Vague Visages’  Monsieur Spade review contains minor spoilers. Scott Frank and Tom Fontana’s Canal+ series on AMC features Clive Owen, Cara Bossom and Denis Ménochet. Check out the VV home page for more TV reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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It’s often been said that you’re only as good as your last story. In Sam Spade’s case, this is especially true. Not only was Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon a pop sensation, but it also proves to be the stuff dreams are made of — Hollywood dreams. Soon after its publication, adaptations of the pulp caper flourished not once, but three times over. The third time was the charm, featuring Humphrey Bogart’s sharp, cold performance in the homonymous 1941 film under the iconoclastic direction of John Huston. They created the genre which Cahiers du Cinéma terms film noir, providing a winning formula for private detective tales.

Canal’s TV adaptation mostly stays true to form, in spite of changes in location and cast. Director Scott Frank and writer Tom Fontana ditch the 1940s setting of crime-ridden San Francisco and reposition Sam Spade (Clive Owen) in the middle of southern France. The lead actor respectably carries forward the literary protagonist’s classic persona, but beyond his performance and the rich French ambiance, there’s not much to the inaugural episode of the six-episode series. Monsieur Spade’s peripheral characters don’t have great depth, and the pilot episode’s sluggish plot is disappointing. The egg yolk is runny. 

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Monsieur Spade’s story, little that there is, picks up 10 years after the original novel and film, in which Spade sends Brigid O’Shaughnessy up a river following the murder of Miles Archer. For reasons unknown in the Canal adaptation, it’s revealed that Spade engineered O’Shaughnessy’s release. The protagonist’s new business venture is to hunt for Frenchman Philippe Saint-Andre (Jonathan Zaccaï), who is a former lover of O’Shaughnessy and the father of her daughter, Teresa (Cara Bossom). Spade’s well-compensated mission is to return the young girl to her do-nothing father and biting grandmother, Audrey Saint-André (Caroline Silhol). This task proves to be unproductive, as neither of the aforementioned French adults welcome the opportunity to claim Teresa as their own.

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Soon, Spade meets the love of his life, Gabrielle (Chiara Mastroianni), and discovers that she had more than social encounters with Philippe. The characters then scheme how to get Zaccaï’s character out of their lives and send him off to serve in the Algerian conflict. Eight additional years pass and so does Gabrielle, leaving Spade the inheritor of a luxurious chateau. He places Teresa in a Catholic orphanage, leaving him with nothing to do other than swimming. But true to classic noir fashion, old ghosts rarely go gently into the night, and it isn’t long after Gabrielle’s passing that the townspeople of Bozouls get wind of Philippe’s return. Now, Zaccaï’s character is eager to claim his daughter’s inheritance money. Chief of Police Patrice Michaud (Denis Ménochet) advises Spade to use extreme discretion when approaching Philippe, but this warning proves irrelevant as mysterious forces come into play. Spade subsequently finds himself wedged in a conflict between potential business partner Jean-Pierre Devereaux (Stanley Weber) and his wife, Marguerite Devereaux (Louise Bourgoin).

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Anyone hoping for a quick, plausible explanation as to why the hard-boiled and quick-tongued Spade is suddenly soaking up the sun in bucolic southern France will be out of luck. This is the age of streaming. Audiences now complacently accept that a series’ opening episodes will merely unbox the characters and chum the waters with red herrings. Conflict and plot arrive later, one hopes. In Monsieur Spade, Owen does indeed bring his A game, presenting viewers with a slower, perhaps more contemplative version of Spade — almost as if the character has accumulated years of emotional baggage. The actor delivers the crass dialogue that Bogie became well known for, even if it’s a more down-beat and less frantic interpretation.

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One of first signs of trouble in Monsieur Spade’s first episode is the overall lack of antagonists — the slow burn feels ill-suited for the title character and the genre at large. Within the first 24 minutes of The Maltese Falcon (1941), Spade is up against a bunch of cut-throat murderers, a deceptive female who may have killed his partner and a police force happy to pin the murder on him. This accents the story’s central focus of the mysterious black bird which triggers a handful of murders while traveling half-way around the world. Monsieur Spade, in comparison, takes 30 minutes to set up a cliché-ridden child custody battle, a soap opera love triangle and a government conspiracy with a supernatural twist. On paper, perhaps these ideas are enticing, but they seem like a cobbled attempt to fill Spade’s time, rather than giving him a renewed sense of purpose.

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None of the other threats hold true as detective mysteries — just melodramatic grudges. Another flaw I perceive in the characterization of Spade is the premise that he is willing to go back on his word at the end of The Maltese Falcon and redeem O’Shaughnessy. This is beyond fan fiction, making me question whether or not Frank and Fontana understand the thematic weight and defining character motivation of Spade sending O’Shaughnessy away in the first place. It’s understandable that a slight update of Hammett’s creation might be in order, one that exposes a little bit more of the protagonist’s humanity, but what suffers in the process is the reptilian cold sense of justice. Contrary to typical noir is Monsieur Spade’s dependence upon exposition to fill much of the story. While it provides Ménochet something to do alongside Owen, a more organic approach is preferable. 

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Points go to Monsieur Spade’s costume department, which applies the best brown duster and short-brim fedora to align with Owen’s gruff mug. If not for the interest decline of comic strip characters, a Dick Tracy revamp might have proven more becoming. Cinematographer David Ungaro’s work proves efficient for the task at hand, the best of which commences Monsieur Spade’s pilot episode. Natural lighting and sharp camera work are put to good use, creating a grey that goes well with the greenish hills of the French countryside and the blackening skies of a looming thunderstorm. This serves as a visual metaphor to complement Sam Spade’s broken spirit and sense of melancholy. Unfortunately, in the later portions of the first episode, the artistic expression subsides. The beautiful interiors of a French chateau and a fully realized market square seem more akin to a Rick Steves’ Europe episode and less suited for a high stakes crime drama.

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Monsieur Spade faces more challenges than the short-lived 1983 NBC serialization of another iconic Bogart protagonist, Rick Blaine, (Casablanca, 1942). The characters of The Maltese Falcon are simply not as endearing as Casablanca. Plus, the conclusion doesn’t have the same heartache or angst. As identified in Umberto Eco’s “‘Casablanca’: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage,” there is an established cult following for Casablanca that is eager to revisit the film’s world, largely because it has been echoed throughout various other movies, particularly during the mid-20^th century. By comparison, I would argue that no comparable fetishization with The Maltese Falcon exists, and even if it does, it’s only in the manner of rewatching the original film, not with a yearning for continuation.

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Monsieur Spade’s second episode hints at the notion of a supernatural child and government espionage, but none of it will be the stuff dreams are made of, at least if the first episode is indicative of the rest. I’m inclined to stick with the ending of The Maltese Falcon, in which O’Shaughnessy gets carried off in a steel elevator, never to be seen again. Hard boiled.

Peter Bell (@PeterGBell25) is a 2016 Master of Arts – Film Studies graduate of Columbia University School of Arts in New York City. His interests include film history, film theory and film criticism. Ever since watching TCM as a child, Peter has had a passion for film, always trying to add greater context to film for others. His favorite films include Chinatown, Blade Runner, Lawrence of Arabia, A Shot in the Dark and Inception. Peter believes movie theaters are still the optimal forum for film viewing, discussion and discovering fresh perspectives on culture.

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