Clive Owen breathes new life into Dashiell Hammett's iconic gumshoe Sam Spade in Monsieur Spade.
The stylish new series, called "prestige TV" in our review, tells the story of Sam Spade some 20 years after the events of The Maltese Falcon. It's the 1960s and Spade finds himself in southern France, where his quiet retired life is interrupted by a horrific murder. What to Watch talked with Owen about the role and how he approached playing the iconic character originally brought to life in the 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart.
"I'm a huge Sam Spade fan," Owen said. "I'm a huge Bogart fan. I'm a huge fan of The Maltese Falcon. I've got an original poster from the movie. I love it so much. So when [co-creator] Scott [Frank] came to me, I was like, 'oh, this is a gift.' I love the genre."
We asked Owen if there were elements he felt were necessary to carry over to Monsieur Spade, and whether he put an original twist on any of it.
"I know we're doing sort of a spin of years later, and he's living in a totally different environment," Owen replied. "But for me, it was really important to feel the origins of the source material. So I went back, I read the Dashiell Hammett book again and the short stories, and then I drowned in listening to Bogart. I needed an oral hook, really, because we were shooting in the south of France with mainly French actors, but I wanted to feel the origins of that 1940s private detective that we know. So I used Bogart, and listened to a lot of his dialogue from films and had that in my ears every morning on the way to work. And yeah, I adore this genre, really."
The idea of an "oral hook" was intriguing, as we noted Owen plays a masterful game of accent gymnastics in bringing Spade to life. In the series, he alternates between an American accent of the 1940s and 1960s, then he's an American speaking bad French and then, years later, he's an American with more experience with French.
"Yeah, it's very, very true," he laughed. "It's a very good point. It was something we worked on a lot, and we worked on it a lot because there's a lot of flashbacks. I tried to make him different so that he was really classically 1940s when he first arrives there and has that vibe of the San Francisco private detective that we know. And then obviously things mellow as time goes on. But it was something I enjoyed working on."
Owen studied Bogart closely to help him bring his own version of Spade to life. "I went back and lifted all of Bogart's dialogue from both Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon just to have one file so I could hear him. And the interesting thing when you really look at Bogart and the way he spoke, you think of him as laid back and laconic, but he's actually super nimble and fast with his dialogue. He just makes it all look easy."
Bringing the character to life involved a combination of Owen's incredible acting and Scott Frank's scripts, which gave him a foundation to work with. "Bogart rips through the dialogue. He doesn't overindulge, he doesn't milk anything too much. It's all about rhythm and speed, and the speed of thought and wit," Owen continued. "And Scott, who's also, like me, a huge fan of this period and this genre, he could write in that vernacular. He wrote in those rhythms.
"So I called him at one point and I said, 'Look, I’ve been watching a lot of it, and it's really, really important that when we do the longer scenes where there's lots of dialogue and it's speedy, I feel like I should never hang about. I think we should really rip through it.' And that’s something I worked on a lot because I'm doing an accent, but I wanted to be able to be really speedy with the dialogue. And so it's something we both worked on together to make sure that’s how we did it."
All of this preparation comes through brilliantly, as we've had a chance to screen the series in advance. "It's effortlessly witty, getting into the Sam Spade vibe without being overbearing," we said.
"I'm so happy you say that, because it's a big thing for me," Owen replied. "And I really do think Scott is one of the best writers out there. You go back and look at films like [1957's] The Sweet Smell of Success and it's an absolute joy to listen to. Smart, witty dialogue where everybody tops everybody, where somebody says something and somebody's got a smart response back. It's a joy. And Scott, I think, nailed that in [Monsieur Spade]. And the dialogue was great. We found time and time again that when we put pace on it, it really sang. And the great thing is when you're working with writing like this, you just trust it. You trust the rhythms are there. You don't overwork it. You don't try to find a spin on it. You just go, this play, you read it. The rhythms are right. Just play that rhythm. Don't get in the way of it."
Lastly, we asked about how so many detective stories were serialized in the 30s and 40s, even dating back to Sherlock Holmes. The limited series format seems to work really well with Monsieur Spade.
"I think it was important," Owen noted. "It was this length because, as we've said, Scott's writing is so smart and full, and we've got so many characters here to get underneath. And the great thing is they all have backstories and they're all interesting. They've all got reasons and predicaments of how they've ended up where they are. And we can explore all of it. So it's full of rich characters throughout. We don't just get to know Spade, we get to know the world he's living in and the people that are around him and who they are. And that really lends itself to making it this long."
Monsieur Spade premieres Sunday, January 14, at 9 pm ET/PT on AMC. It will also be available to stream same-day on AMC Plus and Acorn TV.
