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| Source: Wikipedia |
The stuff gleaned from that conversation is then invalidated by the next conversation, not to mention garbled by Humphrey Bogart's signature drawl. Awfully often, we hear one side of a phone conversation and have the pleasure of extrapolating the other half. And then, from this succession of half-conversations, we somehow extrapolate a classic movie.
Sam Spade is a private dick "too slick for [his] own good." (Finding unintentionally hilarious innuendo makes old movies so much more fun to watch. Other gems: "You're a good man, sister," and "I've taken all the riding from you I'm gonna take." Collect them all!)
When SS's unlikable partner loses an argument with a bullet, and so does the dude his partner was tailing. Now that it's gotten semi-personal, our alliterative detective takes up the case.
How does he do it? Well, he mumbles a lot, and mumbles fast. He only smiles ironically, and the rest of the time he emotes about as much as a stroke victim encased in concrete. With these intimidation tactics, he casually drops vaguely worded intel. The nervous nellies fill in the rest. To get the truth, Bogie slaps it out of men, obliges womanly wiles, and follows up every lead on the missing Maltese "dingus" (as he calls it -- what'd I tell you about innuendo).
The spiffy gents in fancy suits wade him into a swamp of murky morality. As an archetypical detective, he's more interested in getting paid than bringing criminals to justice (or so he claims).
As for the titular plot device? The introductory text scroll sells a hackneyed backstory about the Crusades and a gift to Charles V of Spain that fell afoul of pirates, or some such drivel. Some dame asks Bogie what it's made of, and he replies, "The stuff dreams are made of." Intangible ideals, self-deception, and 8 mm film. But things people will cheat and kill and shell out the big bucks for.
And occasionally jabber about little to nothing for 100 minutes out of 101.
101 minutes.
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