What an incredible movie. The ending line, "the stuff that dreams are made of" is very poignant. This film really skyrocketed Huston’s career obviously. We’re going to see a new generation of filmmakers push narrative cinematic storytelling further in terms of what stories they tackle, the characters they depict and this moral edge between good and evil become further and further obscured.
This film is the first real Film Noir in a sense. There's heavily stylized lighting with chiaroscuro elements. There's slashes of light cutting through a darkened room with a heavy contrast between black and white in the lighting design. It's not gradual shifts either, the darkness and light interplay across the set drastically changing between extreme black and extreme highlight. The camera movements as well are becoming more based on the beat, the acting beat and landing the camera right as the actor says their line or realizes something.
You can tell Hollywood is beginning to push back against the Hays Code dictating what morals can be put onscreen. Film Noir challenges the notion of the "good guy" heavily by making its heroes also villains and criminals in a way. World War 2 clearly is starting to warp the psyche of the American Public by living through evil times. And in that crucible of almost apocalyptic reality, the general public's perception of morals and ethics become heavily twisted. We know this to be the case with the dropping of the Atomic bomb at the end of the war. So it only makes sense that the films of the day start to reflect this inner moral turmoil and battle for the soul of America that is occurring during the war where news of horrible things happening abroad for the sake of advancing the war effort start filtering in.
The lighting design of film noir with intense interplay of dark and light right next to each other without any graduation between them but just stark contrast in addition to these storylines featuring anti-heroes like Sam Spade who is a private detective, an occupation that inherently lives on that edge of good and bad, is becoming more and more appealing to an American public yearning to find answers or dive deep into this space of moral and ethical ambiguity.
Apart from the industry's shift towards tackling these topics this story is quite captivating, even if it is a bit convoluted and nonsensical at times. The way information is slowly scattered out throughout the film like bread crumbs keeps us asking for the next scene and the next scene without really caring if the bread crumbs actually form a complete picture of the story or not. It's the journey of uncovering the "hidden truth that lies beneath the surface" that keeps us engaged.