The Maltese Falcon (or, First, first, first!)

I caught The Maltese Falcon at acmi the other day. Richard has taken it upon himself to accompany on a brisk walk through early noir cinema. It all started with Double Indemnity a few weeks ago and it looks like it is going to continue very soon with To Have and Have Not.

Anyway. Loved The Maltese Falcon. Loved the creeping menace of the film. Loved the dialogue, especially Bogart's final speech. Loved Peter Lorre's gayer than gay character (as highlighted in The Celluloid Closet).

It is easy to see why it is considered a classic and championed as the beginnings of noir. Though it was a shame that the print acmi is showing is rather decrepit.

I don't suppose I can lay claim to not having seen a Bogart film any more. Or a Huston film. I can only consider that a good thing.

Eyes, Lies and Illusions @ ACMI

After such praise from Richard, and having an afternoon dangling, I visited ACMI for their latest exhibition. Eyes, Lies and Illusions promised to deliver a cavalcade of mind-bending illusions from the pre-cinematic age. And it did, but I’d seen most of it before so I left feeling less than whelmed.

It is a clever little exhibition, well curated, quirkily set out, but it is much more hands off than it needed to be. Part of the fun of these illusions it their ability to animate with the tug of a string or the flick of a finger and the countless “hands off” signs made it abundantly clear that the powers that be weren’t very amenable to that.

What does manage to shine through from behind the Perspex is the ingenuity of the human mind when it comes to creating diversions and the charming naivity of the human mind for being diverted so fully by such things.

Check it out but try to sneak in because it isn’t really worth the entry fee – you’re not living in the 18th century, you’re not going to be stunned.