Maltese Falcon, The
Maltese Falcon, The
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Synopsis

Even if you've seen this film so often that you know all the dialog, it never ceases to amaze. A search for a priceless statuette provides the action in this classic, excellent film favorite. Noir at its best with great actors Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, based on Dashiell Hammet''s thriller. John Huston---USA---1941---101 mins.

Reviews of 'Maltese Falcon, The'

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  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
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  | MrTransfer#1

The definitive Bogart movie in the noir genre. All the actors are at the top of their game in a simple story of greed and double cross.

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  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
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  | Lewis#4

This wonderful, much-loved classic, released in 1941, marks both the directing debut of master film-maker John Huston and the acting debut of the redoubtable Sidney Greenstreet. The latter, a veteran stage actor, now 62 years old and weighing nearly 300 pounds, delivered an Oscar-nominated performance that established his screen persona as an effete man of culture who is also a dangerous rogue. Here Greenstreet joins the nasal-voiced, epicene Peter Lorre, the poor man’s femme fatale Mary Astor, and the dependably smarmy Elisha Cook, Jr. in an attempt to gain possession of an immensely valuable 16th-century statuette, the falcon of the title. But the film belongs to Humphrey Bogart whose pitch-perfect Sam Spade demonstrated beyond doubt that he could carry a film as a leading man. In five years he would be channeling Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Hovering over these proceedings is the wonderful John Huston, the son of character actor Walter Huston, who shows himself, from the start, to be in complete control of all aspects of directing. Everything here--the script (Huston’s own adaptation of Hammett’s novel), the dead-on performances, the artful visuals, the energetic editing--suggests a director at the beginning of a long and respectable career. (Huston’s appearance as the evil Noah Cross in “Chinatown” some thirty years later seems to connect the two films, his proto-noir masterpiece and Polanski’s neo-noir homage.) Among the many extras of this Warner/Turner set are the original 1931 “Maltese Falcon” and the looser 1936 “Satan Met a Lady.” The former (directed by Norman Del Ruth), with Ricardo Cortez as a self-satisfied, ever-grinning Spade, seems almost like a first draft of the 1941 film. Let’s give it two stars. The latter (directed by William Dieterle), a far freer adaptation with Bette Davis as the wily female, doesn’t deserve more than one.

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