The character of the Falcon, an amateur gentleman detective similar to Leslie Charteris' "the Saint", was created by Michael Arlen, a Bulgarian-born British writer of Armenian descent, and was then taken up by Hollywood in a series of crime dramas. Arlen's hero was named Gay Falcon, but in the films he was, for unknown reasons, renamed Gay Lawrence, "the Falcon" being a nickname. (Arlen's choice of a forename for his hero was a strange one. I am well aware that in the thirties and forties the word "gay" did not carry its modern meaning of "homosexual", but even then "Gay" was well-established as a feminine Christian name). In the first four films the Falcon was played by George Sanders, who had also played the Saint in a series of films based on Charteris' books. Feeling that he was becoming typecast, Sanders dropped out of the series after the fourth film in which a new Falcon was introduced, Gay Lawrence's brother Tom. This character was played by Sanders' real-life brother, Tom Conway. (His real name was Tom Sanders; "Conway" was a stage name).
Arlen, in fact, only wrote one "Falcon" story, which formed the basis for the first film, "The Gay Falcon"; for all the others a new plot had to be found. "New", however, did not always mean "original", and for the third instalment in the series, "The Falcon Takes Over" (aka "The Falcon Steps Out"), the producers borrowed the plot of Raymond Chandler's novel "Farewell, My Lovely", also to be filmed as "Murder, My Sweet" two years later. (A third adaptation of the book, under its original title, was made in the seventies). They moved the action from Los Angeles to New York and substituted the Falcon for Chandler's hero Philip Marlowe.
I won't go into the plot in any detail; as one might expect with Chandler it is extremely complex. It revolves around Moose Malloy, a thuggish former wrestler who has escaped from prison and is looking for his old girlfriend. Besides Moose and the Falcon, other characters include an attractive lady reporter, a wealthy heiress and the Falcon's assistant Jonathan 'Goldie' Locke, who plays Watson to his Holmes. Locke is a wisecracking New Yorker with a strong Brooklyn accent; the idea was presumably to provide a contrast with the Falcon himself, who is played as an upper-class English gentleman.
The film was made as a B-movie, which meant that it had a very short running time of only just over an hour. This was really insufficient to deal with all the complexities of Chandler's plot and as a result the film comes across as very rushed, muddled and difficult to follow. That is not always a problem with forties crime dramas; nobody, for example, would claim that the plot of Howard Hawks' "The Big Sleep", also based on a Marlowe story, is easy to understand, yet it is still a great movie. Director Irving Reis, however, is unable to capture that powerful sense of atmosphere which is so important a quality of Hawks' film.
I have often admired Sanders as an actor, but normally in better films than this one. He often seemed to be at his best in supporting roles rather than as the main star, for example in "Rebecca", "Samson and Delilah", "Foreign Correspondent", "Ivanhoe" and "All about Eve", for which he won a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar. (Indeed, in a number of these films, notably "Samson" and "Foreign Correspondent", he actually gave a better performance than did the film's official main star). Here, however, he is the lead, and hardly makes the most of it, seeming far too relaxed and laid-back. This may be in line with the Falcon's character, but in real life even the most insouciant individuals tend to become more serious when grave matters like murder are at stake. Allen Jenkins as Goldie starts off as amusing but his appeal wears off after a while.
Reis was clearly attempting the film noir style which was becoming very fashionable in 1942, but noir seems to have needed the greater budget and running-time of an A-movie to succeed. Many noirs from the period remain marvellously watchable today, but "The Falcon Takes Over" is not amongst them. 4/10
