Watch A Date with the Falcon For Free

A different way of telling a story

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Producer: Howard Benedict. Copyright 20 November 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Rialto: 24 November 1941. U.S. release: 16 January 1942. Australian release: 16 March 1942. 5,833 feet. 64 minutes.NOTES: Number 2 of the 16 "Falcon" pictures. "The Gay Falcon" (sic) was number 1.COMMENT: One or two bright moments — Hans Conried playing an inquisitive desk clerk without his usual accent; Allen Jenkins listening to a soap opera on his car radio — cannot lighten an elephantine script and heavy-handed acting, particularly from Gleason, Jenkins and Barrie. Dull direction doesn't help either. The script's humor is aimed at four-year-olds. Aggressively bombastic acting from Gleason and Jenkins, makes it even less tolerable. No wonder Sanders appears so understandably bored stiff. The scene with him on the ledge, and the crowd urging him to jump, foreshadows "14 Hours", and may excite sociologists. Unfortunately, this entry is not content to be just of peripheral interest — or even just plain dull — but determinedly tedious. Only Mona Maris as a fairly agreeable femme fatale can partly save the day. Production values are no more — and sometimes less — than adequate.

In the 1930s and 40s there were a ton of B-detective series films, such as Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, Boston Blackie, The Lone Wolf as well as The Falcon. All these movies shared some common traits--the movies were short (only about an hour in length), were very quickly made, had rather formulaic plots, featured stupid cops and were a lot of fun to watch but also tend to blend together in your mind because the stories are all so similar. I like these films a lot and have probably seen more of them than a person should! Of these series, The Falcon may be my favorite due to the excellent dialog and better than average supporting characters. It's really a shame George Sanders only made a few, though his brother (Tom Conway) continued the series with about nine of his own. It's also a shame that as the series continued, the films became less and less interesting--perhaps due to the frequency of their being produced (six in a two year span alone).As I mentioned above, The Falcon series had good supporting characters. In this case, the Inspector was played very capably by veteran character actor James Gleason. Unlike most cops in other series, Gleason wasn't particularly dim. He did have a dim assistant (Leo Cleary), but despite Brody's lower than normal I.Q., he did manage to catch the criminals single-handedly. All this was such a relief to me--finally cops in a detective film that weren't total buffoons! In addition to these actors, George Sanders' assistant is the old reliable character actor, Allen Jenkins--who is always great for a laugh.The plot is about a synthetic diamond formula that is so good that even experts can't tell these fakes from high quality originals. Not surprisingly, the inventor and his formula are kidnapped (after Gleason does about the only bone-headed thing in the movie--leaving the scientist alone in his lab to wait for a bodyguard to arrive). Now that I think about it, the plot itself really isn't all that important--it's the characters and Sanders' witty comments he made throughout this breezy little gem.

Years ago I must have taped this film which was shown on TCM and it sure was an eye opener. George Sanders,( Gay Lawrence/Falcon),"Solomon and Sheba",'59, played a role quite similar to the "Thin Man" series with Dick Powell. The Falcon was about to get married to Helen Reed,(Wendy Barrie),"Peter Pan",'50 Broadway Theatre, NYC, and suddenly was caught up in a great mystery concerning diamond dealings and plenty of gangsters. James Gleason,(Inspector Mike O'Hara), tried to keep up with the Falcon and was even forced into arresting him quite often through out the picture. This was really a slap stick Comedy, Drama "B" picture and George Sanders did a great job playing the Major Comic. If you are a fan of George Sanders, you will never believe the way he acted in this picture, entirely different than "The Lodger" or "Hangover Square".

Sanders plays Gay Lawrence, The Falcon, who has at last been lured into marriage by his fiancé, Helen (played by Wendy Barrie). Just before he goes off to get married though, he gets mixed up in a case where a reclusive scientist who has created a formula to make fake diamonds that are indistinguishable from real ones get kidnapped by crooks and forced to spill the beans. As usual, the relationship between the falcon and the Law is pretty borderline at best, the keep on trying to arrest him on suspicion of being involved in the plot, murder and anything else they can pin on him. Needless to say he leads the police to the gang, and makes the 'plane to fly off with his fiancé. This is a great movie, and Sanders plays it with an insouciance that is quite invigorating: you cannot decide whether he is in his heart laughing at the whole film in its simplicity. The gangsters are almost a parody of gangsters, the police are bumbling goons, and his fiancé increasingly jealous and frustrated as he keeps on tripping over beautiful women who have known him in the past (but a few loving words and a kiss from him always seems to calm her down - what luck!). A great lark, and great to watch just for Sander's voice!!