never looking up. Like the dandy, Spade handles the cigarette as if it were "a little work

of art" (Klein 42). Interestingly, Henri Agel explicitly compared Bogart to the dandy,

observing that "[h]e knew how to reinvent, little by little, the internal elegance of the

dandy. He elevated to a sort of plastic dignity the most modest manifestations of

existence: taking off his jacket, lighting a cigarette, opening a door" (qtd. in Dickos 112;

emphasis added). In other words, it is Bogart who transforms the simple act of lighting a

cigarette into an aesthetic performance, thus illuminating, however briefly, the other half

of the equation of pictures. His gesture stalls the narrative even before it has begun-

recall Benjamin's assertion that "the distracting element of [cinema] is ... primarily

tactile" ("The Work of Art" 238)-in order to indulge in a tactile pleasure. For the

moment, the economy of the continuity system is interrupted by an ordinary, yet

mysteriously appealing, studio prop. The mystery can wait.

 After the initial puff, the detective tale begins with a bang. A rare exterior shot

punctuates the mostly interior diegesis when Miles Archer is shot dead. Having accepted

the new case and promised to shadow Floyd Thursby, Archer arrives at the intersection of

Bush and Stockton streets. The camera captures Archer stepping into the shot, tilts up to

show him looking confused, and then a revolver appears in the frame, firing a single shot

at him. Neither the murderer nor the motive is revealed. This becomes one of the

mysterious threads in the film: Who killed Miles Archer? In fact, the pursuit of the falcon

seems almost secondary, since Archer's murder is the primary justification for Spade's

involvement-"when one of your organization gets killed," he tells Brigid at the end,

"it's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective

everywhere." When he arrives at the scene of the crime, Spade does not even examine the