Director: John Huston
Screenplay: John Huston, based on the novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Barton McLane, Lee Patrick, Sydney Greenstreet
Running Time: 101 minutes
Genre: Crime, drama, film noir
San Francisco, 1941: Tough, wise-cracking, cynical private detective Sam Spade (Bogart) and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) are hired by the mysterious Ruth Wonderly (Astor) for what appears to be a routine case, but Archer is killed, and so is the man he is supposed to be investigating. Under suspicion by the police for at least one of the murders, Sam digs deeper and finds himself embroiled with a group of wealthy and ruthless crooks on the trail of a priceless statuette known as The Maltese Falcon.
Based on the 1929 novel by Dashiell Hammett, and marking the directorial debut of writer-director John Huston, this is one of the most influential films ever made, and one of the first and best of the "film noir" genre (stylish and bleak crime dramas largely made in the 1940s to 1950s). It remains one of the great Hollywood thrillers, which still holds up today. The plot is complex and intriguing, the script is full of memorable, quotable lines, and the cast is perfect. This was the film that really cemented Humphrey Bogart as a bona fide superstar, and there is also Mary Astor as the treacherous femme fatale, Peter Lorre as a murderous thief and Sydney Greenstreet as the urbane criminal mastermind.
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