The Gad About Town

Alfred Hitchcock is credited with coining the term “MacGuffin,” but not the thing itself, which has been around since people started telling stories to each other. In spy movies and thrillers, a MacGuffin is the object that sets the plot of the movie in motion; it’s usually a something people desire that the hero and his nemeses pursue, and that pursuit provides the film’s plot. The specific nature and form of the MacGuffin is usually unimportant to the overall plot. In plot terms, but not theological ones, the apple in Genesis is a MacGuffin.

In The Maltese Falcon, which made its debut in American movie theaters 75 years ago today, Mary Astor’s character Brigid O’Shaughnessy asks Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) if he would (be doing what he is about to do) if (money had possibly been acquired). (How’s that for avoiding a spoiler?)

The Maltese falcon, a jewel-encrusted treasure of centuries past, or not, is an innocent bystander for the entire movie. It sure looks valuable, looks like it is worth multiple lives, double- and triple-cheating, the sacrifice of love both real and pretend. As Det. Polhaus says as he lifts it, in the second-to-last line, it sure is, “heavy. What is it?” Sam Spade replies, and this is no spoiler even though it is the final line, “The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.”
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The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
 
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
 
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
 
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.—Wallace Stevens, “Of Mere Being,” Opus Posthumous

Wallace Stevens (above) was born on this date in 1879.
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