A single literary work created and re-imagined three times in this turbulent environment reveals a great deal about the repurposing of source texts.ĭashiell Hammett's novel has a dual focus. The coincidence of producing the three Maltese Falcon films during various stages of the Code's development and enforcement gives them particular interest as examples of the constraints under which filmmakers worked and how they responded. The Production Code was the newly consolidated industry's strategy for managing agitation for government censorship, both federal and local. Meanwhile the film industry was growing rapidly and consolidating, renovating theatres for sound and fighting off calls for censorship that had their roots in the rapid and uneven social change. The liberated 'New Era' of the twenties was coming to a close after the stock market crash of 1929 and the movement of the country into the Great Depression.

At the beginning of the period, a century-long battle over Prohibition still raged with momentum now swinging to the side favoring repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Over the next decade-a period of dramatic change in the country and in the film industry-the novel served as the basis of three Warner Brothers films, The Maltese Falcon (1931), Satan Met a Lady (1936), and The Maltese Falcon (1941). It quickly became a best seller and was acquired by Warner Brothers on June fifth (Layman 125). This might be the best audiobook I have heard so far.The Maltese Falcon first appeared serially in Black Mask beginning in September 1929 and in book form in February 1930. The mental images created are very strong in this novel, the characters so stereotypical or 'characaturised' as to be almost cartoonish, but in an entertaining way, and in a style which reflected the 1940's I suppose. Listening to the audiobook also made me realise how much 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit ?' owed to the book, rather than the movie. The voice of Cairo (Peter Lorrie in the movie) is delightful, as if the actor himself, dead all these years, had come back.

Usually the 'dipthong drift' which characterises Amer-English makes the voices too whiney and insubstantial when compared, for example, with Richard Burton or Derek Jacobi. This is the first time I have heard an American reader carry off multiple voices and characters. The femme fatale is wonderfully portrayed, as is the treacherous Joel Cairo. It was richer, and more detailed than the movie (in which Bogie played Sam Spade). The audiobook of the Maltese Falcon exceeded my expectations.

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