Satan Met a Lady

1936 "HE MADE LOVE TO HER TO MAKE HER CONFESS MURDER! Then She Made A Confession That Made Even The Devil's Ears Burn!"
5.8| 1h14m| NR| en
Details

In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief.

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Reviews

GazerRise Fantastic!
Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
MisterWhiplash The issue with this second adaptation of The Maltese Falcon is that Warner brothers wanted to not really adapt the book; they had adapted it years before, but that was in a pre-code, early-sound era studio that was trying things out. In 1934 Hammett's The Thin Man became a big hit and clearly they saw the author name and thought they could lock in to another winning turn by, in so many words, thin-manning the Maltese Falcon.But these are two very different modes of the author - the Thin Man is a light comedy that has some serious undertones and is commanded by Powell and Loy, and the Maltese Falcon was a hard-boiled detective story where Sam Spade has to avenge his partners murder and becomes embroiled with a host of characters - and director William Dieterle thought he could have it both ways. Certainly Warren William tried to channel Powell a lot here, and he might be good in other movies (I don't recognize him), but he's really a discount William Powell, a guy trying really hard to have that charming, sarcastic patter with everyone. The script doesn't really give the audience a break from his attitude so that when he has to play serious it doesn't stick so much.It may be unfair at first thought to try to compare this to the Huston film since, if for no other reason, this was a world that didn't exist. The one thing that this film can possibly compare favorably is Bette Davis. It's an understatement to say she stole the show; she is having so much fun in this part and at the same time doing her darndest to uplift everyone around her. She is beaming and on fire and alive in every moment on screen and there are a few seconds where it seems like she might, might, get a spark of a connection with William. And she's in about 20 minutes of the 74 minute run time.I think this can be judged on its own terms, and on its own it just compelling past being a typical B movie comedy-cum-thriller. All of the supporting players are trying. Sort of. But a couple of actors, like Marie Wilson as (not) Spade's secretary, are given one character trait and it is grating. The tone is all just off and it is trying to be too light when it needs some darkness or at least some commitment to the dramatics of the story. I will give one little extra point to the end of the film and again how Davis is giving an A+ barn burning performance in the middle of a C-grade production.
utgard14 Second film version of The Maltese Falcon is worth a look but pales by comparison to either the 1931 version or the 1941 classic. The problem is they cut so much of what makes the story great, particularly most of Dashiell Hammett's great dialogue. They also add a lot of unfunny comedy to things. Warren William is Ted Shane (not Sam Spade) and he spends the whole movie trying to be as annoying as possible. I think he was supposed to be roguishly charming but it just came across as smug and irritating. Marie Wilson, who I normally like, also gets on my nerves here. Worth seeing for the curiosity factor, as well as Bette Davis, who looks great and is the most interesting part of the movie.
policy134 Having seen the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon at least ten times, it is kind of hard to swallow the story as kind of a madcap comedy.The film stars one Warren William, who I frankly never heard of, as the private eye, here renamed Ted Shane. Bette Davis plays Valerie Purvis, the Brigid character, and in the film's most hilarious part, Arthur Treacher, playing Anthony Travers (Joel Cairo in the '41 version).Davis, as widely reported, was given lackluster parts at this point in her career, and it definitely shows here. She does very little here and there is no indication of her being as dangerous as the character portrayed in the '41 version.To get back to Warren William. He was probably somewhat of a big name in the 30s but it certainly doesn't show here. His character is wildly uneven when it comes to what he is supposed to be. If his character is comedic, then he isn't that funny? If his character is supposed to be a threat, he is as much a threat as Dennis was a menace.The best parts are played by Marie Wilson as Miss Murgatroyd and the aforementioned Arthur Treacher as Anthony Travers. Wilson's "How you doing" is oddly hysterical for some reason. Don't let me explain why, and Treacher has a funny scene with William discussing the trumpet (this movie's version of the falcon).All you can say is nice try but I totally agree with the naysayers of this version. Stick with the Bogart film.
Igenlode Wordsmith It had never previously occurred to me that the convoluted plot of 'The Maltese Falcon' was verging on that of a farce; but in fact this reinterpretation fits with surprising success throughout most of the action of the film...The gulf between this version of the story and the darker wartime 'Falcon' of 1941 is a jolting one, but when it is compared to the film of which it is actually a remake -- Warner Brothers' 1931 'Maltese Falcon' -- the relationship between the earlier two becomes obvious. Warren William's Ted Shane, with his womanising touch and his insolent grin, has far more in common with Ricardo Cortez' silent-style Sam Spade than with Bogart's noir version (and, to be honest, with the 'blond Satan' of Hammett's original novel).William is well cast here as the amoral private eye playing all sides off against one another: in this film, he comes across as being in control of the situation all along, tricking information out of the gentleman crook Travers, disarming the impotent but vindictive Kenneth and driving a hard bargain with Madame Barabbas for a treasure he knows to be without value. When he induces Valerie to confess her guilt in the railway carriage, I was all but expecting him to produce a concealed police officer at the appropriate moment to bear witness! Despite the fact that everyone from his former lover to his own secretary seems to take it for granted, despite his assurances, that it was he who murdered his partner, Ted Shane -- as befits the hero of a light-hearted farce -- never leaves us in any doubt that he is destined to come out on top.Bette Davis, despite her top billing, has relatively little to do here and demonstrates an all too apparent lack of interest. Bebe Daniels, in the equivalent 1931 part, is both more alluring and more obviously faking it; her scenes with Sam Spade often have more comedy, as her character rolls out her full seductive armoury against a complacent male target, than Davis' scenes underplayed here in what is intended to be a farce. I found the minor role of the scatty little secretary Murgatroyd -- who, in this version ends up with the hero for the requisite happy ending! -- to be the more memorable one.But I'm afraid the ending was my main difficulty with the reinterpretation of this plot in comic vein. The mix-ups, multiple women and seemingly pointless events of the start are almost intrinsically amusing, and indeed are already played as such in the 1931 'Maltese Falcon'. The final scenes, however, with their betrayals, dirty dealing and killings for a fortune that never was, have a much more nihilistic tone, and the 'siege' sequence of the earlier version, where all the characters are locked in a room together by mutual suspicion until the morning comes, holds an edge of explosive threat. Staging the equivalent sequence on the docks under a fire-hose downpour, with Shane brandishing the valuables literally just above the villains' noses and getting paid for his trouble rather than coshed for the loot, doesn't serve to raise a laugh... but does rob the scene of most of its effectiveness.Likewise, Valerie's admission of murder and her railing at Shane after he hands her over to the police are not only not funny -- although at least in the latter case, they're clearly intended that way -- but they have no emotional impact either. The result was an unsatisfactory resolution without any resonance to speak of; and Valerie's parting shot, while being dragged off to pay the penalty for murder, where she predicts for Shane the dire fate of... marriage, falls flat as almost embarrassingly inappropriate.'Satan Met a Lady' actually starts off by looking quite promising and at the outset is genuinely funny: but a lacklustre part for the leading lady, plus a growing incongruity between the hard-boiled subject matter and its delivery, serve to undermine this favourable first impression. I enjoyed Warren William's performance, but in the end I felt the film didn't really work.