Moviola > Films >The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (PG)   101 mins

"A guy without a conscience! A dame without a heart!"

Seedy private eye Miles Archer  gets shot while tailing a man.  The young woman who hired him, Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), approaches Miles's partner Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) for help, claiming to be frightened and in need of protection, but is she what she seems?  Thus Sam gets involved in a tangled web of greed, lies and betrayal, with at its centre the search for a fabulous jewel-encrusted bird.  Bogart's portrayal of Spade, a cynical private eye who nevertheless follows his own moral code - "Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be!" - opened a whole new romantic career for him.  Fabulous performances too from Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr and Sydney Greenstreet in his first screen role.  John Huston's directorial début, from the book by Dashiell Hammett, this is one of the first and perhaps the greatest of films noirs, with a wonderfully claustrophobic atmosphere full of dark interiors and menacing shadows.

"A work of entertainment that is yet so skilfully constructed that after many years and many viewings, it has the same brittle explosiveness - and some of the same surprise - that it had in 1941."  Pauline Kael

"Admirable photography of the sort in which black and white gives full value to every detail, every flicker of panic."  Francis Wyndham

Last modified: 20-Jun-2008

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