63 4richards

rashna wadia richards
Loose Ends:
The Stuff That Movies Are Made of
One might write: The whirring blades of the electric fan caused
the window curtains to flutter. The man seated at the massive desk
finished his momentous letter, sealed it, and hastened out to post it.
The whirring fan and the fluttering curtain give motion onlythe
mans writing the letter and taking it out to post provides action. It
is of action that photoplays are wrought.
Frederick Palmer, Technique of the Photoplay
Guided by film, then, we approach, if at all, ideas no longer on highways leading through the void but on paths that wind through the
thicket of things.
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film
a telephone-bell rings in darkness . . .
Out of the fading dust emerge
the ghostly paraphernalia of classic noir. The dirt trail kicked up by a dead body
tumbling down the hillside is still discernible when the exterior night
shot of Miles Archers murder dissolves to an interior shot of a cluttered bedside table. With only partial lighting from the back and left
of the frame, the objects slowly materialize in silhouette: an old standup telephone, a pouch of tobacco, a dusty ashtray, an alarm clock balanced on the edge of a book, a newspaper turned to the racing section.
Curtains sway from the night breeze in the background, while in the
foreground a fumbling hand reaches into the frame to grab the ringing
telephone. Even after the telephone is removed, for almost thirty seconds, the camera does not move. Although a slight pan could capture
the conversation that will propel narrative actionbecause when a
mans partner is killed, hes supposed to do something about itit stays
Arizona Quarterly Volume 63, Number 4, Winter 2007
Copyright 2007 by Arizona Board of Regents
issn 0004-1610
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Rashna Wadia Richards
focused on the bedside composition, as if transfixed by a few charmed

objects. Bogarts voice is heard off-screen: Hello. . . . Yeah, speaking.
. . . Miles Archer dead? . . . Where? . . . Bush and Stockton? . . . Uh. . . .
Fifteen Minutes. Thanks. After he hangs up, the camera pans right
gradually to accommodate the stars profile in the frame; he replaces
the telephone and turns on a lamp, illuminating the entire shot. Now
the objects resume their diegetic function: the alarm clock establishes
the time of night, 2:05 am; Dukes Celebrated Criminal Cases of America
verifies Spades status as a private eye; the sack of Bull Durham authenticates his hardboiled character. Action regains precedence over ambience, and the forward momentum will only cease when his partners
murder has been avenged.1
And yet, for a few seconds, the bedside arrangement in John Hustons The Maltese Falcon (1941) interrupts the onward advance of the
plot. The moment metonymically represents the distinctive style of
1940s Hollywoodchiefly characterized by what Manny Farber has
called puzzling, faintly marred kaleidoscopes of a street, face, or gesture (61). Like the extreme close-up of a visually enormous coffee cup,
which succinctly captures the feeling of paranoiac entrapment in Edgar
G. Ulmers Detour (1945), this virtual still conjures an intriguing world
from the waft of mystery, the whiff of noir.
But the pull of the moment when the telephone rings is not only
contextual. There is an immediacy in its appeal. Even though the narrative is ongoing, our attention is riveted on the stuff that movies are
made of: buzzing telephones, fluttering curtains, menacing shadows.
With its sparse interior setting punctuated by a few key objects, the
moment looks like an Edward Hopper paintingOffice at Night, for
instance, which was painted only a year before the release of The Maltese Falcon.2 Hoppers work enables the viewer to imagine alternative
narratives invoked by its captivating objectslike the partially visible piece of paper wedged under a desk in Office at Nightrather than
explaining what they mean. As the narrative pauses for a moment, the
mysterious stuff of The Maltese Falcon similarly retains its substantive
presence in the diegesis, but it also intimates beyond it. Or, as Kristin
Thompson suggests in her analysis of cinematic excess, the function of
the material elements of the film is accomplished, but their perceptual
interest is by no means exhausted in the process (492). The shot of
Spades bedside table is consistent with the expressionist visual con-
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ventions of noir. As James Naremore argues, one tiny section of the

room evok[es] the entire hardboiled style of life (John Huston 155).
Still, its appeal exceeds that thrilling plot. So, what do we make of this
moment when the still seems to stall the tale? When the momentum
lags, the camera idles?
Idling seems highly unsuitable for the universe of The Maltese
Falcon. In its swift-moving world, pausing to endow with a poetic
value, as Louis Aragon might put it, that which does not yet possess it, to willfully restrict the field of vision so as to intensify expression (52), would be counterproductive. Moreover, the studio would
have disapproved it. Having been advised by the associate producer at
Warners, Henry Blanke, to make every shot count (qtd. in Jameson
38), Huston worked hard to tighten the narrative. To Hal Walliss
memo about the opening sequence being a little slow, for instance, he
responded by shrinking all the pauses and speeding up all the action
. . . making Bogart quick and staccato and taking all the deliberateness
out of his action (qtd. in Behlmer 118). Idling, then, would have been
incompatible with the fast-paced world of noir and with the parsimonious ethos of Warner Bros.
Indeed, idling would appear antithetical to the entire Classic Hollywood method of filmmaking, which preferred the relentless roll of
action to distracting stillness. That mode, modeled on the linear continuity of the assembly line, operated with the speed and efficiency that
Mussolini claimed for his railroad system. In fact, as Lynne Kirby has
effectively argued, cinemas continuity impulse ran parallel to the forward impulsion of the railways.3 It was the arrival of a train at a station
that caused cinemas earliest spectators, who feared the trains onward
momentum, to rush out of the way. Within less than a decade, when
momentum itself was becoming the norm, a railcar became the site of
a great robbery and, in the process, established the standard for narrative filmmaking. For while the Lumires Arrival of a Train at a Station
(1895) marked the beginning of the movies long-running relationship
with the railroad, it was Edwin S. Porters film that discovered how cinematic narrative might parallel the railways code of continuity. Having
been fascinated with Georges Mliss trick films, primarily A Trip
to the Moon (1902), Porter intuited that a picture telling a story in
continuity form might draw the customers back to the theaters and
then set to work in that direction (qtd. in Musser 25). Drawing on the
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railroads linear path as a model for preserving narrative continuity, The

Great Train Robbery (1903) became the first film to follow a single line
of action. The film was enormously popular, and it did much to set
cinema on a firmly narrative path (Kirby 55).
With the unyielding pursuit of a mythical bird at its core, The Maltese Falcon is similarly set on a decisively narrative course. The film
itself makes an implicit argument in favor of narrative continuity. All
along, Spade is preoccupied with getting the story straight. Even more
than the discovery of the elusive falcon, he is concerned with keeping the plot on trackof, as he puts it, keeping in touch with all the
loose ends of this dizzy affair if Im ever going to make heads or tails
of it. By the end, he appears to succeed: the central mystery has been
resolved; the partners murder will be avenged. Although the falcon
remains missing, the plots loose ends are neatly tied up. Action, in
other words, leads to narrative resolution. Most critics of the film seem
to agree, for they have almost exclusively focused on its swift, dramatic
action. After all, idling to look at whirring fans and fluttering curtains
would be futile when it is action that photoplays are made of.4 So when
it was first released, reviewers like Bosley Crowther hailed The Maltese
Falcon for its brisk pace (127). This view has since been consistently
reinforced in the extensive scholarship on the film. William Luhr, for
instance, analyzes it as the ideal example of classical narration, while
Richard T. Jameson draws attention to the films compulsive momentum, suggesting that, like its elusive namesake, [it] is eternally in
motion (46, 40). In other words, The Maltese Falcon is widely regarded
as an exemplary case of continuity filmmaking, where the plot keeps
moving till the end. Nothing, not even intriguing objects, could stall
its momentum. As Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell put it, unlike
Yasujiro Ozu, Huston wouldnt think of cutting away from Sam Spade
and Brigid OShaughnessy to a shot of the coat-rack in the corner of the
office unless the hats on it ha[ve] some [narrative] significance (qtd.
in Luhr, Tracking 162). And yet, when the telephone-bell rings in
darkness, the camera does not cut to Spade. Even though the scene has
been choreographed, it has a cinephiliac appeal. For it appears to signify
in excess, emphasizing the materiality of cinema at the expense of storytelling. In that moment, the narrative fades, and the stuff of cinema
takes the foreground.
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what was the nickel for?

On December 21, 1940, a forty-four-year-old unemployed screenwriter died of a heart attack. Hollywood had not been good for him.
Like many others who preceded him, he said he came to Hollywood
with the resignation of a ghost assigned to a haunted house (Zollo xii).
And like the countless others who would surely follow, he was a failure,
an embarrassmentespecially so since he had been quite successful as
a novelist before taking the train out to Hollywood. But unlike all the
others, he had the unique opportunity to return from the dead to paint
an episodic, albeit incomplete, portrait of the studio system. Nearly a
year after his untimely death, around the time of The Maltese Falcons
release, his college friend published his unfinished novel, which offers
an insiders perspective on Hollywood. But while The Love of the Last
Tycoon may be one of the finest novels about Hollywood, it is certainly
not its complete tale. Projected as a series of episodes, F. Scott Fitzgeralds sketch of the studio system is composed of several quick snapshots
that do not add up to a linear narrative. Due to their brevity, the tale is
told only dimly and in flashes (3). In Fitzgeralds view of Hollywood,
moments are more significant than the plot that contains them. When
we zoom in, the whole equation of pictures (3) in effect seems like a
struggle between the image and the narrative, the still and the tale.
So we find Monroe Stahr, Fitzgeralds consummate movie producer,
constantly wrestling with cinemas linear drive on one hand and the
ambiguity of its distracting images on the other. It is the narrative path
that Stahr points to when comparing filmmaking to railroad construction. Flying over the Hollywood hills, Stahr tells his pilot that the whole
business of filmmaking depends on choosing a particular path and sticking to it. While your surveyors may offer several alternatives for running
a railroad through the mountains, Stahr suggests, you pursue a single
path unwaveringly, even if you are in doubt and all these other possible
decisions keep echoing in your ear (140).5 The studio system follows a
similarly steadfast path, and the railroad becomes a fitting metaphor for
Hollywoods single-minded pursuit of narrative continuity. Consider,
for instance, what Wolfgang Schivelbusch regards as the primary goal
of railroad construction in the nineteenth century: to achieve optimal
performance with the least expenditure of energy, the rail has to run
a level and straight course. So the railroad lay[s] a level and straight
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roadbed through uneven terrain (24). Once the lines are marked and
the tracks are laid, there is no possibility of divergence. There is only
the singular trail of continuity to follow. Doubt, uncertainty, hesitation
would lead off course.
As Stahr surveys the landscape from the airplane, studio filmmaking appears to correspond to the railroad path. From his overhead,
seemingly objective perspective, the straight and level railroad parallels
Hollywoods linear trail. But Stahr is also aware of the advantages of
pausing along the way. In a meeting with a writer who is having trouble
figuring out what the movies are made of, the producer sets this scene:
A pretty stenographer that youve seen before comes into the room
and you watch heridly. . . . She takes off her gloves, opens her purse
and dumps it out on a table. . . . She has two dimes and a nickeland
a cardboard match box. She leaves the nickel on the desk, puts the
two dimes back into her purse and takes her black gloves to the stove,
opens it and puts them inside (32, emphasis added). Then the telephone rings. If the scene is meant to allow the viewer to view the details
idly, then the ring disrupts that image. The plot picks up; she tells the
caller, Stahr continues, Ive never owned a pair of black gloves in my
life (32). The narrative track has now been established, prompting
the writer Boxleys obvious question, What happens? (32). Rather
than developing that line of inquiry, however, Stahr replies that he
doesnt know. The narrative does not seem to interest him much; he
was, he says, just making pictures (32). But then Boxley asks the
more intriguing question, about a detail that has stirred his idle curiosity, even though it probably has nothing to do with the mysterious plot:
What was the nickel for? (33). At first, Stahr seems uncertain, but
then responds: the nickel was for the movies (33). His response ties
the whole system of studio filmmaking to the damn stuff of cinema
(33). Even though his writer claims not to understand it, Stahr believes
that, like every moviegoer, he has intuited the allure of ambiguous
detail. The nickels appeal is not in its symbolic meaning in the scene
Stahr is narrating; it lies somewhere beyond it. The nickel has crucial
implications for our understanding of that other aspect of Hollywood
filmmaking: the role of the stuff that movies were made of.
I have been tracking the twin paths of the studio system. Let me
pause to identify them, so we know where to go from here. On one hand,
Classic Hollywood cinema paralleled the linear trail of the railroad. Its
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succession of framed, mobile images that told a condensed, continuous

tale resembled the onward momentum of the railways. As Mary Ann
Doane has argued, the mode of perception necessary for rail travel was
peculiarly, entirely compatible with that required by filmic narrative,
for it activate[d] the spatial and temporal ellipsis, the annihilation of
the space and the time in-between events (43). This is especially true
of forties noir cinema, whose central premise often revolved around the
solution of a puzzle or a crime. That solution required absolute adherence to a single trail; deviation could be fatal. From a distanceperhaps from Stahrs overhead positionstudio cinema in the forties looks
like a system driven by forward motion, avoiding pauses, prohibiting
digression.
But the view closer to the screen is fairly different. The film spectator was presented with a continuous narrative, pieced together out of
images flitting by at twenty-four frames per second. However, at any
moment, a single frame could distract from that continuum. As the
railway passenger did with the passing landscape, the spectator could
zoom in on particular objects in the scene, at the expense of the whole
picture. So, while Hollywood cinema encouraged its viewer to get
absorbed in the plot, its captivating images on screen sometimes interrupted the narrative. As Robert B. Ray notes, although continuity
cinemas insistence on story often reduced the immediate attraction of
its components . . . , inadvertently, as the Impressionists and Surrealists
saw, the movies glamorized everything: faces, clothes, furniture, trains
(6). The still, then, had the capacity to stall the tale.6
Even during moments that were carefully composed to advance the
plot, the spectator could get distracted by the stuff that movies were
made ofespecially when an image offered that indefinable instance of
visual pleasure that Jean Epstein called photognie. For Epstein, photognie was a uniquely cinematic experience revealed in brief flashes. One
runs into a brick wall trying to define it, he wrote, for photognie is the
face of beauty, it is the taste of things (243). Photognie was directly
influenced by the fragmented experience of modern life, a fragmentation experienced by the railway passenger as well in relation to the
passing landscape. While viewing a narrative, the spectator could feel
an intense sensation about everyday commodities when they were in
motion. Such a surge of unexpected feelings aroused by ordinary objects
on screen, Epstein argued, interrupted the linear sequence of images
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temporarily. Interestingly, Epsteins example of a photogenic moment,

based on his experience of silent star Sessue Hayakawas performance in
a scene from The Honor of His House (1918), resembles Stahrs description of the idle moment in the office. Hayakawa crosses a room
quite naturally, his torso held at a slight angle. He hands his gloves to
a servant. Opens a door. Then, having gone out, closes it (243). As in
Fitzgeralds sketch, the focus is entirely on the stuff of cinema; Hayakawas torso and his gloves sweep[] the scenario aside (Epstein 243).7
In other words, just as the idle railway traveler could get distracted by
particular objects in the passing landscape, photogenic images allowed
a curious spectator like Epstein to become absorbed in cinemas details,
ignoring its narrative situation.
Even The Great Train Robbery, the film that made continuity the
thread tying all Hollywood films together, contains a shot acknowledging the capacity of enigmatic images to break that strand. The medium
close-up shot of a gunman pointing his revolver directly at the camera
(or is it at the audience?) and firing it point-blank usually appears after
the climactic showdown with the posse. What is most intriguing about
this final shota virtually perfect still, used on the films publicity postersis its collection of fascinating cinematic objects. The curl of the
bandits eyebrow, his hat tilted at an angle, the handkerchief around
his neck, all offer disruptive rather than narrative pleasure. While they
play a crucial diegetic function, they also gesture toward the other half
of the equation of Classic Hollywood cinema. Paraphrasing Siegfried
Kracauers argument cited in the epigraph, I would suggest that narrative cinema does not travel on highways through the void. It winds its
way through the thicket of things. What we need, then, is another way
of thinking about these things, a way of mobilizing the kind of spectatorship that Epstein privileged, and that the rail traveler perfected, in
order to address the stuff that movies are made of.
Objects, even ordinary ones, were central to studio filmmaking.
As Will Hays asserted in a radio speech, The motion picture carries
to every American at home, and to millions of potential purchasers
abroad, the visual, vivid perception of American manufactured products (qtd. in Eckert 5). Even when films were not explicitly promoting
specific items through tie-ups with corporationsas seen in the popular
fashion films of the 1930sthey were implicitly showcasing items for
visual consumption. I am referring not only to the unambiguously mem-
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orable objects, like Dorothys ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz (1939),

but also to things like Walter Neffs dictaphone in Double Indemnity
(1944) or the tailors cutting shears in Ministry of Fear (1944). Film noir
lends itself particularly well to such a visual display; its expressionist
mise-en-scne and chiaroscuro lighting yield mysterious stills that, like
Edward Hopper paintings, highlight everyday objects capable of providing visual pleasure. In a recent essay on Barbara Stanwycks anklet,
which deals with the fatal pleasure of a well-dressed femme fatale, Paula
Rabinowitz makes the following case for objects:
Objects tell stories. In the 1960s, when feminists argued against
womens position as sex objects, demanding subjectivity, objects
acquired a lousy reputation. But in commodity culture, as Marx
suggested, they have something to say. (21)
The task before us is to uncover the stories that objects, especially those
that appear in film noir, might tell. For noir cinema is like those dear
old American adventure films that Aragon praised for their capacity
to magnify objects, to raise to a dramatic level a banknote on which
our attention is riveted, a table with a revolver on it, a bottle that on
occasion becomes a weapon, a handkerchief that reveals a crime (51).
Naremore has similarly observed that, in his affection for early Hollywoods treatment of cinematic objects, Aragon might well have been
describing thrillers of the 1940s, which were perversely erotic, confined
largely to interiors, photographed in a deep-focus style that seemed to
reveal the secret life of things (More Than Night 18).
But while the viewer might find the stuff of noir thrillers especially
fascinating, academic film criticism has not found a way of articulating or explaining this aesthetic fascination. Most Hollywood historians
have tended to criticize studio cinemas conversion of everyday objects
into desirable commodities. As we have seen, one path pursued by
studio filmmaking led not to narrative resolution but to visual pleasure.
But film historians have generally denounced the production and consumption of visual pleasure, by, as Linda Williams puts it, expos[ing]
the processes by which individuals fall victim to an illusory belief in
the exalted value of certain objects (28). This scene is literally played
out in Clarence Browns Possessed (1931), where a factory worker is
enchanted by opulent displays in the windows of a passing train. Return-
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ing home from her assembly-line job, Marian (Joan Crawford) stops in
front of a railroad track and watches a train to go by. Each attractive
window displays desirable commodities: servants prepare cocktails and
hors doeuvres, a maid irons silk undergarments, an elegant woman puts
on silk stockings, and so on. This sequence may be read as a displacement of womens desires onto commodities. But that reading would not
account for a spectators irrational fascination for distracting cinematic
objects.
That critics of Hollywood cinema distrust the fetishistic commodity
is not surprising. Speaking about the distinction between Soviet realism and American filmmaking, Orson Welles observed that the Classic
Hollywood style simulated a merchants eye, devoting itself to lovingly evaluating texture, the screen being filled as a window dressed in
a swank department store (qtd. in Naremore, Magic World 121). Since
then, the analogy between the Hollywood screen and the window display has become familiar, although the comparison has not always been
complimentary. Film historians have usually found little to admire in
the distracting, exhibitionist stuff of Classic Hollywood, whose spectator is likened to the passive consumer seduced by the attractive shop
window. So even when Laura Mulvey, who initiated the study of visual
pleasure in narrative cinema, attempts to reconsider the role of fetishism, her analysis of fetishistic commodities leads her back to the society that produced them and the obsessions and imitations that created
its collective fantasy (27).
That approach, however, is only half the equation. It is inadequate
for uncovering the full range of spectatorial experience of cinematic
objects. What we need is an alternative way of looking at them. Daniel
Miller suggests that approaches that quickly move the focus from object
to society in their fear of fetishism and their apparent embarrassment
at being, as it were, caught gazing at mere objects are in fact limited
in their understanding of material culture (9). Of course, the shoppers
gaze is, to some extent, acquisitive. But gazing at mere objects is not
necessarily an act of submission to the metanarrative of consumerism.
As recent studies of visual culture have suggested, gazing might indeed
have the opposite effect, acting as a counter-narrative strategy, so that
the linear progression of narrative is disturbed and re-ordered by the
drive of fantasy (Cowie 164). Gazing at objects in the form of window
shoppingespecially for the female spectator, as recent feminist studies
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of gazing, like Elizabeth Cowies and Anne Friedbergs, have shown

can be an effective strategy for seeing more than what is explicitly given
for observation and for consumption. The shop window, then, becomes
a site for distracted viewing, like the view outside the window is for the
idle railway traveler.
Of course, the shop window was not meant merely for distracted
spectatorship. It came into existence in the late nineteenth century
as a consequence of an increasingly standardized, mass-produced consumer culture. While the department store had emerged around 1840
in response to rapid urbanization, the shop window materialized a little
later, almost simultaneously with the invention of cinema. As William Leach points out in his analysis of the rise of American consumer
culture, unlike the midnineteenth century, when it was still thought
indiscreet and vulgar to stare at windows, by the beginning of the twentieth century, people were being invitedeven baitedto look (61).
But, strangely, the shop window did more than invoke consumer desire.
While it displayed goods for sale, it also activated a mode of looking
at objects that did not always result in an economic transaction. It
involved gazing, as Anne Friedberg argues in her influential history of
window shopping, with a speculative regard to the mise-en-scne of
the display window without the commitment to enter the store or to
make a purchase (68).
Moreover, the display window was not a static fixture. The shop
window was introduced by a traveling salesman from Chicago. Wanting to spend more time at home with his family, he settled upon writing
childrens stories and, simultaneously, hit upon an idea that perfectly
matched the needs of Chicagos retailers: the creation of show windows (Leach 59). Later, in search of a quiet place to write, he would
move to Southern California, where his fantastic childrens tales eventually became perfect metaphors for the wonderful world of Classic
Hollywood. But at the end of the nineteenth century, L. Frank Baum
was primarily focused on finding a new face for merchandise display.
The year that he took a trip down the yellow brick road in his childrens
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), he also outlined aesthetic
techniques for captivating shoppers attention. In The Art of Decorating
Dry Goods, Baum argued that objects did not need to be crowded in the
windows. Tastefully display a single apron, he urged; although their
purpose was to make the sale, he encouraged merchants to reveal pos-
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sibilities lying dormant in the beautiful goods (qtd. in Leach 60). That
display could invoke not only consumer desire but also, perhaps inadvertently, an experience that made the objects come alive (ibid.).
By animating individual objects, Baums show windows mobilized the
shoppers gaze. Rather than becoming passively absorbed in the series
of displays or buying into the narrative of capitalist consumerism, the
shopper could look at certain details in the window distractedly.
The shop window and the window gazer, then, hold the potential
for an alternative relation with material objectsa potential that could
be activated for thinking differently about the mysterious objects of film
noir. If we approach a film still like a display in a shop windowor like
Epsteins instance of photogniewe might find a way to address the
things that movies are made of. Indeed, the shop windows capacity
to activate the possibilities lying dormant in the beautiful goods was
fully realized on the screen, where, as Walter Benjamin significantly
remarked, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieu under the ingenious guidance of the camera,
the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of
an immense and unexpected field of action (The Work of Art 236).
What Benjamin conceived as the hidden details of familiar objects
are precisely those details that signify beyond their narrative function.
The familiar objects are things that no longer have mere use value. Of
Charlie Chaplins unconventional use of material objects Andr Bazin
asserted, It looks as if things are only willing to be of use to him in
ways that are purely marginal to the uses assigned by society (146). We
might likewise be able to employ the stuff of cinema to do other things;
gazing at things in incidental fashion could lead to an unorthodox
approach to cinematic objectsperhaps a way of writing with the stuff
of cinema and not just about them.
What then can we do with the thing that interrupts Stahrs narrative? What, we might ask again, is the nickel for? The nickel acts as a
reminder that Hollywood filmmaking was, from the beginning, a commercial venture, and it is this commercialism that contributed most to
continuity filmmaking. The nickelodeons popularized the motion picturesThe Great Train Robbery being one of its earliest successesnot
as high art but as a form of narrative entertainment. But that is not all
the nickel alludes to. After all, the whole equation of pictures must also
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contain a certain amount of uncertainty. So, the nickel also holds that
kernel of knowledge that appears, as Benjamin would put it, only in
lightning flashes. The narrative is the long roll of thunder that will
certainly follow (Arcades 456). But for the brief moment while it is in
our frame of vision, the nickel distracts attention from the thunderous
roll of Classic Hollywood cinema. It encourages Stahrs idler to stroll
off the track.
on a walking tour of hollywood
The original idler, of course, is Benjamins flneur, the stroller of
nineteenth-century Paris, for whom, the fruits of idleness are more
precious than the fruits of labor (Arcades 453). He wanders about the
city streets leisurely, to be able to catch the scent of a threshold or to
recognize a paving stone by touch (427). When invoking the flneur,
however, one needs to be careful about the various incarnations of this
well-known character. For he has been known as the consumer and
the detective; the urban dandy and the capitalist spy; one who feels
himself viewed by all and sundry as a true suspect, but also one who
is utterly undiscoverable, the hidden man (420). In recent years, he
has become the kind of figure who represents the modern condition
in general, or though grounded in everyday life, [he has become] an
analytic form, a narrative device, an attitude toward knowledge and its
social context (Jenks 148). At the same time, he is on occasion identified with a certain kind of fluid, aestheticized sensibility that implies
the abdication of political, moral or cognitive control over the world
(Gluck 53).8 While all of these depictions are interrelated, and therefore remain significant for a full understanding of his role, in this essay I
am particularly interested in the flneur who traverses the city, pausing
wherever an ordinary object catches his eye, in order to discover an
entire history out of a single detailjust as Victor Fournel was able to
reconstruct an entire conversation, an entire existence out of a word
heard in passing (qtd. in Arcades 431).9
The Parisian landscape opens up before the flneur like the interior of a room, where every facet holds the promise of a new discovery.
He lingers along the streets, which present a world in miniature, a
grand pome de ltalage, a spatial verse of visual display (Friedberg
74). From sidewalk to sidewalk, he crisscrosses the labyrinthine city
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streetsa task made more complicated and hazardous since the regulation of street trafficin pursuit of moments of visual rapture. Again and
again, Benjamins wanderer returns to the arcades, where objects have
become commodities, and loses himself in the crowd. The merchandise
excites him. And the nickel has given him purchasing power. But his is
not the excitement of a consumer. Flnerie does not concern itself with
the utilitarian value of things; the flneurs idle reveries do not result in
economic transactions. He does not subscribe to any particular philosophy or approach, for his is an investment in things not theories.
Because he makes idling itself an aesthetic project, the flneur
would be an ideal historian figure to gaze at the mysterious objects of
film noir. Following the flneurs path might provide the right alternative to the thunderous roll of studio cinema. For the flneur is a solitary
walker who traverses the pavement in order to give free rein to [his]
thoughts and let [his] ideas follow their natural course, unrestricted
and unconfirmed (Arcades 453). His path is determined by aesthetic
choices. He would rather adhere to the whimsy of his own notions than
the standardized rules of traffic. After all, he follow[s his] inspiration
as if the mere fact of turning right or turning left already constitute[s]
an essentially poetic act (437). And it is this poetry of his turns and
returns that distinguishes the flneur from the casual observer; he has
a higher aim than any mere idle spectatora more general aim, something else than the fleeting pleasures of the occasion (Baudelaire 36).
Therefore, it would be incorrect to think of him as a cavalier onlooker;
his idle gazing amounts to an aesthetic interrogation. Nor is it accurate to equate the flneur with the physiologist. That he wishes only to
make a study of the physiognomic appearance of people in order to discover their nationality and social station, character and destiny, from a
perusal of their gait, build, and play of features is, in Benjamins terms,
a shabby thesis of flnerie (Arcades 430). Instead, ignoring the linear
path of scientific realism, the flneur follows the contours of metaphor
and analogy. His interrogation of modernity results in a lyrical discourse.
Uncertaintydoubt, Benjamin has argued, is the proper state of the
flneurbecomes his poetic principle. For the flneur prefers the surprise of aesthetic discovery to the conclusiveness of scientific inquiry.
Like Epsteins moment of photognie, flnerie begins with an instance of
visual delight. Indeed, the flneurs gaze anticipates the distracted mode
of viewing practiced by the rail traveler, the window shopper, and ulti-
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mately, the cinema spectator. But the flneur does more than become
entranced by fascinating objects on his walks through the city. On his
walking tour of Paris, he also becomes its intellectual historian. Just as
the collector turns a commodity into a souvenir, detach[ing] the object
from its functional relations (Arcades 207), the flneur transforms his
wanderings into an avant-garde aesthetics.
The next section attempts to make this transformation, of the initial moment of visual pleasure into knowledge, with the stuff of cinema.
That knowledge would belong to the second half of the equation of
Classic Hollywood. What I am proposing, in other words, is a walking tour of The Maltese Falcon.10 Starting with the narrative trail, we
will visually stroll along the continuum of images, stopping to look at
things, distractedly. This mode of viewing will be similar to the way
Ralph Ellisons nameless narratorhimself akin to the flneur in his
invisibilitylistens to Louis Armstrong in Invisible Man. Ellisons narrator praises Armstrongs music because it gives [him] a slightly different sense of time. Jazz doesnt allow its listener to be on the beat:
Sometimes youre ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift
and imperceptible flowing of time, he says, you are aware of its nodes,
those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. What
the invisible man celebrates in Armstrongs music is the singular note
that existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece
(89). The flneur appreciates the visual equivalent of these musical
nodes. For him, not all images have equal appeal; rather, he isolates
those that arouse his idle curiosity.
Like the flneur, I isolate several moments from The Maltese
Falconmoments where the stuff of cinema pulsates with uncommon
intensity. As a series of stills, the selected images offer the most condensed version of the narrative. Read in chronological order, their captions provide the most distilled account of the film. But as Benjamin
has argued, the trouble with captions is that they are too prescriptive;
the directive a caption gives the viewer is much more explicit than,
say, the title of a painting. In other words, with captions, the (photographic) still loses its ambiguity. This problem, Benjamin noted, is
multiplied with continuity filmmaking, where the sequence acts as the
obligatory caption, where meaning of each single picture appears to
be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones (The Work of
Art 226). If the captions reinforce the narrative track, then the stills I
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have isolated lead in different directionsto unusual sketches of Classic Hollywood. Snapped out of the noir thriller, each moment is like
an unpredictable instance of photognie. In a consciously linear narrative, it appears, as Epstein would put it, as a nucleus from which roads
radiate elsewhere (243). Like the flneur, on this walking tour of The
Maltese Falcon, I take roads that lead elsewhere, prompted by the stuff
that these moments are made of. If in Hollywood, Blaise Cendrarss
forbidden city, anyone who walks around on foot is a suspect (52),
then the flneur-historian might raise some suspicion.11 But this trail
will also uncover some secrets lying just beneath the (narrative) surface
of things.
trailing the maltese falcon
The film begins with a nod to continuity filmmaking. A few stock
images of the Golden Gate Bridge establish the location of the tale in
San Francisco. Moving from the outside in, the camera focuses on Sam
Spade, who is apparently wait[ing] for the story to come find him
(Jameson 40). For almost five seconds, however, the camera waits for
him, as he turns his swivel chair in our direction, focused on rolling
a cigarette. Even when his secretary Effie announces the arrival of a
potential client, Spade is fixated on his hand-rolled cigarette (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: A New Case: Suppose you tell me about it from the very beginning.
Copyright 1941 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
99
In a moment, the narrative will get underway: Brigid will walk into the
private eyes office, ostensibly asking for his help in locating her sister,
who, she claims, has run away with a fellow named Floyd Thursby. That
story will snare the private detective into the larger plot about the missing falcon. But for now, the camera is riveted on Spades gestures, as he
caresses a charmed object, the cigarette.
How do we think about this object whose appeal is at least as elusive as that of the falcon itself? We might start by acknowledging that
the cigarette metonymically evokes the entire ethos of hard-boiled
American masculinity. Along with watches, keys, distressingly ringing telephones, lipstick, furs, trench coats (undoubtedly), the bentbrimmed hats of men and the modish couture of women, cigarettes
have become an iconic part of noir paraphernalia, so much so that a
single puff can radiate the texture and mood and often symbolize the
motivations and incriminations of the characters who possess and use
them (Dickos 174). But its capacity to signify the noir mood, with its
mix of passion, stoicism, and danger, is not the only reason why the
cigarette appears as a supercharged thing. After all, an entire generation
of young cinephiles became enthralled with the American cinema due,
in part, to Bogarts singular way of handling his cigaretteevoked in
the opening shots of Jean-Luc Godards Breathless (1959), where, in a
familiar gesture, Jean-Paul Belmondo removes a cigarette hanging from
the side of his mouth, holding it between his fingers while rubbing his
lips with the back of his thumb. Paraphrasing Stanley Cavell we might
say, if those cigarettes did not exist, Bogart would not exist, the name
Bogart would not mean what it does.12 While the cigarette may have
been a short-hand way of establishing Spades tough-guy persona, the
appeal of his signatory gesture exceeds the requirements of narrative
characterization. So, what does the charm of this thing that ignites the
tale hinge upon?
Employing Spades suggestion, let us begin again, at the very beginning. The cigarette has a stimulating back story that, filtered through
the lens of dandyism, might light up a crucial element of studio filmmaking. Tobacco was introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century as
a result of imperialist expansion and trade. The conquistadors brought
back cigars from the New World as an indulgence for wealthy Spaniards. Within a couple of hundred years though, cigarettes began circulating all around the globe, passing from one culture to the next. Their
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circulation was further intensified by the Napoleonic and Crimean

wars. By the late nineteenth century, James A. Bonsack introduced a
machine that accelerated their production and distribution. His invention made the practice of hand-rolled cigarettes obsolete in the twentieth century. Now sold in packs, the cigarette was thus transformed into
a mass-marketed, highly profitable commodity. That is but one way to
tell the cigarettes story. Here is another way: In his unusual history of
this sublime commodity, Richard Klein contends that the cigarettes
introduction corresponded with the arrival of the Age of Anxiety, the
beginning of modern consciousness that accompanied the invention
and universalization of printed books, the discovery of the New World,
the development of rational, scientific methods, and the concurrent
loss of medieval theological assurances. So acute was the jolt of modernity, he maintains, that it acted as a drug for easing the anxiety arising
from the shock of successive assaults on old certainties and the prospect
of greater unknowns (27). Far from being just another mass-produced
commodity, the cigarette, according to Klein, aided the revolution in
consciousness required for the transition from antiquity to the modern
age. If modernity, as Ben Singer has argued, had brought about a radical
increase in nervous stimulation and bodily peril (74), then the brief,
sensual pleasure of the cigarettenervous stimulation combined with
bodily peril applies nicely to smokingmight well be regarded as the
modernist experience par excellence. Thus, the French novelist Pierre
Lous asserted that the one distinguishing feature between antiquity
and the modern age was the cigarette, which became the most important thing to study, the one most worthy to occupy the attention of
the historian of culture. The pleasure of the cigarette, he claimed in
an 1896 short story titled Une Volupt Nouvelle, was the only new
pleasure man had invented in eighteen hundred years (qtd. in Klein
28). But what was so distinctive about this volupt nouvelle?
Merging volupt with gesture, the mid-nineteenth century Parnassian poet Thodore de Banville argued that the cigarettes pleasure was
primarily tactile. For Banville, volupt was in the performance of smoking. Unlike other commodities, and indeed unlike the cigar or the pipe,
rolling tobacco became an aesthetic act. The process might look mundane, Banville declared: It is a pinch of tobacco, rolled in a little leaf
of tissue paper. But once the tobacco has been placed and distributed
equally, the leaf must be rolled elegantly, rapidly, with a rhythmic har-
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mony, with a rapid, confident gesture (qtd. in Klein 42).13 Naturally,

the figure who perfected this aesthetic mode of smoking was the dandy.
Banville, who was influenced and admired by Baudelaire, considered
the dandy ideal because he would regard the cigarette in aesthetic rather
than utilitarian terms. And that is precisely the appeal of Bogarts signatory gesture as well. As the opening sequence begins, Spade sits behind
the desk, rolling his own cigarette. This detail is provided in Dashiell
Hammetts novel, which Huston adapted faithfully for the film. Hammett describes the process of rolling a cigarette at great length in the
novel, concentrating on how Spades thick fingers made a cigarette
with deliberate care, sifting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into
curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with
a slight depression in the middle, thumbs rolling the papers inner edge
down and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, and so
on (1314). In the film too, instead of using machine-pressed cigarettes,
which would be quicker to light and hence more suited to the quickpaced noir thriller, Spade makes his own cigarettehe pours tobacco
from a pouch onto a rolling paper, tightens the pouch string with his
teeth, and begins rolling a cigarette between his fingers, never looking
up. Like the dandy, Spade handles the cigarette as if it were a little
work of art (Klein 42). Interestingly, Henri Agel explicitly compared
Bogart to the dandy, observing that he knew how to reinvent, little by
little, the internal elegance of the dandy. He elevated to a sort of plastic dignity the most modest manifestations of existence: taking off his
jacket, lighting a cigarette, opening a door (qtd. in Dickos 112, emphasis
added). In other words, it is Bogart who transforms the simple act of
lighting a cigarette into an aesthetic performance, thus illuminating,
however briefly, the other half of the equation of pictures. His gesture
stalls the narrative even before it has begunrecall Benjamins assertion that the distracting element of [cinema] is . . . primarily tactile
(The Work of Art 238)in order to indulge in a tactile pleasure. For
the moment, the economy of the continuity system is interrupted by
an ordinary, yet mysteriously appealing, studio prop. The mystery can
wait.
After the initial puff, the detective tale begins with a bang. A rare
exterior shot punctuates the mostly interior diegesis when Miles Archer
is shot dead. Having accepted the new case and promised to shadow
Floyd Thursby, Archer arrives at the intersection of Bush and Stock-
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ton streets. The camera captures Archer stepping into the shot, tilts
up to show him looking confused, and then a revolver appears in the
frame, firing a single shot at him (Fig. 2). Neither the murderer nor the
motive is revealed. This becomes one of the mysterious threads in the
film: Who killed Miles Archer? In fact, the pursuit of the falcon seems
almost secondary, since Archers murder is the primary justification for
Spades involvementwhen one of your organization gets killed, he
tells Brigid at the end, its bad business to let the killer get away with
it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere. When he arrives
at the scene of the crime, Spade does not even examine the dead body;
one look at the firearm, and he knows that despite his reluctance he
will have to do something about it. The gun is an important narrative
catalyst that drives the plot forward, confirming what Fred Zimmerman once said: The fact that somebody shoots a gun is of no interest.
What I want to know is why he shoots it and what the consequences
are. When a gun goes off in the movies, it is usually at the height of
suspense. As far as the narrative is concerned, the gun is not an innocuous accessory. Naturally, attention is directed at the cause and the effect
of the shotor, as is the case in The Maltese Falcon, at the whodunit.
The moment the shot is fired, or the type of gun used, are not as significant as what-happens-next. David Thomson calls this the bang bang
effect, where the moment of the crime is quick (and wholly unrealistic).
Consider, for instance, his anecdote about a group of seven screenwriters who are having trouble with one of their characters. Arthurs a
loose end, one of them suggests. So they decide to kill him: We do
it as a sudden epiphany. All it takes is a ten-second scene, and bang
bang, Arthur (Beneath 164). Miles Archers murder is not much different: The bullet goes in, and life goes out (173). And the plot goes on.
Yet, guns themselves are exceptionally compelling cinematic objects.
While they are mainly used as weapons of destruction, triggering the
plot as soon as they are fired, guns are also icons of seduction. Like the
shot fired by an unknown gunman in The Great Train Robbery, or the
fascinating opening close-up of a revolver turning on the viewer in Fritz
Langs The Big Heat (1953), guns have come to signify more than violence and crime. Joseph H. Lewiss Gun Crazy (1949) tries to capture
their allure in the opening scene, where a young boy stares at a gun in
a window display, then breaks the glass to steal it. For him, the revolver
is not just a weapon; as his sister says in the court room sequence, its
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something else about guns that gets him. How do we talk about that
something else?
Like any event captured in medias res, like a photographic still, the
shot of Archers murder draws attention to its materiality: in chiaroscuro lighting, a man in a trench coat and a hat emerges from the
darkness, while a gleaming revolver appears in the frames foreground.
Since the person pointing the weapon is invisible, the gun appears suspended in midair, looking virtually detached from the narrative for an
instant. Gilbert Adair provides one way to think about the unique connection between guns and movies: arguing that the gun remains by
far the cinemas single most ubiquitous prop, he suggests that there is
a symbiotic link between the gun and the camera: both hold their
subjects, or victims, in their sights; both aim and shoot (21). But
the shot is fictional, and that might be another way to characterize the
relation between guns and movies. The shot of a gun happily exposes
the fictionality of cinema. What is appealing about Classic Hollywood
cinema is not that it approximates real life but that its reality is fake.
As in a childrens game, a gun is pointed at its subject, and bang bang,
youre dead. Appropriately, the gun used to kill Miles Archer takes
this idea of cinematic fictionality to its logical extreme. When Spade
gets to the scene of the crime, Detective Polhaus shows him the weapon
used in the murder. Spade recognizes it as a Webley Fosbery forty-five
automatic, eight-shot. The caliber of the gun is one of the few changes
from the novel to the film: Hammetts Spade identifies the gun as a
Thirty-eight, eight shot, adding, They dont make them anymore.
As far as the film version is concerned, the truth is that they never made
them. For while the motivation for the change is unclear, Peter P. Gillis
notes that the revised caliber is an anomaly. Although the thirty-eight
was an eight-shot model, all forty-fives are six shooters; so, ironically,
the film dialogue describes a gun that is nonexistent (30).14 But that
does not distract from the appeal of the (fictional) shot. Bang bang,
Archer.
That shot is followed by another murder. Later that night, Detective Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy arrive at Spades apartment to
inform him that Floyd Thursby, the man Archer was supposed to have
been shadowing, has also been murdered. But, as Spade soon realizes,
the cops are also on assignment, trying to discover if he has anything
to do with the double homicide. From the moment they walk into his
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Figure 2: The Partner Is Shot: Miles Archer dead? Copyright 1941 by Warner
Bros. Pictures.
Figure 3: The Detective Becomes a Suspect: You fellows trying to rope me made me
nervous. Copyright 1941 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
105
apartment, the scene unfolds mostly through a series of three-figured

medium shots, interspersed with close-ups, underscoring the claustrophobic energy in the room. Whether the two cops sit across from Spade,
as if interrogating him, or the three characters gather around to have a
drink, the images portray the sparse interior typical of film noir. Spades
apartment reveals a tough, masculine style that emphasizes noirs minimalist aesthetic in close interior spaces. From the massive leather chair
that Dundy occupies rather awkwardly, to the unmade bed where Spade
sits with his back to the camera, to the strategically placed lamp on a
side table that permits ominous shadows, every shot is carefully composed (Fig. 3).
Except for a few key objectsthe lamps, overcoats, and pulleddown hats that are the stock-in-trade of detective films (Naremore,
John Huston 157)the images are virtually emptied out. The lamps,
overcoats, and pulled-down hats are just enough to sustain the tense
atmosphere required during this confrontational sequence in the plot.
The cops hats and overcoats contrast sharply with Spades wrinkled
white shirt and bare head. As the scene is about negotiating the power
dynamics between the private detective and the officers of the law, the
camera occupies different points of view in the room, depending on
which side has the upper hand. But it always returns to a tight medium
shot of the three characters, with not much else in the frameperfect for creating the paranoid atmosphere so typical of noir. Indeed,
this sequences most obvious trait is that it is a series of standard noir
shots; we have seen this kind of scene before. But then if we follow
Adairs argument about another unexceptional noir, Fritz Langs Beyond
a Reasonable Doubt (1956), its usualness might precisely be the scenes
appeal. For although one might remember Classic Hollywood in terms
of epics like Gone with the Wind, what going to the cinema during those
years really meant was watching near-identical men in near-identical
suits and hats sitting in near-identical apartment rooms and bars and
black, bulbous vehicles (124). Adair calls this the mediums metallic
poetry (124), a fine phrase that applies nicely to the shot of Spades
living room.
So, what can be said about a standard shot of near-identical men
trying to uncover some details to piece together yet another narrative of
whodunit? If we look around, we find evidence of a somewhat different
sort. When Spade first realizes he is being accused of killing Thursby, he
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says with a slight smirk that he feels as though he has got up on [his]
hind legs as the detectives are trying to rope [him]. In a scene where
there is little possibility of any horsing around, Spades remark finds an
ironic visual match in the equestrian images on the wall. While the
room is almost barren, the wall does display a number of mismatched
pictures of horses and horse-riding. At first, we might assume that the
pictures serve as signifiers of Spades tough-guy personality. We might
even argue that they allude to Spade as a misplaced hero of a Western
now confined to the close interiors of noir.15 Unwilling to draw his guns
too quick, refusing to even carry guns, telling Polhaus he doesnt like
them, Spade can be regarded as the reluctant cowboy who might yet
bring order to the seemingly lawless frontier of San Francisco. While
interesting in themselves, these readings are too symbolic. Besides,
Spades apartment is not the only place in the film that exhibits images
of horses: there is also a horse statuette on Kasper Gutmans mantelpiece and a similar horse figurine on District Attorney Bryans desk.
What could motivate the appearance of these near-identical objects
in otherwise distinct but typical spaces? Perhaps it is a Hustonian signature on his first directorial venture. After all, Huston had a passion
for horses. As a boy, he became accustomed to a fairly rootless lifestyle with his mother, Rhea Gore, who was a feisty newswoman with
a yen for traveling in general and following race horses and courses in
particular (Jameson 37). Before moving to Hollywood, Huston wrote
numerous stories about horses. Writing about his attitude as a director,
James Agee even called Huston a highly intelligent cowboy (22). Yet,
none of these auteurist interpretations fully explains the presence of
near-identical, albeit incidental, props uniting three unrelated spaces
in the film.16 What we need to do, then, is to set the horses on a less
predictable trail.
Even though it would come to be remembered as a place where film
production was standardized and monitored on closed sets, Hollywood
did not start off being that kind of town. It was founded in the late
nineteenth century by a Kansas City real estate developer and prohibitionist, Harvey Henderson Wilcox, who, along with his wife Daeida,
retired on a huge ranch there. Although there were no English holly
trees in sight, Daeida reportedly named the place after she met a woman
on a train who spoke dreamily about her summer home in Chicago;
that home was called Hollywood. When Cecil B. DeMille, along with
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Oscar C. Apfel, rode to the end of the train line from Arizona and
discovered that Hollywoods open countryside would be ideal for shooting their western, The Squaw Man (1914), the town was still undeveloped. DeMille set up his studio in what became the Lasky-DeMille Barn
and rode to the set on horseback. The only paved road was Prospect
Avenue (now Hollywood Boulevard). Aside from the few destinations
accessible by the red cars of Pacific Electric Railway, horses were more
practical for travel during the towns formative years. But by the 1920s,
the automobile became enormously popular in Hollywood, changing
not only the mode of transportation but also its model of production.
For, increasingly, Hollywood studios began imitating Fords standardized production system. As Budd Schulberg reportedly told Fitzgerald
while the latter was writing The Love of the Last Tycoon, Hollywood was
a town that turned out a product. Instead of automobiles . . . , in our
town we turned out cans of film (qtd. in Wallace 31). Thus, filmmaking became based on a formula, which was fully perfected in the genre
films. And it was the appeal of this formula that drove so many viewers
to see near-identical men in near-identical suits and hats sitting in nearidentical apartment rooms and bars and black, bulbous automobiles.
Still, for all its similarities to Fordist principles of rationalized production, Hollywood was not making Model Ts. That ascetic vehicle, a
triumph of functionalism, had succeeded by avoiding any traces of the
irrational decoration that Ford portrayed as wasteful, inefficient, and
feminine. . . . [But] the movies succeeded commercially to the extent
that they enchanted (Ray 2). While it is correct, then, to assume that
studio filmmaking engaged in the creation of standardized products, it
also embraced irrational decorationas evidenced by the incidental
shots of near-identical horses in a film that is obsessed with keeping
things on track for the pursuit of a mythical bird.
For over four hundred years, we are told in the films prologue, that
bird, a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels,
has been at the center of an intriguing mystery. Since it was first seized
by pirates in 1539, before it could be presented to Charles V of Spain
by the Knight Templars of Malta, the priceless bird has passed through
countless hands, turning up mysteriously in various parts of the globe
at different times. It remains, the prologue concludes, a mystery to
this day. It is this mystery that Spade inadvertently becomes involved
in the moment Brigid OShaughnessy walks into his office; it is this
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case that leads to Miles Archers murder. But Spade seems far less interested in finding the falcon than in solving the murder. Even though
Gutman assures him of the authenticity of the statuette These are
facts, historical facts, he tries to assure Spade, not schoolbook history, not Mr. Wellss history, but history neverthelessSpade remains
skeptical. For him, a Golden Falcon is the stuff that myths are made
of. After all, a pragmatic private eye cannot believe it exists, much less
expect it to simply fall into his hands. But Spade does stumble upon the
dingusor rather, it stumbles upon him. Just as he is telling his secretary Effie that the tale of the priceless bird is ridiculous, an old man
staggers into the office holding a package wrapped in newspaper, cryptically mumbles you know . . . falcon, and then collapses on a couch,
dropping the package on the floor (Fig. 4). Spade rushes to examine the
fellow, whom he identifies as Captain Jacoby, master of La Paloma, the
ship aboard which the falcon was supposed to have arrived from Hong
Kong. Jacoby, who has apparently been shot, dies before being of any
assistance in unraveling the mystery of the no-longer-missing falcon.
Along with Spade, we will have to wait for more details about the
mysterious falcon, for Jacoby does not stay alive long enough to tell us
something. Despite the dramatic entrance, Jacobys role in the narrative is limited to the delivery of the coveted bird. Still, when he stumbles
in, something about this shot of a staggering old man disrupts the narrative. We know that Captain Jacoby is played by Walter Huston, John
Hustons father. He agreed to appear uncredited; his cameo appearance
was meant to bring his sons directorial debut good luck. The Huston
charm seems to have worked. The film was a huge success, and its director was praised, along with Orson Welles that year, as one of the finest
young directors. As a New York Herald Tribune reviewer noted, Mr.
Huston might have been known at one time as the son of a celebrated
actor, Walter Huston. He needs no parental identification after this job
(qtd. in McCarty 38). But the image of the elder Huston staggering into
Spades office enables more than just an allegorical transfer of authority from father to son.17 His cameo is also staggering in another sense,
because the recognition of Walter Huston as John Hustons father overwhelms the fictional exchange of the statuette. Hustons cameo presence in Spades office distracts from the long-awaited appearance of the
jewel-encrusted falcon. What makes the cameo so distracting?
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Figure 4: An Odd Delivery: Why couldnt he have stayed alive long enough to tell
us something? Copyright 1941 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Figure 5: The Falcon Turns out Fake: The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.
Copyright 1941 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
110
Let us think about the cameos other meaning, as a precious gem

carved in relief, or a projecting detail on a sculpture that distinguishes
itself from the surrounding plane surface. All bundled up like the falcon
himself, Huston, in cameo, similarly appears like a precious object that
stands out from the narrative background. Indeed, Michael Andereggs
analysis of guest appearances gets at this inherently disruptive aspect
of the cameo. Anderegg calls these appearances bracketed, because
they are detachedor at least easily detachablefrom the flow of the
narrative in which they appear (147). Perhaps John Huston was intuitively aware of the cameos distracting possibilities, especially if we consider the anecdote that Lawrence Grobel recounts about the shooting
of that stumbling scene. Although Walter intended it as a goodwill gesture, John would not let his father off easy. John, Grobel notes, shot the
scene over and over, holding back his laughter, as Walter kept staggering in, falling, and dying. Walter complained that he didnt expect
to have to put in a days work. But John unapologetically chided his
father for missing the mark, saying This time, try it without staggering so much (221, emphasis added). Perhaps John Huston wanted the
falcon to be more staggering than its deliverer.
Curiously, when Spade finally gets his hands on the falcon, he does
not unwrap the poorly packaged statuette in a grand revelatory gesture. Instead, after briefly grinning at its contents, he rushes out of his
office to deposit the package at the Union Bus Station. So, when Effie
brings the falcon to Spades apartment in the final sequence, the statuette is still covered with the tattered newspaper that Jacoby delivered
it in. Spade places the old bundle on the table, and Brigid, Cairo, and
Gutman begin unwrapping it. The camera shows Gutmans hands tearing away the layers of packing with a violent intensity, as if he is plucking a bird to death. When the layers have been peeled back, Gutman
places the statuette upright. As he turns it around, we see two pairs of
hands touching the bird in an overtly fetishistic manner. In a close shot,
the precious falcon is revealed for the first time (Fig. 5).
Of the noir thrillers released in the forties, The Maltese Falcon
often regarded as the genres prototypeis the one markedly concerned
with the fate of objects, with what Spade calls the stuff that dreams are
made of. For that purpose, the black bird is an ideal prop: even in its
original, its a fake. From a previous scene, where Gutman recounts the
history of this strange bird, we recall that the jewel-encrusted falcon
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acquired a coat of enamel in the nineteenth century to disguise it as

nothing more than a fairly interesting black statuette. When it is
finally revealed, that is precisely what the statuette looks like: interesting
but not extraordinary. To be sure, Gutman starts chipping away at the
surface with a pocketknife, but after a few strokes, he realizes that there
is nothing underneath. Exasperated, he declares, Fake! Its a phony!
Its lead. The camera now pulls back, for the narrative must go on: the
quest for the real falcon will continue, assures Gutman, although Spade
will soon turn them all over to the police for the murders of Thursby
and Jacoby; for Miles Archers death, Brigid will take the fall. The focus
will no longer be on, as Spade tells Polhaus, this black statuette . . .
that all the fuss was about.
Nevertheless, as he walks off the screen with the dingus in his
arms, Spades final comment leaves a different impression. When Polhaus questions him about the unusual object, he responds, it is the, uh,
stuff that dreams are made of. Lesley Brill has argued that this allusion
to Shakespeares The Tempest enables Huston to emphasize the artifice
of the cinematic performance that the audience has just witnessed and
the internal fictions, the lies and acting that its figures have performed
for each other (153). But the reference does not only draw attention to
the diegetic artifice. Indeed, the line has become a popular expression
signifying the power of the movies in general, transforming a literary
allusion into a virtual clich that refers not to Shakespearean spirits but
to stuff just as ephemeral. Hollywoods like Egypt, David O. Selznick
had said about the already declining dream factory in the 1940s. He predicted that, like the disintegrating pyramids, Hollywood would never
come back. Itll just keep on crumbling, Selznick argued, until finally
the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands (qtd. in Hecht
258). From our perspective at the beginning of the twenty-first century,
we can see that the crumbling breakdown has long been accomplished.
And yet, some of the studio props have survived, and they continue to
generate tremendous excitement. One such prop, the coveted Maltese
falcon, was auctioned off at Christies East for $398,000 on December
4, 1994. The statuette was one of seven made by the prop department
at Warners, and the amount of money raised by this fake falcon (they
were all fake, of course, even as originals) is astounding when one considers that The Maltese Falcon itself was produced on a budget slightly
smaller than that. What makes an old studio prop so popular? Nare-
112
more suggests that its popularity replicates the fetishization of Classic

Hollywood cinema in general: A kitschy statuette originally intended
to represent a worthless imitation has been transformed into the stuff
that dreams are made of, if only because Humphrey Bogart touched it
(More Than Night 255). In other words, the statuette has now become
a collectors item, a souvenir, whose value far exceeds its role in the
diegesis. In a way that Selznick could not have imagined, Hollywoods
props have outlived its narratives.
who ever heard of a wrong number?
In Notes towards an Unrealized Project, Luis Buuel outlines
the idea for a picture, perhaps starring Adolphe Menjou and Myrna
Loy. It is expected to be a comedy. The whole thing is under way, he
notes, motoring as silently as a Rolls Royce, when one of the several
telephones in evidence starts to ring. At first, the characters decide to
ignore it, but the ringing does not stop. They look to the director for
help, but this is not a prank. By now the action has been suspended.
Menjou picks up the phone, says Wrong number, and hangs up. The
characters are apparently confused and dismayed. This is a smart
comedy, Buuel suggests, dependent on eleven exactly timed phone
cues. So the telephone will ring again and again, drawing the conventional plot to a pause. Since the cast does not know what to do, they
sit, reduced and stilled by this wretched phone. Murder is in the air
(qtd. in Thomson, Telephones 26).
Buuels sketch of a picture guided by phone cues captures the
negotiation highlighted at the very beginning in the portentous telephonic moment from The Maltese Falconincidentally, the film, like
Buuels proposal, is in fact structured by a series of phone cues. On
one hand, the ringing telephone draws attention to itself as a material
object, because it interrupts the context. And interruption, as Benjamin has argued, is one of the fundamental methods of all form-giving
(Understanding Brecht 19). So, when the telephone-bell rings in darkness, the narrative pauses. An outdated, stand-up Bell telephone turns
into a promising instance of photognie (Fig. 6). Yet, the phone must
be answered. As Godard has noted, we cannot resist it. Who can?
The phone reminds us that . . . we cannot resist the unknown future
(qtd. in Thomson, Telephones 27). So the narrative must resume: the
phone call initiates the pursuit of Archers murderer, which then gets
Spade tangled up in the tale of the missing falcon.
113
Figure 6: The Telephone Rings: All is lost. Copyright 1941 by Warner Bros.
Pictures.
Epstein also realized the telephones capacity to activate the narrative drive. While we are focused on the curtain at the window and
the handle of the door, he lamented, the telephone rings. All is lost
(242). Action now takes over, directing all attention to the onward
momentum of the plot. Visual pleasure yields to narrative closure. Still,
consider the potential of redirecting the call. For that is what flnerie
is about. Like a playful switchboard operator, the flneur reorders the
circuits. His method is one of redirection, where every move provides
an unanticipated connection. And that is what the previous section
has attempted to do with the stuff of The Maltese Falcon. Rather than
following the narrative track, each still redirects the trail of analysis
on a different course. As Buuel puts it, Who ever heard of a wrong
number? (qtd. in Thomson, Telephones 26).
SUNY-Brockport
notes
1. Convicting Archers murderer, of course, is not the central quest of the film.
The pursuit of the mythical falcon will not end even when the film comes to a close.
For, although Spade refuses to join the expedition, the search for the elusive bird
will apparently continue.
114
2. The Hopper painting generally discussed in connection with film noir is

Night Hawks, but I think that his interior scenes provide a much more fruitful comparison.
3. Although several film theorists have remarked on the similarities between
the railroad and cinema, Lynne Kirbys work on the parallel tracks of travel and
early spectatorship offers the most significant evaluation of the railroads function
in the prehistory and early history of cinema.
4. I am alluding to Frederick Palmers argument, as cited in the epigraph.
Writing as early as 1924 on the techniques of the photoplay, Palmer argued that
Hollywood cinema favored action, the outward expression of inner feelings, over
simple motion (qtd. in Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 15).
5. While there is no direct mention of doubt during this scene in Fitzgeralds
unfinished novel, the authors working notes give a sense of how the incident might
have developed. I am following Fitzgeralds stated intent in his working notes,
where he outlines how the entire scene was to play out, based on his recollections
of a conversation with Irving Thalberg, whom Stahr is supposed to represent.
6. The distracting nature of these glamorous objects can be compared to the
positive aura of film that Walter Benjamin distinguished from the traditional aura
of artwork. Due to its technical reproducibility, the experience of aura in cinema
was not related to its uniqueness or authenticity. Instead, what Benjamin valued
was the capacity of the cinematic object to enable an instantaneous activation
of memory images and associations in the spectator. To perceive the aura of an
object, he argued, means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return
(Charles Baudelaire 148).
7. Interestingly, while Epstein delights in the way Hayakawa moves, the focus
is not on movement. Like Charlie Chaplin, who fascinated the Impressionists not
for his active antics but for the appeal of his photogenic face, Hayakawa becomes
an ideal aesthetic object for him.
8. Gluck correctly cautions, potentially, any social type could be mistaken for
the flneur and the list of false flneurs was theoretically endless (67).
9. In a sense, Orson Welles demonstrates this tendency in Citizen Kane (1941),
where the entire life of Charles Foster Kane is constructed out of a single word
uttered at the beginning, Rosebud.
10. This tour would be different from the one offered by the studios themselves. Warner Bros., for instance, currently offers a VIP tour, which includes a tram
ride through old movie sets and a trip to the newly opened Warner Bros. museum in
Burbank. The museum houses some of the things from Warner classics that werent
recycled, sold, or torn down, including that most fetishistic of all cinematic props,
the original Maltese falcon statuette. But the studio tour stays too close to the
narrative track and does not allow any divergence.
115
11. Of course, for Cendrars, that is literally true. He recalls that one late evening while he was in Hollywood, he decided to walk back to his hotel on foot as
it was a splendid moonlit night and the hotel wasnt too far away. He was strolling
rather happily, not thinking of anything in particular, when he was stopped by the
police (52). Not having a car to zip around Hollywood had raised suspicion.
12. Cavell is in fact referring to the noir thrillers themselves, starting with The
Maltese Falcon. If those films did not exist, he suggests, Bogart would not exist,
the name Bogart would not mean what it does (28). He argues that Bogarts persona is so tied to film noir that he would not have existedhe certainly would not
have existed as Bogeywithout them.
13. That is why Banville lamented, however hyperbolically, the passing of the
cigarette dandy in an essay written just before Bonsacks machine automated cigarette production in 1895.
14. Gillis suggests that the caliber may have been changed because the thirtyeights were an extremely rare model. Given its rarity, he argues, it was too valuable a piece to be toted in the overcoat of a character the likes of Floyd Thursby
(30).
15. Besides the 1930s gangster films, Bogart had appeared in several Westerns before his breakthrough performance as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest
(1936).
16. In a previous essay, So Many Fragments, So Many Beginnings, So Many
Pleasures, I have argued that the horses may be regarded as such details as Zizekian sinthoms are made ofthey resist interpretation through repetition (181).
17. Lee Edelman makes an interesting case for reading this moment psychoanalytically, as the patriarchal transfer of phallic authority from father to son (80).
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a telephone-bell rings in darkness . . .

Out of the fading dust emerge

Rashna Wadia Richards

focused on the bedside composition, as if transfixed by a few charmed

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ventions of noir. As James Naremore argues, one tiny section of the

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railroads linear path as a model for preserving narrative continuity, The

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what was the nickel for?

Rashna Wadia Richards

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succession of framed, mobile images that told a condensed, continuous

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temporarily. Interestingly, Epsteins example of a photogenic moment,

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orable objects, like Dorothys ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz (1939),

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of gazing, like Elizabeth Cowies and Anne Friedbergs, have shown

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The Stuff That Movies Are Made of

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circulation was further intensified by the Napoleonic and Crimean

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mony, with a rapid, confident gesture (qtd. in Klein 42).13 Naturally,

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The Stuff That Movies Are Made of

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apartment, the scene unfolds mostly through a series of three-figured

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The Stuff That Movies Are Made of

Rashna Wadia Richards

Let us think about the cameos other meaning, as a precious gem

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acquired a coat of enamel in the nineteenth century to disguise it as

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more suggests that its popularity replicates the fetishization of Classic

The Stuff That Movies Are Made of

Rashna Wadia Richards

2. The Hopper painting generally discussed in connection with film noir is

The Stuff That Movies Are Made of

Rashna Wadia Richards

The Stuff That Movies Are Made of

Rashna Wadia Richards

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