Classics at The Alameda: The Maltese Falcon

The third week of classics at the Alameda Theatre commenced yesterday afternoon with The Maltese Falcon, John Huston's first film and one of Humphrey Bogart's finest moments. I have always enjoyed the movie but have rarely been able to follow the storyline no matter how many times I see it. Still, it's always fun to see a movie like that on the big screen -

- even if the projection disappoints. This time, in addition to the usual strange focus issues - maybe it does have to do with print quality, though I still don't understand how that could be - the film was projected to fill the full rectangular screen. This meant that a good 1/5 or more of the image was cut off, ruining Huston's framing. Back in 1941, when the film was released, films came in the squarer 1.33:1 "Academy" aspect ratio. The projectionist could have used a special lens to project the film properly; don't know if they lacked the lens or made the choice to fill up the screen. I believe that some films have been shot with the intention of "masking" part of the frame during projection - I need to look into this, as I've always wondered about it - but Falcon was not one of them.

Enjoyably enough, prior to the main feature the classic comedy short, The Absent-Minded Waiter, starring Steve Martin, was shown.