Sam Spade and Miles Archer run a private detective agency in San Francisco, and are hired by a Miss Wonderly to find her sister, who has eloped with a man named Thursby. That night both Miles and Thursby are shot in separate incidents, Wonderly disappears and Sam is the police's chief suspect for both murders. Who killed them, and why ?
Like only a handful of other movies, it's hard to overestimate The Maltese Falcon's huge influence on the crime genre in specific and cinema in general. Of course there are films which preceded it about private eyes, slippery femme fatales, shifty suspects and twisting plot lines. It's not even the original screen adaptation of Dashiel Hammett's classic 1930 novel (Roy Del Ruth first filmed it in 1931, and it was remade again in 1936 as Satan Met A Lady). This version however combines an astonishingly assured performance by Bogart with an outstanding supporting cast, a brilliant head-scratching script by Huston and superb direction to create perhaps the definitive crime picture, and paved the way for many memorable film noir and gangster classics to follow. It's also important to note the small scale of the film - Bogart and Huston were well respected as a supporting actor and writer respectively, but it was Huston's debut as a director (arguably one of the best ever) and it made Bogart a huge star and cemented his reputation as a hard-boiled tough guy. The screenplay is very faithful to Hammett's riveting book, with only minimal abridging for such a deliciously deceiving story, and as with all the best crime fiction it's really all about the people, and what drives their darker personas. Bogart plays a fabulous thin line between good guy, world-weary cynic and dangerous bluffer as he plays off everyone out to chisel him, on both sides of the law. He is aided by one of the most memorable support casts I've ever come across; Astor is sensational as the serial liar/lover who's constructed so many false identities she's not sure of anything anymore, Lorre is superb as the dapper Levantine Mr Joel Cairo, all perfumed accessories and aloof mannerisms, Greenstreet is unforgettable as the corpulently wily Kasper Gutman ("By Gad sir, you are a character."), and arguably best of all is Cook as the psychotic gunsel Wilmer, who seems constantly poised to explode but instead suffers every indignity at the hands of Spade. The players bring Hammett's rich and strange characters to vivid life with such craft and intensity it's almost impossible to imagine anybody else portraying them. The rumpled detective has become such a staple of books and movies it's easy to forget its origins, but Bogart here will always be the definitive private eye. Crisply photographed by Arthur Edeson (who also shot Frankenstein and Casablanca), this is an unmissable forties classic and one of Huston's best movies. It's also a truly amazing book you must read, although in my view two of Hammett's other novels, Red Harvest and The Glass Key, are equally sensational. Trivia - the one-shot-no-lines-die-on-the-sofa scene-stealing character of Captain Jacoby is played by the great Walter Huston, the director's father.
Like only a handful of other movies, it's hard to overestimate The Maltese Falcon's huge influence on the crime genre in specific and cinema in general. Of course there are films which preceded it about private eyes, slippery femme fatales, shifty suspects and twisting plot lines. It's not even the original screen adaptation of Dashiel Hammett's classic 1930 novel (Roy Del Ruth first filmed it in 1931, and it was remade again in 1936 as Satan Met A Lady). This version however combines an astonishingly assured performance by Bogart with an outstanding supporting cast, a brilliant head-scratching script by Huston and superb direction to create perhaps the definitive crime picture, and paved the way for many memorable film noir and gangster classics to follow. It's also important to note the small scale of the film - Bogart and Huston were well respected as a supporting actor and writer respectively, but it was Huston's debut as a director (arguably one of the best ever) and it made Bogart a huge star and cemented his reputation as a hard-boiled tough guy. The screenplay is very faithful to Hammett's riveting book, with only minimal abridging for such a deliciously deceiving story, and as with all the best crime fiction it's really all about the people, and what drives their darker personas. Bogart plays a fabulous thin line between good guy, world-weary cynic and dangerous bluffer as he plays off everyone out to chisel him, on both sides of the law. He is aided by one of the most memorable support casts I've ever come across; Astor is sensational as the serial liar/lover who's constructed so many false identities she's not sure of anything anymore, Lorre is superb as the dapper Levantine Mr Joel Cairo, all perfumed accessories and aloof mannerisms, Greenstreet is unforgettable as the corpulently wily Kasper Gutman ("By Gad sir, you are a character."), and arguably best of all is Cook as the psychotic gunsel Wilmer, who seems constantly poised to explode but instead suffers every indignity at the hands of Spade. The players bring Hammett's rich and strange characters to vivid life with such craft and intensity it's almost impossible to imagine anybody else portraying them. The rumpled detective has become such a staple of books and movies it's easy to forget its origins, but Bogart here will always be the definitive private eye. Crisply photographed by Arthur Edeson (who also shot Frankenstein and Casablanca), this is an unmissable forties classic and one of Huston's best movies. It's also a truly amazing book you must read, although in my view two of Hammett's other novels, Red Harvest and The Glass Key, are equally sensational. Trivia - the one-shot-no-lines-die-on-the-sofa scene-stealing character of Captain Jacoby is played by the great Walter Huston, the director's father.