Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Gladys George, Barton MacLane, Lee Patrick, Ward Bond, Elisha Cook Jr Jr., Elisha Cook, Charles Drake, William Hopper, John Hamilton, Jerome Cowan, Creighton Hale, James Burke, James Burke, Emory Parnell, Murray Alper, Robert Homans, Hank Mann, Jack Mower, Walter Huston

Director: John Huston

Summary: After his partner's death, private eye Sam Spade becomes involved in a search for a priceless statuette. Based on Dashiell Hammett's classic novel.

Hard-drinking private eye Sam Spade sleuths the backyard of San Francisco in search of an elusive black bird statuette while evading the setups of three disparate miscreants: the duplicitous Brigid, the perfumed Mr. Cairo, and the scheming Fat Man. Huston's brilliant directorial debut is aided by first-rate performances, excellent camera work, as well as the director's acute attention to detail while shooting the film. Based on the crime novel by Dashiell Hammett. Academy Award Nominations: 3, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Sydney Greenstreet), and Best Screenplay. Previous versions of the story were filmed in 1931 (a.k.a. DANGEROUS FEMALE) and in 1936 (as SATAN MET A LADY, starring Bette Davis), and poorly redone in 1975 (THE BLACK BIRD).

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The Maltese Falconis still the tightest, sharpest, and most cynical of Hollywood's official deathless classics, bracingly tough even by post-Tarantino standards. Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett's definitive private eye, Sam Spade, struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the double-crosses pile up around his ankles. The plot, which dances all around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of the title, is too baroque to try to follow, and it doesn't make a bit of difference. The dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered with whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances of Mary Astor, and roughs up a cringing "gunsel" played by Elisha Cook Jr. It's an action movie of sorts, at least by implication: the characters always seem keyed up, right on the verge of erupting into violence. This is a turning-point picture in several respects: John Huston (The African Queen) made his directorial debut here in 1941, and Bogart, who had mostly played bad guys, was a last-minute substitution for George Raft, who must have been kicking himself for years afterward. This is the role that made Bogart a star and established his trend-setting (and still influential) antihero persona. --David ChuteEND

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Original Theatrical Trailer, Humphrey Bogart Trailers
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish
Year:	1941
Release Date:	July 1, 2000
Runtime:	99 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	D 065012
Keywords:	General, Falcon, Maltese, Drama
Genre:	Drama