The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)

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This article is about the 1941 film. For other uses, see The Maltese Falcon (disambiguation).

The Maltese Falcon
Directed by	John Huston
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis (executive producer) Henry Blanke (associate producer)
Written by	John Huston based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Mary Astor Peter Lorre Sydney Greenstreet Gladys George Barton MacLane Lee Patrick
Music by	Adolph Deutsch
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson
Editing by	Thomas Richards
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	October 3, 1941
Running time	101 min.
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film written and directed by John Huston, based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, and starring Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his femme fatale client, Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, and Peter Lorre. The film was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

The story concerns the entanglement of a San Francisco private investigator with three greedy, unscrupulous and murderous adventurers who compete with each other to obtain a fabulous jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon worth millions.

The Maltese Falcon has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by Roger Ebert,^[1] and Entertainment Weekly,^[2] and was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain, the French book that coined the term film noir, as the first film of that genre.^[3]

The film premiered on October 3, 1941 in New York City and in 1989 was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.^[4]

Contents 1 Background 2 Plot 3 Cast 4 Production 4.1 Casting 4.2 Preparation 4.3 Production Credits 4.4 Cinematography 4.5 Falcon props 4.6 Soundtrack 5 Release 5.1 DVD release 6 Reception 6.1 Cultural impact 7 Production details 8 Notes 9 External links

[edit] Background

The antihero protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, private investigator Sam Spade, is based on the author's experiences as a private detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in San Francisco. Hammett not only invested Spade with characteristics drawn from his own personality but also gave him his own first name, Samuel, which Hammett had discarded when he launched his career as a writer.

Hammett also drew upon his years as a detective in creating many of the other characters for The Maltese Falcon, which reworks elements from two of his stories published in Black Mask magazine in 1925, "The Whosis Kid" and "The Gutting of Couffignal".^[5] The novel itself was serialized in five parts in Black Mask in 1930 before being published in book form that same year by Alfred A. Knopf.

The 1941 film is the third film version of the novel. The first, released in 1931, starred Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade, while the second, called Satan Met a Lady, was a loose adaptation that turned the story into a light comedy, with the characters renamed. It was released in 1936 and starred Warren William and a young Bette Davis, only five years into her long film career.

Warner Brothers had been prevented by the Hays Office censors from re-releasing the 1931 version due to its "lewd" content, which is possibly what caused them to go into production in 1941 with a new, cleaned-up version. (It was not until after 1966 that unedited copies of the 1931 film could legally be shown in the U.S.) Ironically, the 1941 film still managed to sneak some homosexual innuendo past the censors.

[edit] Plot

"In 1539, the Knights Templar of Malta paid tribute to Charles V of Spain by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels -- but pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day."^[6]

In San Francisco in 1941, private investigators Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) meet a beautiful new client - Miss Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor) - who asks them to locate her missing sister, there with a man named Floyd Thursby. Wonderly is meeting Thursby and hopes her sister will be with him. After they receive a substantial retainer, Archer volunteers to follow her that night and help get her sister back.

That night, a call informs Spade that Archer has been shot and killed, but before he goes to the murder scene he tells his secretary Effie Perrine (Lee Patrick) to break the news to Archer's wife, Iva (Gladys George), and to keep her away from him. At the scene, police detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) shows Spade the murder weapon, a rare English handgun. Spade tells Polhaus that Archer was tailing Thursby, but refuses to give any more information. Spade then calls Wonderly’s hotel but finds that she has checked out with no forwarding address.

Returning to his apartment, Spade is visited by Polhaus and his superior, Lt Dundy (Barton MacLane), a tough and uncompromising cop. They grill Spade about the case he and Archer were working on but he refuses to name his client. They tell him that Thursby has been shot dead and suggest that Spade had time to do it.

The next morning Spade is visited by Iva who embraces him passionately, and asks if he killed Archer so that the two of them can be together — but Effie suggests to Spade the possibility that Iva might be the killer. Spade meets with Wonderly - now calling herself Brigid O’Shaughnessy - and assures her that he's kept her identity secret from the police, but lets her know that he is aware the story about her sister was fake. She explains that Thursby was her partner, carried a gun and probably killed Archer, but claims to have no idea who killed Thursby. Spade agrees to find out who’s behind the killings, but makes her pay him most of the money she has on hand.

At his office, Spade meets Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), who offers him a $5,000 fee to find a “black figure of a bird”. When Spade is distracted, Cairo pulls a gun on him to search the office, but Spade knocks the gun away and knocks Cairo out. Spade goes through Cairo's possessions, inspecting his money and his three passports from different countries. When Cairo revives, he asks if Spade has the bird he's looking for, but Spade doesn't, so Cairo hires him to find it. They discuss terms until Cairo politely asks for his weapon back. He promptly turns it on Spade again to search the office, much to Spade's amusement.

Later that evening, Spade realizes that he is being followed and loses the man, then visits Brigid, telling her about his meeting with Cairo. They fence verbally, and Spade kisses her, but demands she tell him what's going on. They go to Spade’s apartment so that Brigid can meet with Cairo. When Cairo shows up, they grill each other about the black bird’s whereabouts, and Cairo becomes agitated when Brigid mentions that “the Fat Man” is in San Francisco. When Brigid insults Cairo, he tries to pull a gun on her, but Spade slaps him down.

The two police detectives show up at Spade's door wanting to talk, but he won't let them in. When they hear Cairo's cry for help from inside, they go in anyway and are told conflicting stories about what happened. Dundy wants to bring them all in, but Spade tells them they were being ribbed and Brigid and Cairo back him up. Cairo leaves, followed by the police, and Spade gets Brigid to tell him more about the black bird and herself, most of it apparently fabricated.

In the morning, Spade goes to Cairo's hotel, where he spots the man who's been following him sitting in the lobby. He speaks to him to send a message to the "Fat Man", but Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.) feigns ignorance and tells him to “shove off”, so Spade gets the house detective to throw Wilmer out. Cairo arrives, saying that he's been grilled by the police all night, but has stuck to Spade's "goofy" cover story. When Spade returns to his office, he learns that Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet), the "Fat Man", has gotten his message and wants to talk to him. After sending Brigid off with Effie for safekeeping, and cold-shouldering Iva, Spade goes to Gutman's hotel suite. Gutman greets Spade warmly, gives him a drink and begins to talk about the Falcon, but becomes deliberately evasive, causing Spade to put on an act of becoming violently angry. He smashes his glass and storms out, giving Gutman a deadline of 5:30 that evening to cooperate with him. As he goes into the elevator, we see Joel Cairo coming out of another one, on his way to Gutman's suite.

After being questioned by the District Attorney, and telling him off, Spade is accosted by Wilmer to take him to Gutman at gunpoint. Before they get to the hotel suite, Spade overpowers him, taking his weapons, and then humiliates him by handing the weapons over to Gutman. Gutman and Spade sit down to more drinks, while Gutman elaborately relates the checkered history of the Maltese Falcon, which ends with the Falcon in the home of a Russian general in Istanbul. Gutman tried to buy it, but when the general refused to sell, Gutman sent in some "agents" to steal it. "Well, sir," Gutman says, "they got it, but I haven't got it."

Gutman offers Spade $25,000 for the bird, and one-fourth of the proceeds from its sale. Spade's vision blurs and he passes out on the floor: his drink has been spiked. Wilmer kicks Spade in the face in revenge for embarrassing him, and he and Gutman and Cairo (who has been in the other room) depart, leaving Spade alone and unconscious.

When Spade revives, he immediately calls Effie to talk to Brigid, and learns that she is not with her. He searches Gutman's suite and finds a newspaper with the arrival time of the freighter La Paloma from Hong Kong circled. He goes to the dock but the ship is on fire. A dock officer informs him that the crew and passengers all got off safely, and he returns to his office.

Suddenly a man (Walter Huston) bursts into the office, staggers toward Spade clutching a bundle wrapped in newspaper, and drops it, muttering “You know ... Falcon”. He collapses on the couch, dead. Spade inspects the dead man’s wallet and tells Effie that the man, who has been shot, is Captain Jacobi of the La Paloma. Looking inside the bundle, Spade grabs Effie hard by the wrist and says "We’ve got it, angel. We’ve got it."

The phone rings, and the secretary hears Brigid give an address and then scream before the line goes dead. Spade directs her to call the police after he’s gone and tell them how the captain died but not to mention the package, which he takes to a bus terminal baggage room and checks, mailing the claim check to himself at a postal box.

After the address Brigid gave turns out to be an empty lot, Spade returns home and finds her hiding in a doorway near his apartment. He takes her inside, where he finds Gutman, Cairo and Wilmer waiting for him, guns drawn. Gutman gives Spade $10,000 for the Falcon, but Spade tells them that part of his price is a fall guy he can turn over to the police for the murders of Archer, Thursby and Captain Jacobi, getting himself off the hook. Spade suggests that Wilmer is the best choice, since he certainly killed Thursby and Jacobi at least. After some intense negotiation, Gutman and Cairo agree to sacrifice Wilmer, who is knocked out in a scuffle. Spade gets the details of what happened and who killed whom, so that he can present a convincing story to the police along with Wilmer.

Just after dawn, Spade calls Effie, who brings him the bundle. In a frenzy, Gutman, Cairo and Brigid unwrap it, revealing a black statuette: the Maltese Falcon. Gutman inspects the bird, and to make sure it's the real thing, he begins to scrape away the enamel coating with a penknife. Growing increasing agitated, he cuts faster and faster, and finally cries out, "It's a fake!"^[7]

Brigid adamantly insists that the bird is the same statuette she got from the Russian general, and Cairo explodes that it was Gutman's crude attempt to buy the bird that tipped off the general to its great value — he must have had a duplicate made for them to steal. "No wonder we had such an easy time stealing it!"

Cairo breaks down and weeps while Gutman regains control of himself, suggesting that he and Cairo go to Istanbul to continue their quest. He demands at gunpoint that Spade return the money he's been paid, but allows him to keep $1,000 for his "time and expenses". Gutman invites Spade to join them, saying "You're a man of nice judgment and many resources", but Spade declines.

Gutman and Cairo leave, and Spade calls the police and tells them where to pick them, and Wilmer, up. Spade angrily confronts the frightened Brigid, telling her he knows she killed Archer to implicate Thursby, her unwanted accomplice. "Well," he adds, "if you get a good break, you’ll be out in 20 years and you can come back to me then. I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck."

Brigid can’t believe that Spade will turn her over to the police. "You killed Miles" he says, "and you're going over for it." She appeals to him and his love for her. Spade doesn’t argue, saying: "When a man’s partner’s killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it."

Spade lets in the police and turns over the Falcon, the guns he's taken from Wilmer, Gutman and Cairo, the money Gutman gave him, which he says was a bribe for his silence, and last of all Brigid, explaining that she killed his partner. Brigid is taken away, and Polhaus picks up the statuette and asks what it is. Taking the Falcon, Spade replies, "The stuff that dreams are made of". Spade steps out into the hallway and sees Brigid staring vacantly through the bars of the elevator window as the film ends.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role	Other notes
Humphrey Bogart	Sam Spade	private investigator
Mary Astor	Brigid O'Shaughnessy	the client
Sydney Greenstreet	Kasper Gutman	the "Fat Man"
Peter Lorre	Joel Cairo	adventurer
Barton MacLane	Lieutenant Dundy	homicide detective
Ward Bond	Det. Sgt. Tom Polhaus	homicide detective
Lee Patrick	Effie Perrine	Spade's secretary
Jerome Cowan	Miles Archer	Spade's partner
Gladys George	Iva Archer	Archer's wife
Elisha Cook Jr.	Wilmer Cook	Gutman's henchman
Walter Huston	Captain Jacobi	a freighter captain

[edit] Production

[edit] Casting

First-time director John Huston was very careful when casting The Maltese Falcon, but Humphrey Bogart was not the first choice to play Sam Spade. Producer Hal Wallis initially offered the role to George Raft, who rejected it because he did not want to work with an inexperienced director. (Raft would go on turning down roles that Bogart would play and make famous, including the cynical hero of Casablanca.) The 42-year-old Bogart was delighted, however, to play a highly ambiguous character who is both honorable and greedy. Huston was particularly grateful that Bogart had quickly accepted the role, and the film helped to consolidate their lifelong friendship and set the stage for later collaboration on such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); Key Largo (1948); and The African Queen (1951). Bogart's convincing interpretation became the archetype for a private detective in the film noir genre, providing him near-instant acclaim and rounding and solidifying his onscreen persona. It was The Maltese Falcon that Ingrid Bergman watched over and over again while preparing for Casablanca, in order to learn to interact and act with Bogart.^[8]

The role of the deceitful femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy was originally offered to Geraldine Fitzgerald, but went to Mary Astor when Fitzgerald decided to appear in a stage play. Hammett remembers that the character O'Shaughnessy "had two originals, one an artist, the other a woman who came to Pinkerton's San Francisco office to hire an operative to discharge her housekeeper, but neither of these women was a criminal." ^[9]

The character of the sinister "Fat Man" Kasper Gutman was based on A. Maundy Gregory, an overweight British detective-turned-entrepreneur who was involved in many sophisticated endeavors and capers, including a search for a long-lost treasure not unlike the jeweled Falcon. ^[8] However, the character was not easily cast, and it took some time before producer Hal Wallis solved the problem by suggesting that Huston give a screen test to Sydney Greenstreet, a veteran stage character actor who had never appeared on film. Greenstreet, who was then 61 years old and weighed between 280 and 350 pounds, impressed Huston with his sheer size, distinctive abrasive laugh, bulbous eyes, and manner of speaking. ^[8] Greenstreet went on to be typecast in later films of the 1940s such as The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), The Verdict (1946) and Three Strangers (1946).

Greenstreet's characterization had such a strong cultural impact that the "Fat Man" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II was named after him.^[10] (The appellation "Fat Man" for Gutman was created for the film - in the novel, although he is a fat man, he's referred to as "G.")

The character of Joel Cairo was based on a criminal Hammett captured for robbing Pinkerton’s in 1920 in Washington D.C. ^[9] In Hammett's novel, the character is blatantly homosexual, but to avoid problems with the censors this was downplayed considerably, although he is still noticeably effeminate — for instance, Cairo's calling cards and handkerchiefs are scented with gardenias, he fusses about his clothes and becomes hysterical when blood from a scratch ruins his shirt, and he makes subtle fellating gestures with his cane during his interview with Spade. By contrast, in the novel Cairo is referred to as "queer" and "the fairy". The film is one of many of the era that, because of the Hays Office, could only hint at homosexuality. It is referenced in The Celluloid Closet, a documentary about how films deal with homsexuality.

Elisha Cook Jr., a well-known character actor was cast by Huston as the henchman Wilmer. According to Huston, Cook “lived alone up in the High Sierra, tied flies and caught golden trout between films. When he was wanted in Hollywood, they sent word up to his mountain cabin by courier. He would come down, do a picture, and then withdraw again to his retreat.” Like Cairo (and even Gutman) the character of Wilmer has also been seen by many commentators as homosexual, primarily because of the use of "gunsel", meaning a young homosexual in a relationship with an older man, to describe him.^[11][12][13]

Gladys George had made her mark on Broadway with her starring role in Lawrence Riley's Personal Appearance (1934) (adapted for the screen in 1936 as Go West, Young Man); this comedy's huge success had been credited in great part to her comic performance.^[14] Her role as Archer's wife thus displays her versatility.

The unbilled appearance of the great character actor Walter Huston, in a small cameo role as the freighter captain who delivers the Falcon to Spade’s office, was done as a good luck gesture for his son, John Huston, on his directorial debut. The elder Huston had to promise Jack Warner that he would not demand a dime for his little role before he was allowed to stagger into Spade’s office.

[edit] Preparation

During his preparation for The Maltese Falcon, first-time director John Huston planned each second of the film to the very last detail, tailoring the screenplay with instructions to himself for a shot-for-shot setup, with sketches for every scene, so filming could proceed fluently and professionally. Like other directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Huston was adamant that the film keep to schedule, and that everything was methodically planned to the fullest to ensure that the film never went over budget. By providing the cast with a highly detailed script, Huston was able to let them rehearse their scenes with very little intervention.

Such was the extent and efficacy of his preparation of the script that almost no line of dialog was eliminated in the final edit of the film.^[15] Except for some exterior night shots, Huston shot the entire film in sequence, which greatly helped his actors create their characters. The shooting went so smoothly that there was actually extra time for the cast to enjoy themselves, and Huston brought Bogart, Astor, Bond, Lorre and others to the Lakeside Golf Club near the Warner lot to relax in the pool, dine, drink and talk until midnight about anything other than the film they were working on.

Huston used much of the dialog from the original novel,^[16] removing all references to sex which the Hays Office had deemed to be unacceptable. The many "by gad"'s Greenstreet utters in the movie were inserted by the censors to replace "by God". Huston was also warned not to show excessive drinking. The director fought this, on the grounds that Spade was a man who put away a half bottle of hard liquor a day and showing him completely abstaining from alcohol would mean seriously falsifying his character.^[8]

[edit] Production Credits

• Associate Producer - Henry Blanke
• Director of Photography - Arthur Edeson
• Dialogue director - Robert Foulk
• Film Editor - Thomas Richards
• Art Director - Robert M. Haas
• Sound - Oliver S. Garretson
• Gowns - Orry-Kelly
• Makeup Artist - Perc Westmore (credited) and Frank McCoy (uncredited)
• Music - Adolph Deutsch
• Musical Director - Leo F. Forbstein
• Production Management - Al Alleborn (uncredited)
• Assistant Director - Claude Archer (uncredited)
• Script supervisor - Meta Carpenter (uncredited)
• Orchestrator - Arthur Lange (uncredited)

[edit] Cinematography

With its low-key lighting and inventive and arresting angles, the work of Director of Photography Arthur Edeson is one of the film’s great assets. Unusual camera angles – sometimes low to the ground, revealing the ceilings of rooms (a technique also used by Orson Welles and his cinematograher Gregg Toland on Citizen Kane) – are cleverly utilized, and emphasize the nature of the characters and their actions. Some of the most technically striking scenes involve Gutman, especially the scene where he explains the history of the Falcon to Spade, purposely drawing out his story so that the knockout drops he has slipped into Spade’s drink will take effect.^[8] Meta Wilde, Huston's longtime script supervisor, remarked of this scene:

It was an incredible camera setup. We rehearsed two days. The camera followed Greenstreet and Bogart from one room into another, then down a long hallway and finally into a living room; there the camera moved up and down in what is referred to as a boom-up and boom-down shot, then panned from left to right and back to Bogart's drunken face; the next pan shot was to Greenstreet's massive stomach from Bogart's point of view. . . . One miss and we had to begin all over again.^[17]

Film critic Roger Ebert says of this scene:

Was the shot just a stunt? Not at all; most viewers don't notice it because they're swept along by its flow. And consider another shot, where Greenstreet chatters about the falcon while waiting for a drugged drink to knock out Bogart. Huston's strategy is crafty. Earlier, Greenstreet has set it up by making a point: "I distrust a man who says 'when.' If he's got to be careful not to drink too much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does." Now he offers Bogart a drink, but Bogart doesn't sip from it. Greenstreet talks on, and tops up Bogart's glass. He still doesn't drink. Greenstreet watches him narrowly. They discuss the value of the missing black bird. Finally, Bogart drinks, and passes out. The timing is everything; Huston doesn't give us closeups of the glass to underline the possibility that it's drugged. He depends on the situation to generate the suspicion in our minds. (This was, by the way, Greenstreet's first scene in the movies.)^[1]

Very nearly as visually evocative are the scenes involving Astor, almost all of which suggest prison: In one scene she wears striped pajamas, the furniture in the room is striped, and the slivers of light coming through the Venetian blinds suggest cell bars, as do the bars on the elevator cage at the end of the film when she takes her slow ride downward with the police, apparently on her way to execution. Huston and Edeson crafted each scene to make sure the images, action and dialog blended effectively, sometimes shooting closeups of characters with other cast members acting with them off camera.^[8]

[edit] Falcon props

The "Maltese Falcon" itself is reportedly based on the "Kniphausen Hawk," a ceremonial pouring vessel made in 1697 for George William von Kniphausen, Count of the Holy Roman Empire. It is modeled after a hawk perched on a rock and is encrusted with red garnets, amethysts, emeralds and blue sapphires. The vessel is currently owned by the Duke of Devonshire and is an integral piece of the Chatsworth House collection.

There were several 11-1/2 inch tall Falcon props made for use in the film due to the fact that Humphrey Bogart dropped the original during shooting. The original Falcon is on display to this day in Warner Brothers' movie museum, and its tail feathers are visibly dented from Bogart's accident. Some of the copies of the Falcon were cast of plastic resin, and some of lead. Only two 45 lb. lead Falcons and two 5 lb., 5.4 oz resin Falcons are verified to be in existence today. One lead Falcon has been displayed for years at various venues. The second, which was marred at the end of the movie by Sydney Greenstreet, was a gift to William Conrad from studio chief Jack L. Warner. It was auctioned off in December 1994, nine months after Conrad's death, for $398,500 to Ronald Winston of Harry Winston, Inc. At that time, it was the highest price at which a movie prop had ever been sold. It was used to model a 10 lb. gold replica displayed at the 69th Academy Awards. The replica has Burmese ruby eyes, interchangeable claws (one set of gold, one set of coral) and has a platinum chain in its beak with a 42.98 flawless diamond at the end. Its value is estimated at well over $8 million. The lead and resin Falcons are valued in excess of $2 million.

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: The Maltese Falcon Soundtrack

The music for The Maltese Falcon was written by Adolph Deutsch, who later went on to win an Academy Award for his incidental music for Oklahoma! in 1955.

The recording was re-released in 2002 with the soundtracks to other film works of Deutsch, including George Washington Slept Here, The Mask of Dimitrios, High Sierra, and Northern Pursuit.

[edit] Release

• United States: October 3, 1941 (New York City premiere)
• United States: October 18, 1941 (general release)
• Argentina: December 17, 1941
• Austria: December 22, 1945
• Sweden: February 15, 1943
• Portugal: August 8, 1945
• Germany: May 3, 1946
• France: July 31, 1946
• Finland: September 20, 1946
• Greece: September 21, 1946
• Denmark: October 28, 1946
• Italy: April 5, 1947
• Hong Kong: August 13, 1950
• Japan: January 26, 1951

[edit] DVD release

The DVD was released on June 1, 2006 with a new Dolby Digital mono soundtrack. It includes the original theatrical trailer, as well as a trailer for the earlier 1936 film adaptation of the novel, Satan Met a Lady, and trailers of other Humphrey Bogart films such as The Petrified Forest, High Sierra, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The DVD also includes an essay, A History of the Mystery, examining the mystery and film noir genres through the decades.

Another notable special feature is a Turner Classic Movies documentary, Becoming Attractions: The Trailers of Humphrey Bogart. Hosted by TCM's Robert Osborne, the 45-minute feature traces Bogart's evolution from a heavy in the 1930s to a romantic leading man in the '40s, and his return to playing bad men late in that decade.

[edit] Reception

On its release, The Maltese Falcon received significant acclaim from both critics and the public, and its reputation has been growing ever since. In 1942, it was nominated for three Academy Awards: the film was nominated for Best Picture, Sydney Greenstreet for Best Supporting Actor, and John Huston for Best Adapted Screenplay.

As a result of the film's success, Warner Brothers immediately made plans to produce a sequel entitled The Further Adventures of the Maltese Falcon, which Huston was to direct in early 1942. However, due to the fact that Huston was now in high demand and the major cast members were unavailable, the sequel was never made.^[8]

The Maltese Falcon is considered a classic example of a MacGuffin, a plot device that motivates the characters of the story but otherwise has little relevance.^[18]

The film has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by Roger Ebert^[1] and Entertainment Weekly,^[2] and the American Film Institute ranked it #23 in their list of the best 100 movies in American cinema as well as #26 in their list of the top 100 thrilling movies in American cinema.

The quote that Bogart ends the film with, "The stuff that dreams are made of" (a misquotation from The Tempest^[19]), was chosen as #14 on the AFI's list of top movie quotes in cinematic history.^[20]

The Maltese Falcon (1941) has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and in 1989 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.^[4]

[edit] Cultural impact

The CBS radio network created a 30-minute adaptation of The Maltese Falcon on The Screen Guild Theater with actors Bogart, Astor, Greenstreet and Lorre all reprising their roles. This radio segment was originally released on September 20, 1943, and was played again on July 3, 1946.^[21] On May 18, 1950, another adaptation was broadcast on The Screen Guild Theater starring Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall. In addition, there was an adaptation on Lux Radio Theater on February 8, 1943, starring Edward G. Robinson, Gail Patrick, and Laird Cregar.

In 1975, Columbia released a spoof of The Maltese Falcon called The Black Bird, starring George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr., with Patrick and Cook reprising their roles as Effie and Wilmer from the 1941 version. In 1974, during production for this film, one of the seven plaster figurines of the original 1941 Falcon on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was stolen, and it was alleged that the “disappearance” of the figurine was staged as a publicity stunt for the Segal film. If it was, it backfired, since news accounts of the missing Falcon exceeded those of the Segal film.^[22]

In 1988, the film was parodied in "The Big Goodbye," a first-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, is a fan of detective stories of the early 20th Century, including the fictional Dixon Hill, a stand-in for Sam Spade. In a holodeck simulation, Picard-as-Hill is opposed by Cyrus Redblock, whose name is a play on "Sydney Greenstreet." Redblock is looking for "the item," which is never identified, but is meant to stand in for the Falcon.

There is a homage to the film in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, a made-for-TV movie that gained some notoriety by being mocked on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Famed Marvel Comics supervillain the Kingpin is also supposedly based on Sydney Greenstreet's character of Kasper Gutman.^{[citation needed]}

In an episode of Get Smart that parodies the film, Maxwell Smart travels to Mexico on a case to find the Tequila Mockingbird, a parody of the title To Kill a Mockingbird.

An episode of Batman: The Animated Series entitled "Perchance To Dream" features Batman quoting the line, "The stuff dreams are made of."

An episode from the first season of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries is called The Maltese Canary and the title card is in black-and-white colors. The character of Sam Spade also stars in the episode, and his place as a detective is taken over by Granny until his return from a tournament.

[edit] Production details

• The revolver used to shoot Miles is correctly identified by Spade as a Webley-Fosbery. The Webley was an experiment to get a handgun to automatically reload and cock itself between shots. Unlike a typical semi-automatic pistol with a moving slide, this was a revolver that used its backward momentum to cock the hammer and rotate the cylinder, readying it for the next pull of the trigger. Webleys are rare and considered very valuable by collectors. There was an eight shot .38 calibre version (unusual in itself as most revolvers carry six, or occasionally five, rounds), and a six-shot .455 calibre version. In the film, the .455 version was incorrectly described as the eight shot weapon and the name mispronounced as "Foresby".
• Contrary to popular belief, Bogart (as Spade) does not wear a trench coat in this film, although he does wear an unbelted wool overcoat in outdoor scenes. The popular association of the trench coat with Bogart began when he wore the item in Casablanca.
• Ronson "Touch Tip" lighters are used throughout the film. These lighters, popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, came in a variety of configurations.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• The Maltese Falcon (1941) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) at the TCM Movie Database
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) at Filmsite.org
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) at Film Noir of the Week
• Palace Classic Films' Maltese Falcon Commentary
• The Daily Script: The Maltese Falcon
• The Maltese Falcon movie posters at MoviePosterDB.com

• Books about The Maltese Falcon

v • d • e Films directed by John Huston 1940s The Maltese Falcon • In This Our Life • Across the Pacific • Report from the Aleutians • The Battle of San Pietro • Let There Be Light • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre • Key Largo • We Were Strangers 1950s The Asphalt Jungle • The Red Badge of Courage • The African Queen • Moulin Rouge • Beat the Devil • Moby Dick • Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison • The Barbarian and the Geisha • The Roots of Heaven 1960s The Unforgiven • The Misfits • Freud the Secret Passion • The List of Adrian Messenger • The Night of the Iguana • The Bible: In the Beginning • Reflections in a Golden Eye • Casino Royale • Sinful Davey • A Walk with Love and Death 1970s The Kremlin Letter • Fat City • The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean • The Mackintosh Man • The Man Who Would Be King • Wise Blood 1980s Phobia • Victory • Annie • Under the Volcano • Prizzi's Honor • The Dead