The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Wilmer Cook: Keep on riding me and they’re gonna be picking iron out of your liver.
Sam Spade: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

The third time was the charm for this outstanding adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel.  Screenwriter John Huston’s first effort as a director created a classic that helped form the “new” Humphrey Bogart character and made him a star.

Beautiful Ruth Wanderly (Mary Astor) visits the offices of Spade and Archer and hires them to trace her missing sister.  While Miles Archer is trailing her sister’s companion, he is shot and killed.  Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) soon discovers that Miss Wanderly’s name is really Bridget O’Shaughnessy and that she is more interested in the whereabouts of a valuable ornament in the shape of a falcon.  As Sam tries to discovery Archer’s killer he is menaced by other shady types searching for the same bird.  With Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, Sidney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman, and Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer Cook.

I’m running out of ways to describe timeless classics.  Suffice it to say that I love every single aspect of this film.  I’ve also seen the 1931 version of the same story and the difference that these actors make to the delivery of the exact same dialogue is amazing.  Some critics cite this as the first film noir.  I don’t know that I agree.  True, it has the hard-boiled dialogue and some of the high-contrast lighting and odd camera angles of a noir but the tone is different.  In particular, Sam Spade is a man who won’t play the sap for anyone and the noir hero is typically born to play that role.

We can all be thankful that this was Huston’s first film.  The studio first offered Bogart’s part to George Raft who turned it down because he did not want to work with an untested director.  Huston was buddies with Bogart and never wanted anyone else.

Trailer – oddly Bogart can’t escape his gangster past in the trailer