"Let's do something right for a change"

Let's face it. Sam is more badass than Rick. I know Rick has all the dramatic power, the underneath explosions going on and incredible count of memorable lines that would be unnecessary to add in this analysis. But Sam Spade doesn’t need all this material. He is blunt! He is charming and he has the balls to what he has to do despite what he is feeling. Different from Rick, that constructed all his character around only one sad break up.
We have to be frank on that. Rick pulled down his entire life because a girl left him on a train station. I know it was an incredible intense bound that the two of them created, but it wasn’t that big, he wasn’t strong enough to move on. And I am not saying that is bad thing. Because his entire character was build around just one love fail that make his cynism more legit. Casablanca is about his confrontation to all he sheltered from.
But Sam Spade... Although Casablanca is one of my favourites and it is above any common selection, Maltese Falcon captures my fantasies and transforms them into images. For a fairly bright noir movie, with a plot that would be rejected by studios in our current days, it actually defines the entire “dark” motif of all detective movies and influences other productions in many. (Look at Batman, which curiously enough started been published on a comic called “Detective Comics.”) And Sam Spade is all that Batman wanted to be.
As we mentioned during classes, the best way to approach movies is to compare them with other movies. And Sam only makes sense in comparison with other characters, especially from other movies.
At first I thought Sam was just so...blunt and plain and he would never have the charm of Rick. He has a different kind of charm. And that’s why he is much more difficult to read than Rick. Rick has a past and a really developed background. We don’t know much more about Sam than anyone else in the Maltese Falcon. He is just a stereotype. He is a Hero! But, differently from the heroes in Greek tragedies, he is not really that noble, nor he is running away from destine. He is just trying to make the better for himself. Okay...I was trying to avoid the term but that will have to appear. He is the prototype of an anti-hero. And nothing will remove from my head that for some reason, that was not a fake falcon. I know it was set during the progression of the climax that it was not the Maltese falcon, but there is something in Sam that makes him unpredictable. He beats people up without any feelings, just to defend his moment. And then he resumes the negotiation as it was the most normal thing to do! How not to like him?
And, specially comparing these 2 movies: they had 2 things that distinguished the mood of the happenings: Paris for Casablanca and the Falcon for the Maltese Falcon. The understanding of Rick and Sam of those things define who they were. For Rick, Paris was the last piece of heaven he ever had and expects to have again one more time. It was his hydro honey. The Falcon for Sam did not mean anything, and he just wanted it because it would help him in his end of the bargain. The attachment of Rick makes him cynic and the detachment of Sam makes him so badass!
When he sends the love of his life to jail, knowing and showing that he loves her, just made him more special. In the end, the moral of Sam, the guy that only thinks of himself, is way more integral then the moral of Rick, the one that was really trying to do the right thing.
If Sam was the owner of the bar in Casablanca, those Nazi officers would be pig’s food really quick and we would have a terrible movie on the screen. But I am always more pleased to watch badass characters in the screen, although they can only fit in specific kind of movies. And don’t get me wrong. I would be more than pleased to have tons of Sam’s movies all over the places. I would love to watch lots of amazing scenes where the protagonist knows and is able to overcome any adversity, without sweating his clothes.

But I would, hiding from everyone, watch over and over Casablanca, crying by myself.