The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Editor's note: When the question is asked, “What is the first film noir?” usually 1941's Maltese Falcon is the answer. Not everyone agrees, however. Clute and Edwards make a good case for the much more obscure film I Wake Up Screaming released the same year. Others think that the "Falcon" isn't 100-percent noir while the shadowy look of Stranger on the Third Floor much closely resembles the German expressionistic style that was used in later noir from the classic period (although they both share the amazing Peter Lorre). What's not in question is the greatness of the film (which was nominated for best picture of that year). It was critically praised when released and was a hit with movie goers and at the box office. A sequel for the film was even in the works from Warner Bros. Due to the high demand for the cast and director caused by the original's success the second Sam-Spade-Bogart film was never made. Far from forgotten - the third filming of the Dashiell Hammett book still grows in popularity today. Here's a piece from the new book The Rough Guide to Film Noirthat helps tell the story of the making of The Maltese Falcon.

By Alex Ballinger & Danny Gradon from the book Rough Guide to Film Noir

The Maltese Falcon cast and crew: Dir John Huston 1941, US, 100m, b/w Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr.
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Music: Adolph Deutsch

“You go and make The Maltese Falcon exactly the way Hammett wrote it, use the dialogue, don’t change a goddam thing and you’ll have a hell of a picture.” So recommends Howard Hawks to first-time director John Huston. Taking Hawks’s advice, the 34-year-old director instructed his secretary to break up Hammett’s 1930 book into basic shots, suing “the novel as a word-for-word guide.”

In the summer of 1941, studio executives regarded The Maltese Falcon as yet another standard Warner Bros detective melodrama with an $81,000 B-movie budget an a six-week shooting schedule. Their contract star, George Raft, had refused the role of Sam Spade and was replaced by character actor Humphrey Bogart, better known for his many secondary roles in 1930s gangster films. It was the novel’s third outing, already filmed as The Maltese Falcon (1931) by Roy Del Ruth and Satan Met a Lady (1935) by William Dieterle. From those inauspicious beginnings, The Maltese Falcon gave birth to the great director-actor partnership of Huston and Bogart, set the standard for all subsequent private eye films, and virtually launched the film noir style.


Action and events in The Maltese Falcon unfold tumultuously. Before we know it, Spade’s partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), ends up on the wrong end of a Webley .45 after taking on a mundane job for the beautiful Mrs Wonderly (Mary Astor). Investigating Archer’s death, Spade balances his desire for and mistrust of Wonderly (aka Brigid O’Shaughnessy) and encounters a grotesque gallery of characters – Sydney Greenstreet as the fat man Kasper Gutman, Elisha Cook Jr as his “gunsel” Wilmer Cook and Peter Lorre as the effeminate Levantine Joel Cario – and their ruthless quest to find the elusive Maltese falcon. The film is dominated by the unshaven, world-weary Bogart as Spade – streets away from Hammett’s hawkish “blond satan”. His morally ambiguous detective, menacing and jaunty, is at ease in the company of district attorneys as he is with perverse criminals.

The actors and director were a tight bunch, breakfasting together and often socializing at the Lakeside Country Club after filming. Huston’s approach on set was no less refreshing, making Astor run round the studio before takes to induce her breathless and deceptively vulnerable delivery. Huston even cast his father, Walter Huston, in the non-speaking role of Hammett’s 7ft Captain Jacoby, who delivers the falcon to Spade in his death throes.

Leaving nothing to chance, Huston sketched each of the film’s main set-ups and buckled the Hollywood norm by shooting most of the film sequentially. With imperious cinematographer Art Edeson – aka “Little Napoleon” – they continually filmed over Bogart’s shoulder, dolly tracked behind him or showed his point of view to get into the detective’s mindset. Characters are composed in medium shots in unnerving tableaux, for instance Spade flanked by police investigators Dundy (Barton MacLane) and Polhaus (Ward Bond) in his shadowy apartment. In the film’s final tense sequences, as the protagonists await the falcon’s arrival, the frame can hardly contain Gutman’s bulk, the electric presence of Spade and the seething Cairo in the background. Unnerving low angles, such as those of Gutman or the shock cuts of Wilmer’s alarmed point of view as he looks at Gutman, Cairo, Spade and Brigid, led critic Manny Farber to describe Huston as having an “Eisenstein-lubricated brain”.

Visual excess takes a secondary role in Spade’s memorable confrontation with Brigid at the movie’s close. Here, Hawks’s advice would be proved right, as Hammett’s dialogue crackles on screen. With the couple covering an extraordinary amount of detailed plot exposition, Brigid insists on the sincerity of her love for Spade while simultaneously revealing the depths of her deceit. Whatever the tragic outcome, Spade’s self-justifying words to her, “When a man’s partner is killed, he supposed to do something about it”, have a particularly hollow ring to them.