Cinema
The Maltese Falcon
John Huston · 1941
Synopsis
San Francisco. A client who calls herself Miss Wonderly asks the agency of Sam Spade and Miles Archer to have a certain Floyd Thursby followed, who is supposed to have abducted her sister. That very evening, Archer is shot dead, then Thursby is killed, and the police suspect Spade. The client admits that her name is Brigid O'Shaughnessy and that she made up her story. Joel Cairo, then Kasper Gutman and his gunman Wilmer, are looking, like her, for a statuette of a black falcon that the Knights of Malta are said to have sent in 1539 to Charles V, and which never arrived.
Context
The shooting script follows the book very closely, dialogue included. George Raft turned down the lead role, among other reasons because he did not want a first-time director; Humphrey Bogart took it on and found in it his signature role. The film received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, without winning any. One of the lead statuettes used in the shoot was sold for 4,085,000 dollars at Bonhams, in New York, in November 2013.
Who it is for
A film of an hour and forty minutes, in black and white, with a tight plot and fast dialogue; the 2023 4K disc carries a French track.
Prizes and reception
Added in 1989 to the National Film Registry; several critics, following Borde and Chaumeton, see in it the first great American film noir.
Sources for this page 9
The pages consulted to check this page.