Sam Spade may be back but he’s a continent away from his now-closed San Francisco detective agency. And he’s no longer in black-and-white, much less stuck in the 1930s and ‘40s.
The aptly named “Monsieur Spade,” streaming Jan. 14, presents a retired Spade, played with wit and gravity by Britain’s Clive Owen (Clinton in “American Crime Story”), who now resides in picturesque France.
It’s a revolutionary step for Dashiell Hammet’s iconic sleuth, created in his now classic 1930 novel and firmly set in memory with Hollywood’s third adaptation, rated as perhaps the greatest film noir ever: John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” (’41) starring Humphrey Bogart.
“This is kind of a dream job for me because I’m a huge fan,” Owen, 59, said during a Zoom interview. “When they said, Would you be interested? I was like, Oh my God you’ve come to the right person. I just want to be in this world.
“It’s very difficult when you’re taking these classic characters to freshen them up, because we feel like we know them really well. It’s very easy to fall into things that we’ve seen before.
“But Scott Frank” — co-creator, co-writer and director — “is taking him older as a sort of quintessential tough, stoic, private detective who is here living in a French house in a quiet little town.
“So you’ve got this very classic ‘40s character now. But in this environment of early ‘60s France. It’s a very clever way of reinventing him as a sort of fish out of water.”
Spade’s quiet routine, which includes a daily swim in the buff in his outdoor pool, is interrupted and galvanized by the brutal, horrifying murder of six nuns.
“Spade has a quiet life, keeps to himself. He wants to leave his old life behind. Then at the end of the first episode, you see a situation that is going to pull the old Sam Spade back. He’s going to have to get involved in something — and that’s Scott taking this classic ‘40s private detective trying to live a different life but getting pulled back.”
As to why Sam Spade has endured, “It’s difficult to say, Owen said. “There’s something about the standard ‘test of time’ and it’s partly to do with Dashiell Hammet’s original satisfying novel. And it’s partly, if you had to sum up, to do with Humphrey Bogart. Some characters make an impact — and we don’t forget them.”
Owen cites how “The Maltese Falcon” ends, “When Spade turns Bridget Shaughnessy over to the cops and says, ‘I’m no sucker for anybody,’ it’s this blazing integrity which is going to always be, I guess, at the core of who he is.”
“Monsieur Spade” streams on AMC Jan. 14