“You are a liar.”
“I’ve always been a liar,” she says with a sly satisfied smile, and he grins like a ghost playing charades with a charlatan, somehow seeing that the tangled twisted temptress is… Well. She just is. She is Brigid O’Shaughnessy (or so she says), and she’s equal parts liar, thief, murderer, and whore.
*
“You are a liar.”
“I’ve always been a liar,” she states with candid conspiracy, gleefully appalled by her own admission.
“Well,” replies an amused Sam Spade, his laugh a huff of unexpected breath, hanging in the air between them.
*
“You are a liar.”
“I’ve always been a liar.”
“Well,” he responds with a laugh, “Don’t brag about it.”
*
I rewind the scene and play it again…and again… And am repeatedly amazed ~ 70 years after the movie’s making ~ at Bogie’s brilliance.
There is crystal clarity in the shaded gray of black and white, in the hard-boiled soft spots of Hammett’s heros, in the timeless noir of 1941. So I lose myself in Bogart’s breakthrough role, in Huston’s directorial debut, in the hijinx of high-living lowlifes, and I seek solace there…
If only for a little while.
I am both taken by your loving description of the scene AND your unbridled passion for it.
It looks very sexy on you.
Well, if you think *that’s* sexy, you should see me read a book. 😉
I do it in bed.
With unbridled passion.
Naked.
(Excepting, of course, one necessary accessory: my glasses.)
Feel free to visualize…
Seriously. Brutally. Exquisitely. Un-fucking-fair.
You’re welcome. 😉
Humphrey Bogart / Mary Astor in John Huston’s The Malteese Falcon. Classic! Does it really get any better than this? Well, maybe close, but not better.
This interplay between their characters ~ three simple lines ~ tells you everything you need know about each of them, without really telling you anything at all.
And then again, at the end, Sam says to Brigid: “I won’t, because all of me wants to.”
Classic.
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