The 1941 film was directed by John Huston in his first directorial role - he also wrote the screenplay - and stars Humphrey Bogart as the detective, Mary Astor (in place of Geraldine Fitzgerald whose clashes with the studio cost her the role) as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the femme fatale and ultimate villainess, who hires him, Sydney Greenstreet in his exceptional film debut as the extraordinary Kasper Gutman, and Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo.
This film was Humphrey Bogart's first role in a movie outside the studio system he had worked under previously. The role of Sam Spade was, in fact, not offered first to Bogart, but rather to George Raft who turned it down because he thought it, "was not an important picture." Bogart's role became the character archetype for a private detective in the Film Noir genre providing him near instant acclaim for the role.
Also in the film are Barton MacLane and Ward Bond as policemen, Lee Patrick as Spade's long-suffering secretary, and Gladys George's confusing things as the wife of Spade's partner.
The 1941 version of the film (which was obviously censored of certain sexual dialogue and motifs that appeared in the original "Pre-Code" movie version) has, nonetheless, been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. The quote, "The stuff that dreams are made of," was listed as #14 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, a list of top movie quotes. Released by Warner Bros.
Plot Description
Private eye Sam Spade and his partner are approached by O'Shaughnessy to follow a man.
During the tail Spade's partner is murdered, and Spade becomes embroiled with O'Shaughnessy, Cairo, and Gutman - three ruthless characters seeking the lost Maltese Falcon, a statuette of a bird, currently black but believed to be solid gold and jewelled beneath this veneer.
The Huston version exemplifies the noir aesthetic both thematically and visually. At the end of the film, the hero Sam Spade realizes that O'Shaughnessy, who hired him and with whom he has fallen in love, is responsible for his partner's death. He must decide between turning her in or running away with her. Typically, for the noir period film, the hero eventually makes the moral decision. Visually, as she is being led away, the woman enters an elevator, and the grate closing in front of her face symbolizes her jailing.
In the novel, Spade also gives up O'Shaughnessy, but in a more hard-boiled manner: It is a choice between which of them will be jailed for murder, and Spade is aware they will hang him but not O'Shaughnessy. [top]
Awards
Best Picture (nomination)
Best Supporting Actor (nomination) - Sydney Greentstreet
Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay (nomination) - John Huston
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