Summary
Sam awakens on the floor of Gutman’s room, which is now dark. Stumbling across the room, he turns on the light in the bathroom and goes to the sink to splash cold water on his face. He then calls Effie and asks to speak to Brigid, but Effie tells him that Brigid never came to her house. Sam tells Effie to meet him at the office, and says, “Let’s do something right for a change.” Hanging up the phone, Sam is struck by an idea and furiously searches the apartment, pulling the sheets off the bed, lifting up mattresses, and checking cupboards, drawers and notepads for answers that might help his plight. He then picks up a newspaper and notices a shipping notice for a ship, La Paloma, from Hong Kong arriving at 5:35 that has been circled by Gutman.
The scene shifts abruptly to show the La Paloma, which is on fire and sinking in the harbor. As firemen attempt to put out the fire on board the vessel, Sam tells a crew member from the ship that he knows someone who went aboard the ship that afternoon, and is worried about her safety. The crew member assures him that everyone got off the boat safely, and Sam asks the crew member if he happened to have seen his lady friend, whom he begins to describe. The crew member cuts him off, however, insisting that everyone got off the boat except the harbor watch.
Back at his office, Sam speaks to Effie as she dresses the wounds on his face tenderly. Having heard the whole story, Effie tells Sam, “The part about the bird is thrilling.” They are interrupted by the sounds of a man in the hall, and a man, rapidly losing consciousness, falls through the door. The man manages to slur that the thickly wrapped package he is holding contains the Maltese Falcon, before falling onto a couch, dead. Sam instructs Effie to lock the door and looks in the man’s wallet. Effie is disturbed as she enters the room, and Sam tells her the man is dead, having been shot several times. Sam washes his hands and bemoans the fact that the man wasn’t alive long enough to tell them anything that might help them. When Effie seems to be close to fainting, Sam rushes to her, shaking her and telling her she can’t pass out on him, because he needs her help.
Bending over, Sam picks up the newspaper-wrapped package and opens it, clutching Effie’s hand hard. He confirms that the package does indeed contain the statuette. The phone rings and Sam instructs Effie to answer it. We hear a woman’s voice on the line, and Effie talks to the woman until we hear the sound of a scream on the other end. Hanging up, Effie frantically informs Sam that it was Brigid O’Shaughnessy, that she said she was in danger, and that something awful had happened to her. Upset, Effie urges Sam to go find her and save her from danger. He instructs Effie to call the police and tell them what happened, without naming names, and lying that he received the phone call instead of her, and had to go without telling her where. As she helps him put on his coat, he tells her to tell the police everything as it actually happened, but not to tell them about the arrival of the package containing the Maltese Falcon. Taking the bundle with him, Sam tells Effie to lock the door behind him, only opening it for the police, and when she asks who the dead man on the couch is, informs her that it’s Captain Jacobi, the captain of the La Paloma, the ship that was burning earlier. “You’re a good man, sister,” he says as he leaves.
Arriving at the bus terminal, Sam checks the bundle with the man at the front desk in a safe deposit box and puts the slip for retrieving the bundle in a stamped envelope that he addresses with the clerk’s pencil. Closing the envelope, he puts it in the mail slot and goes on his way to find Brigid. Sam gives Brigid’s address to a driver he knows named Frank, and they get in the car to go in search of her. Arriving at the address, Sam tells Frank to keep the motor running and walks up to where Brigid told him she was, which is just an empty lot. There is no one around, so Sam motions for Frank to pull up and pick him up, having been misled, in a “bum steer.” At a phone booth, Sam calls Effie and asks what the word is. She tells him everything went alright, and he urges her to get some sleep.
Frank drops Sam off at his own apartment, and as Sam walks up to the front entrance, Brigid emerges from the shadows, frantic and saying she thought he would never arrive. Sam brings her inside, as she is visibly exhausted, and when they get into his apartment, the boy is waiting behind the door with a gun, and Gutman and Cairo are sitting inside. Gutman invites them all to sit down, and Sam tells the boy, whose name is Wilmer, to drop the gun. Brigid sits, but Sam remains standing, asking Gutman if he has the first payment for the statuette. Picking up the cash that Gutman hands him, Sam finds that there is only $10,000, much less than promised. Gutman tells him he needs more information, and when Sam counters that he has the Falcon, Cairo—holding a gun—suggests that while he may have the Falcon, they have him.
Handing the envelope of money to Brigid, Sam insists to Gutman and Cairo that they need to have a “fall guy,” someone to turn into the police at the end of it all, to account for the murders. When Gutman questions the fact that Sam cares about the police, Sam fires back that if he doesn’t find a victim to hand over to the police, he’ll be the one going to jail. Looking at Wilmer, Sam suggests they use him as the victim, as he is the one Sam believes to have actually killed Thursby and Jacobi. Plus, Sam says, he looks the part. Gutman laughs at Sam’s unpredictability, and insists that he thinks of Wilmer as a kind of son, not to mention, if Wilmer were arrested he would tell the police all about the statuette. Sam dismisses this notion, confident that the police would never believe Wilmer if he told. Sam sits down on the couch with Brigid and asks how she’s feeling, to which she responds that she is frightened. Assuring her that nothing bad will happen, Sam asks her if she wants a drink, but she whispers to him to be careful.
Gutman agrees to listen to Sam’s plan to hand over Wilmer to the police. Sam tells them that he can tell the District Attorney, Bryan, that if they try to arrest everyone, they’ll have a tangled case, but if they arrest Wilmer, it will be simpler, and he will be able to “get a conviction standing on his head.” Wilmer looks angrily at Sam as he says this, and walks towards him threateningly, urging him to stand and shoot it out. Sam simply smiles and alludes to the fact that shooting him would be “bad for business,” as he knows where the statuette is. Gutman encourages a livid Wilmer to back off, and tells Sam that his plan is unsatisfactory. Sam offers another suggestion: hand over Cairo to the police. Cairo also becomes furious, and Sam insists that the “fall guy” is part of the price that he is asking for the Falcon. When Sam asks Gutman how he plans to procure the statue if they kill him, Gutman ominously assures him that they have other “means of persuasion,” insinuating violent coercion. Sam hears him out, but insist that such means of coercion have no effect if they do not contain the threat of death.
Gutman laughs at Sam’s gall, suggesting that making the stakes deathly requires a delicate attention from both parties, as most men, when faced with the threat of death, “let their emotions get in the way.” Cairo whispers something in Gutman’s ear, as Sam taunts Wilmer with the threat of arrest. Sam tells Gutman that he is ready and able to get both Cairo and Wilmer’s guns out of their hands if need be, and that he hopes the presence of weapons isn’t influencing Gutman’s decisions one way or another. Wilmer grows more and more agitated and tries to shoot Sam, but Sam punches him unconscious as Brigid picks up his dropped revolver from the ground. Cairo and Sam put the unconscious Wilmer on a couch, and Sam makes his final offer to Gutman: either make Wilmer the “fall guy” or Sam will turn in the whole group to the police as well as the statuette. Gutman, after a brief hesitation, agrees to make Wilmer the fall guy. Sam tells him he won’t be able to get the Falcon immediately, and Gutman thinks it’s best for them to all stay within each other’s sight until the transaction is completed.
Analysis
In this section of the film, Effie and Sam’s rapport takes center stage. Effie, who has until now been a loyal but relatively minor character, becomes Sam’s right-hand man. After having done most of the dirty work on his own throughout the film, Sam now sees the need for some back up and enlists Effie, the person who perhaps knows him the best of anyone, to help him. Effie’s virtue is her ability to meticulously follow directions, and Sam has plenty. While she has a relatively hard time keeping her cool under pressure—visibly traumatized by the death of Captain Jacoby to the point of nearly fainting—she is comforted by Sam’s firm guidance. As he calls her “sweetie” and “precious,” emblematic of the slang used to address secretaries in film noir, she performs duties that exceed the everyday pressures of the average receptionist. As he leaves the office to find Brigid, he pinches her chin and tells her, “You’re a good man, sister.” In this moment, the androgynous elements of Effie’s role are explicated; Sam still views her as a doting and feminine secretary, but in these pressured circumstances, she is rising to the challenge of what Sam thinks of as a man’s work, thus the juxtaposition of gender signifiers.
It is in this section that we also see Sam again portrayed as an unpredictable maverick, neither hero nor criminal. Sam is a unique protagonist, in that he is motivated not only by the desire to restore order and help other people, but also by self-interest. Indeed, Sam’s ability to find the unusual way out of sticky situations, while still managing to get a good deal out of it, is his chief asset as well as charm. When he first began to seduce Brigid, she marveled at his “wild and unpredictable” personality. Then, when he finds Gutman, Cairo, and Wilmer waiting for him in his apartment, he says they should offer Wilmer to the police as the fall man for the whole crime, which makes Gutman laugh, similarly marveling at Sam’s unpredictable logic. Gutman says that Sam is always “bound to say something astonishing.”
Thus, we see that Sam is an unusual protagonist; he is not a hero because he is heroic in the traditional sense—that is to say, wholesomely, or with a purity of heart and nobility— but rather because he does things his own way, a way that is bafflingly adaptable and changeable. His methods lose him the trust of the authorities—the police and the district attorney—who want to peg him for murder, but Sam stays his own course, intent on coming out on top. We can view Sam, therefore, as an archetypical noir anti-hero, in that the qualities that alienate him from society and the powers that be—his self-reliance and tendency to do things his way—are also the qualities that distinguish him and allow him to solve crime more effectively.
Again, Gutman’s villainousness is inversely proportionate to his jolly laughter and his seemingly warm demeanor. In contrast to Sam, who is purer of intention, but harder and gruffer in demeanor, Gutman is a man who will go to evil lengths, but is soft and round. Wearing luxurious smoking jackets, smoking cigars, and indulging in treats and cocktails, Gutman is a Dionysian character, but his pleasure-seeking has a decadent edge. Gutman is immoral precisely because he is so indulgent, and will stop at nothing to obtain the material pleasures he so desires. Sam wants the Falcon too, but his desire for the wealth it promises does not push him to murderous lengths. In their first meeting, Gutman notes admiringly the fact that Sam admits that he only works for himself, identifying with the attitude. He mistakes Sam’s independence, however, for selfishness, and this is the key to the difference between the two men. For all his wildness and unpredictability, Sam has a sense of ethical proportion, while Gutman is a “fat man,” both physically and metaphorically, his sense of ethical proportion thrown entirely out of whack by his own greed.
In this section of the film, the action really starts to pick up, and director John Huston’s innovations with camerawork, his straightforward and clear storytelling, and the continually suspense of Sam’s meetings with the slippery villains builds. Rather conveniently, the statuette is delivered directly to Sam’s office, if in the arms of a recently-shot Captain Jacobi, and the delivery gives Sam the upper hand that he has needed the whole time. With the statuette in his possession, Sam is valuable to the villains, and to kill him would be a huge mistake. While we know that Gutman and his gang will stop at nothing to get what they want, the fact that Sam has what they want becomes his built-in protection.
