The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1941) begins with a detective's partner being murdered, and what everyone is looking for is a statue. A woman comes to Sam Spade's office, apparently a client looking for her sister. His partner Miles Archer takes the job and is killed the same night. The police suspect Spade: he had been having an affair with Archer's wife. Then others arrive. All of them want the same thing: a jewelled statue of a falcon made centuries ago. Everyone is lying and everyone is ready to sell out the others. Spade is the strangest thing in it. He is loyal to nobody, cares about nobody, and lies to his own client. He is not a hero in the classical sense and the film does not present him as one. It was John Huston's first film as director. He had been a screenwriter and had persuaded the studio to let him direct. It is adapted from Dashiell Hammett's novel. The book had been filmed twice before and both were forgotten; Huston stayed almost word for word faithful to it. It built Humphrey Bogart's career. Until then he had mostly played second rank gangsters. Sydney Greenstreet made his first film appearance here at sixty one and was nominated for an Oscar. It is counted among the founding examples of noir: shadowed light, an untrustworthy woman, a morally ambiguous lead. The last line is about the statue and is among the best known closings in cinema. It runs 100 minutes, in black and white. Good for: noir, classic Hollywood, and detective stories. Less good for: the plot is fast and dense; look away and you are lost.