The Maltese Falcon is a
1941 American Warner Bros. film based on
novel of the same name by
Dashiell Hammett. Written and directed by
John Huston, the movie stars
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 a San Francisco private detective's dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers who compete to obtain a fabulous jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon.
The Maltese Falcon has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by
Roger Ebert,
[Ebert, Roger "The Maltese Falcon (1941)." rogerebert.com. 13 May 2001. 24 February 2007.] and
Entertainment Weekly,
[Entertainment Weekly. The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. New York: Entertainment Weekly Books, 1999.] and was cited by
Panorama du Film Noir Américain, the first major work on
film noir, as the first film of that genre.
[Sklar, Robert. Film: An International History of the Medium. [1]: Thames and Hudson, . 1990.]
