September 10 movie: Dangerous Female. This was a 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon. I can't comment on its quality because the Bogart version is so firmly imprinted on my brain, it was impossible to give this earlier one a fair shake. Sam Spade smiles too much, the woman's betrayal is too obvious too soon, and Gutman and Cairo ... no. Just no. The actors (Dudley Diggs and Otto Matieson) weren't bad, but no one can play those parts besides Syndey Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
The one weird thing was Diggs's performance as Gutman, a bizarrely accurate imitation of Greenstreet's. Bizarre because The Maltese Falcon in 1941 was Greenstreet's first movie, and that was his real voice, not a shtick. So how in the heck did Diggs manage to turn in such a prescient performance?
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