the opening credits tells the tale of a romantic and exciting history, promising a breathless adventure film with exotic locales, dashing treasure seekers and perilous escapes. Even the opening image of San Francisco’s gleaming Golden Gate Bridge seems to promise a rousing caper. However, this expectation is subverted by the film's firm positioning as a noir. The glamorous and exotic story of the Maltese Falcon exists in contrast to the gritty, earthy life of Sam Spade, who lives in a "dump," cannot trust a woman, and rolls his own cigarettes while arguing with the police. The dissonance between the shadowy style of film noir and the adventure plot of the Maltese Falcon makes for an exciting irony.
Wilmer Thinks He's a Thug (Situational Irony)
A running irony throughout the film is the contrast between how Wilmer the gunsel views himself and how Sam sees him. Wilmer is a humorless wannabe gangster who feels a constant need to prove his manhood, especially to Sam. Sam sizes him up very quickly and figures out that the best way to get under Wilmer's skin is to treat him like anything other than a tough guy.
When Sam hands Wilmer's gun to Gutman after easily disarming him outside Gutman's room, he says, ""A crippled newsie took 'em away from him, but I made him give them back!" Sam quickly dismisses Wilmer as in over his head, even though Wilmer thinks of himself as a tough guy.
The Counterfeit Statuette (Situational Irony)
Perhaps the main irony of the film is that after all the searching, death, and deception, the Maltese Falcon that arrives on the La Paloma is nothing more than a fake. So many convoluted events have built suspense around its arrival, and when Gutman unwraps it, everyone—even Sam—anticipates its reveal. After 17 years of searching and living a life of crime, Gutman and his cohorts are duped time and time again, and this time is all the more disappointing. The film does not even confirm whether the Maltese Falcon actually exists, but Gutman and Cairo leave Sam's apartment intending to keep searching for it, even after so many unnecessary deaths. Thus, the villains are, rather ironically, wasting years of their lives chasing a dream that might not even be real, and risking the lives of others to do so. In the world of the film, an ancient artifact worth $1,000,000 can simply be a black lead counterfeit. Nothing is as it seems.
"The Stuff Dreams Are Made of" (Situational Irony)
At the end of the film, Sam cryptically calls the counterfeit Maltese Falcon "the stuff dreams are made of," when Tom asks what it is. Thinking of the chaos that the search for the statuette has created, Sam shares a kind of private joke with himself about the fact that the statuette is a fake, hardly worth dreaming about. The bird's fakeness is itself ironic, but it is also ironic that Sam doesn't tell the police that it was, in fact, the motivating force behind all of the crimes that took place. An object that took on such significance for Sam and the criminals remains a mystery to the authorities in the final moments of the film. Perhaps this is because Sam had held out hope, like the criminals, that the bird was real, but we will never know.
