George Raft wouldn't have done too badly as Sam Spade in this classic private eye mystery but no way near as well as Humphrey Bogart who took the role and completely ran with it, launching himself as a star. And no wonder - its remarkable what an anti-hero Spade is: mean, cruel, sleeping with his partner's wife, sadistic (look at his face when he punches Peter Lorre), greedy, snarky. His saving grace is a sense of honour and the fact the villains are worse. Or, more accurately, fabulous: was there ever a better rogues gallery than Sydney Greenstreet, Lorre, Elisha Cook Jnr and Mary Astor (who I never used to be a fan of but my appreciation of her performance grows every time I see this film)?
There is an awful lot of exposition going on here - great slabs of dialogue which go on and on, and to be honest sometimes I had trouble following the plot. But I went with it because the acting and dialogue was so good - there's encounter after encounter between masters at their peak: Bogart and Astor, Bogart and Lorre, Bogart and Greenstreet. I felt it could have done with some more emotion - I never really got the sense that Bogart fell for Astor, despite that dynamic finish.
Lots of gay subtext - Lorre/Cairo is campy, Greenstreet/Gutman keeps pawing Bogart - plenty of nice touches (eg Bogart's hand shaking after an encounter with the others), a cute cameo from Walter Huston, some scary cops (Ward Bond and Barton MacLane), plenty of rich supporting roles.
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