The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)

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

The Maltese Falcon
Directed by	John Huston
Produced by	Henry Blanke (associate producer) Hal B. Wallis (executive producer)
Written by	John Huston based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Mary Astor Peter Lorre Sydney Greenstreet
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
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 triple Academy Award nominated film directed and written by John Huston in his directorial debut. The film, set in San Francisco, is based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as the femme fatale client Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut as Fat Man Kasper Gutman, and Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo.

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

Contents 1 Background 2 Synopsis 3 Cast 4 Crew 5 Casting 6 Production 7 Cinematography 8 Screenplay 9 Release 10 DVD release 11 Soundtrack 12 Reception and criticism 13 Cultural impact 14 The Maltese Falcon Prop 15 Minor errors and flaws 15.1 Geographical errors 15.2 Historical errors 15.3 Continuity 15.4 Visual flaws 15.5 Audio-visual flaws 16 Trivia 17 Notes 18 External links

[edit] Background

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

The wry, witty antihero, Sam Spade, portrayed in the 1941 film by Humphrey Bogart, is based upon Hammett himself, who for many years was employed 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 discarded when he launched his career as a writer).

Hammett also drew upon his early career as a detective in creating many of the other characters for The Maltese Falcon, which he pieced together from two of his stories that were published in Black Mask magazine in 1925, “The Whosis Kid,” and “The Gutting of Couffignal.” The novel itself was serialized in five parts in Black Mask in 1930 before being published as a whole by Alfred A. Knopf.

[edit] Synopsis

As the film begins, the audience learns a little about the Falcon through a written introduction: "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". When pirates captured the ship, the Maltese Falcon was lost, and its whereabouts remain a mystery.

The story then moves to San Francisco in 1941, and the office of private detectives Sam Spade and Miles Archer, where Spade (Bogart) meets a beautiful, young client - Miss Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor). She asks Spade to locate her missing sister, a helpless young woman who is somewhere in San Francisco with a mysterious man named Floyd Thursby. Astor says she has a date to meet Thursby that night and is hoping her wayward sister will be with him. When Spade's partner Archer arrives, Spade quickly explains the situation, and after they receive a substantial retainer from the woman, Archer volunteers to follow her that night and help her free her sister from the clutches of Thursby.

When Miles Archer shows up that night, he is startled to find someone holding a gun on him. The gun fires, and Archer is blown backward over a barrier and down a hill. After receiving a call informing him of his partner’s death, Spade hurries to the scene, where plainclothes detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) shows him the murder weapon. Spade informs Polhaus that Archer was tailing a guy named Thursby, but refuses to give him any more information. Spade then calls Miss Wonderly’s hotel, but finds that she has checked out.

Returning to his small apartment, Spade is soon 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 identify his client and gets angry when they suggest he killed his partner. Spade then learns that Thursby has been killed in front of his hotel. Although they doubt Spade's alibi, the cops restrain from arresting him.

The next morning Spade is visited by Iva (Gladys George), Archer’s widow, who embraces him passionately, to his discomfort. Wonderly - now calling herself Brigid O’Shaughnessy - telephones, and asks him to come to see her. When he does, Spade assures her that he has refrained from informing the police that she is his client, but lets her know that he is aware she invented the story about her sister. She explains that Thursby was her companion, 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 he makes her pay him most of the money she has on hand.

At his office, Spade finds a man named Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), who offers him a $5,000 award to find a “black figure of a bird.” When Spade is distracted, Cairo pulls a gun on and insists on searching the office, but Spade is too quick and knocks the gun out of Cairo's hand and knocks him out. While he is unconscious, Spade goes through his possessions, inspecting his French and British passports, money, and an orchestra seat to the Geary Theatre. 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 asks for his weapon back, and then turns it on Spade again to search the office, much to the amusement now of Spade.

Later that evening, Spade sees that he is being followed and loses the man, then visits Brigit, telling her that Joel Cairo has offered him $5,000 for “the black bird.” He kisses her but demands she tell him what it’s all about. Together they go to Spade’s apartment, where they are later joined by Cairo. Brigit and Joel Cairo grill each other about the black bird’s whereabouts, and Cairo gets excited when Brigit mentions that “the Fat Man” is in San Francisco.

Their conversation is interrupted by Detective Polhaus and Lt. Dundy, where Cairo accuses Brigit of assaulting him. After an argument, Dundy says he is going to run them all into the police station, but Spade cleverly tells the cops they were merely pulling their legs and, rather than go to jail, Brigit and Cairo back him up leaving the police again stranded.

Joel Cairo goes back to his hotel, and Sam Spade asks, “What’s this bird, this falcon, that everybody’s all steamed up about?” When Brigit responds with a line about following the bird, Spade calls her a liar, and then glimpses the man outside in the street who had tailed him earlier. Spade then goes to the Hotel Belvedere and asks to speak to Cairo on the desk phone. Again he spots the man who has been following him, puts down the phone, and sits next to him. But when Bogart asks him where Lorre has gone, Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.) pretends ignorance and tells him to “shove off.” Spade calls the house detective (James Burke), a friend of his, who removes Wilmer from the hotel.

When Spade returns to his office, he learns that Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet), the Fat Man, has been calling him. After sending Brigit off with his secretary for safekeeping, the detective gets a call from Gutman and goes to his hotel suite, where he is greeted by Wilmer who turns out to be the Fat Man’s gunsel. Gutman greets Spade warmly, gives him a drink, and invites him to sit down. Spade quieries him about the black bird. and the Fat Man begins to tell him about the falcon but then becomes delibetately evasive and Spade loses his patience by smashing his glass and storming out, giving Gutman a deadline to explain the mystery.

Later Wilmer, one hand stuck in his pocket where a pistol bulges, stops Spade on the street, telling him that The Fat Man would like to see him again. Before they get to Kasper Gutman's suite, Spade overpowers the gunman and humiliates him in front of his boss by handing the weapons over to the Fat Man. He and Spade sit down to more drinks while he relates the history of the Maltese Falcon from the days of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.

The Fat Man explains that pirates stole the jewel-encrusted, priceless falcon when it was sent to King Charles in the 1500s and that, centuries later, it was discovered in Paris, where it was painted over with black enamel. Then, in 1923, a Greek antique dealer found the falcon and gave it another coat of paint. But the dealer was murdered and the falcon stolen once again. The Fat Man informs Spade that he traced the falcon to the home of a Russian general in Istanbul, but that when he visited the Russian, the falcon was gone.

Believing now that it is in San Francisco and may even be in Spade's hands, he offers him a vast sum of $25,000 for the bird. He also promises to give him one-fourth of the proceeds from the sale of the falcon. Spade attempts to leave, but his vision begins to blur and he passes out; his beverage has been drugged. The Fat Man leaves the room and returns wearing his jacket; and Cairo appears; and, after Wilmer kicks Spade in the face as his come-uppance for embarrassing him, the sinister trio depart leaving him unconcious.

When Spade revives, he immediately calls his scretary, learning that Brigit is not with her. He searches the Fat Man's apartment and finds a newspaper with the column of the time of arrival of the La Paloma from Hong Kong highlighted. He is soon at the docks but finds that the ship is on fire. However, a dock officer informs him that the crew and passengers have gotten off safely, and he returns to his office.

Suddenly a man with his face hidden behind a black hat (Walter Huston, unbilled) bursts into the office, and staggers toward Bogart clutching a package, drops it, murmuring, “You know...falcon,” and collapses on the couch, dead. Bogart inspects the dead man’s wallet and tells the panic-stricken Patrick that the dead man, who has been shot, is the captain of the ship the La Paloma. After inspecting the package, he mischeviously grins and says, “We’ve got it, angel. We’ve got it.”

The phone rings, and the secretary hears Brigit give the address of 26 Ancho Street 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. He takes the package to a baggage room and searches it, then mails the claim check to himself at a postal box.

Although a taxi ride to 26 Ancho Street reveals the address to be an empty lot, Spade finds Brigit and takes her to his apartment where he finds the gang waiting. The Fat Man gives Spade $10,000 and asks him to retrieve the falcon. Spade calls his scretary and tells her to pick up the package and bring it to him. Bogart inspects the money he has been given, discovers a $1,000 bill is missing, and accuses him of conning him; the Fat Man jokingly admits as much and turns over the bill. Then Patrick appears and turns over the package revealing a black statuette of a falcon.

As the Fat Man inspects the bird, he grows agitated, and begins to cut away the black enamel with his pen knife. He cuts faster and faster, carving in a frenzy but finds no jewels encrusted in the falcon’s body, finally shouting, “It’s a fake...it’s a phony...it’s lead...it’s lead...it’s a fake.” Brigit denies substituting the bird, insisting that this is the statuette she got from the Russian general. The Fat Man is close to nervous wreck, while Cairo explodes at him: “You, it’s you who bungled it, you and your stupid attempt to buy it, you, you imbecile, you bloated idiot, you stupid fathead, you.”

Joel Cairo breaks down and weeps while the Fat Man tries to regain his control. He demands that Spade return the money and departs on a new search for the Falcon but Spade is allowed to keep $1,000 for his “time and expenses.” Once the gang have left, Spade angrily confronts the frightened Brigit, telling her he knows she killed his partner to implicate her unwanted lover and accomplice, Thursby, and then killed Thursby. “Well,” he adds, “if you get a good break, you’ll be out of Tehachapi in 20 years and you can come back to me then. I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck.”

But Brigit doesn’t believe that Sam is going to turn her over to the police. “Don’t be silly,” he says, “you’re taking the fall.” She appeals to him and the love she knows he has for her. Bogart doesn’t argue. He sits down glumly, staring downward, saying: “Listen. This won’t do any good. You’ll never understand me, but I’ll try once and then give it up. 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 real falcon, the money the Fat Man left as a bribe for his silence, and the devastated Brigit, explaining that she killed his partner. Resigned, Brigit is taken away by the Lieutenant. Bond picks up the statuette, saying, “It’s heavy. What is it?” Taking the falcon, Spade replies, “The stuff that dreams are made of.” Spade has time to step out into the hallway and see the tearful Brigit symbolically stare vacantly through the bars of the elevator window as she departs in on her way to jail 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", crime boss
Peter Lorre	Joel Cairo	petty criminal
Elisha Cook Jr.	Wilmer Cook	Gutman's henchman
Lee Patrick	Effie Perrine	Spade's secretary
Jerome Cowan	Miles Archer	Spade's partner
Gladys George	Iva Archer	wife of Miles
Walter Huston	Captain Jacobi	a seaman making a delivery
Barton MacLane	Detective Lieutenant Dundy	police detective investigating murders
Ward Bond	Detective Tom Polhaus	police detective investigating murders

[edit] Crew

• Cinematography - Arthur Edeson
• Film Editing - Thomas Richards
• Art Direction - Robert M. Haas
• Costume Design - Orry-Kelly
• Makeup - Perc Westmore and Frank McCoy (uncredited)
• Production Management - Al Alleborn (uncredited)
• Assistant Director - Claude Archer (uncredited)
• Sound Department - [Oliver S. Garretson
• Musical director - Leo F. Forbstein
• Dialogue director - Robert Foulk
• Script supervisor - Meta Carpenter .... (uncredited)
• Orchestrator - Arthur Lange (uncredited)

[edit] Casting

Huston was also very careful when casting for the film, but Bogart was not the first choice to play Detective Sam Spade. Producer Hal Wallis initially offered the role to George Raft, who rejected the role because he did not want to work with an inexperienced director. The 42-year-old Bogart was delighted, however, in 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.

Raft would go on turning down roles that Bogart would play and make famous, including the cynical hero of Casablanca (1942). And 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.

The character of the sinister Fat Man was based on real-life villain A. Maundy Gregory who was an overweight British detective-turned-entrepreneur who was involved in many sophisticated endeavors and capers, including an arduent search for a long-lost treasure not unlike the jewelled Falcon. However the character was not easily cast and it took some amount of time before producer Hal Wallis solved that dilemma by suggesting that Huston screentest Greenstreet, a veteran character actor of the stage but had never appeared on the silver screen, Greenstreet, who was then 61 years old and weighed between 280 and 350 pounds, impressed Huston considerably be his sheer size which combined with his distinctive abrasive laugh, bulbous eyes, and manner consolidated his decision for casting the role. Such was the approval of his casting in the Maltese Falcon that Greenstreet would go on to be type cast in later films of the 1940s such as The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), The Verdict (1946) and Three Strangers (1946). "The Fat Man", had such an important impact culturally that the "Fat Man" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II was named after him.^[4]

The character of Joel Cairo is based on the criminal Hammett captured for robbing Pinkerton’s in 1920 in Washington D.C. In the original novel, his character is blatantly homosexual, but to avoid problems with the censors, Warner Bros downplayed this element of the character considerably but still ensured that he was given an effeminate edge. For example he fusses about his clothes and becomes hysterical when blood from a scratch ruins his shirt, while his calling cards and handkerchiefs have the potent odor of gardenias, which Spade makes a point of noting to his secretary Effie before she shows him into his office. In contrast in the novel Effie simply refers to Cairo as a queer.

The role of the deceitful Brigid O'Shaughnessy was originally offered to Geraldine Fitzgerald but was offered to Mary Astor when Fitzgerald decided to act in a stage play.

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 Joel Cairo and even the character of Fat Man Gutman, the character of Wilmer has also been by many commentators as homosexual.

[edit] Production

John Huston used much of the dialogue from the original novel, removing all references to sex which the Hays Office had deemed to be un-American. The many “by gads” Greenstreet utters in the movie were inserted by the censors to replace the words “by God.” Huston was also warned not to show excessive drinking. The director opposed this instruction, averring that Spade was a man who put away a half bottle of hard liquor a day and showing him completely abstaining from alcohol would be to seriously falsify his character.

In 1936, Warner Brothers attempted to re-release the original 1931 version, but was denied approval by the Production Code Office due to the film's "lewd" content. This is probably why a cleaned-up version of the film was produced in 1941. It was not until after 1966 that unedited copies of the original film could be legally shown in the United States. Ironically, the 1941 film still managed to sneak some homosexual innuendo past the Hays Office censors, e.g., the use of the term "gunsel" for a very young man used by an older one for sex as well as for a 'gunslinger',^[5] and Lorre's subtle fellating gestures with his cane.

[edit] Cinematography

The film uses black and white to its advantage with the darkness helping to make different scenes difficult to discern, adding to the suspense. The characters are almost disguised in these scenes, and viewers are directed to focus on the plot and the action as a result.

Special shots are also used to make the film more intensifying. As the camera pans across empty streets or zooms in on the terrified face of Brigid, viewers are easily able to understand the setting of the story and the emotions of the characters.

Huston utilized his cameraman Arthur Edeson to shoot the whole scene fluidly with some 26 dolly moves. With its low-key lighting and inventive and arresting angles, the photography is one of the film’s great assets. Huston used ceilings to create images of confinement, and the sets, except for the hotel and the dock scene, are almost claustrophobic, suggesting that Spade’s investigation is extremely limited, that he has just so much space in which to search for that elusive black falcon.

Moreover, unusual camera angles are cleverly utilized to emphasize the nature of the characters. Some of the most striking technical scenes involve the Fat Man, Greenstreet, especially the scene where he slowly explains the history of the falcon to Bogart, purposely drawing out his story so that the knockout drops he has slipped into Bogart’s drink will take effect. As the seated Greenstreet growls out the black tale of the bird, the camera, from floor angle, shoots up at him vertically, emphasising his considerable girth as he fills the entire screen. By dominating the scene in this way it illustrates that he is a overwhelmed by greed, and very much a leader with an evil authority. His expanse of belly, crossed by a gold watch chain, symbolically enforces the enormity of the tale of dark conspiracy surrounding the falcon.

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 coddled 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.

[edit] Screenplay

During the planning for the Maltese Falcon, 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 the filming process would be performed more fluently and professionally. Like other direcotrs such as Alfred Hitchcock Huston was adament that the film went according to schedule and that everything was methodically panned to the full to ensure that his first film never went over budget. In generating a highly detailed and instructive script, Huston was able to let his screen actors rehearse their scenes with very little intervention.

Such was the master planning of original script that not a line of dialog was eliminated from the eventual edited version. Except for some exterior night shots, Huston shot the entire film in sequence, which greatly helped his actors. The shooting went so smoothly that there was actually extra time for the cast to enjoy themselves, and Huston led 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 black bird.

[edit] Release

Country	Release date
United States	October 3, 1941 (New York City premiere)
United States	October 18, 1941 (Cinema across America)
Argentina	December 17, 1941
Sweden	February 15, 1943
Portugal	August 8, 1945
Austria	December 22, 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? with a new Dolby Digital mono soundtrack. The DV release of the film includes the original theatrical trailer for The Maltese Falcon, as well as a trailer for the earlier film adaptation of the novel, the Bette Davis vehicle Satan Met a Lady from 1931. The DVD also includes an essay, A History of the Mystery examining the history of the mystery and film noir genre through the decades originating from this film.

Notable special features on The Maltese Falcon DVD is a Turner Classic Movie documentary, Becoming Attractions: The Trailers of Humphrey Bogart. Hosted by TCM's Robert Osborne, the 45-minute feature traces Bogart's evolution from heavy in the 1930s to romantic leading man in the '40s heavily influenced by the Maltese Falcon to his return to playing bad men late in that decade. The documentary takes a novel approach by mapping out Bogart's career through selected film trailers. The DV also features trailers of other Bogart films such as The Petrified Forest, High Sierra, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as well as the original trailer for the Falcon.

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: The Maltese Falcon Soundtrack

The soundtrack to the film was performed by Adolph Deutsch who later went on the win an Academy Award for his composition in Oklahoma! in 1955. It was performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.

[edit] Reception and criticism

The Maltese Falcon recieved significant acclaim from both critics and the public. The film has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by Entertainment Weekly^[1] and Roger Ebert.^[6]. The Maltese Falcon was nominated for 3 Academy Award's including Academy Award for Best Picture (Hal B. Wallis), Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Sydney Greenstreet) and Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for director and screenwriter John Huston. The quote that Bogart recites in the film, "The stuff that dreams are made of," (cf The Tempest, Act IV, Sc 1, line 155) was chosen as #14 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, a list of top movie quotes of cinematic history.^[1]

The Maltese Falcon was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain (the French book that coined the term film noir) as the first film noir ever made, inventing a whole genre which became successful throughout the 1940s and 1950s.^[7]

As a result of the film's success, the Warner Brothers studio immediately made plans to produce a sequel entitled The Further Adventures of the Maltese Falcon, which Huston was to direct the following year in early 1942. However due to the fact that Huston was now in high demand and the major cast members had equally been awarded different roles, the sequel was never made.

The American Film Institute ranked The Maltese Falcon #23 in their list of the best 100 movies in American cinema.

The American Film Institute ranked The Maltese Falcon #26 in their list of the top 100 thrilling movies in American cinema.

[edit] Cultural impact

The 1941 version has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

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, following Bogart, Astor, and Greenstreet's Academy Award win in 1946. ^[8] 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 produced a spoof on The Maltese Falcon called The Black Bird, starring George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr., with Patrick and Cook reprising their roles from the 1941 version. Seven plaster figurines of the original falcon were used during the 1941 production and later displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from which one of them was ironically stolen in 1974, during the production. It was alleged that the “disappearance” of the figurine and the Segal film were staged as a publicity stunt. If it was, it backfired, since news accounts of the missing falcon exceeded those of the Segal film. ^[9]

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. The episode title is a play on The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, both titles of novels by Raymond Chandler featuring hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe. In a holodeck simulation, Picard-as-Hill is opposed by Cyrus Redblock, whose name is a play on "Sidney Greenstreet." Redblock was played by Lawrence Tierney, who had acted in several crime drama films in the 1940s. 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 Raul Julia made-for-TV movie that gained fame by being mocked on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Famed supervillain the Kingpin comic is also supposedly based on Sydney Greenstreet's character of THe Fat Man.

[edit] The Maltese Falcon Prop

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 intergral piece of the Chatsworth 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 Bros movie museum and its tail feathers are visibly dented from Bogey's flub sixty years ago. Some of the copies of the falcon were cast of plastic resin, 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 by studio chief Jack L. Warner. It was auctioned 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, which happened to be the value placed on the "real" original Maltese Falcon Fat Man Kasper Gutman in the film.

[edit] Minor errors and flaws

The film has a number of goofs, most of them minor continuity errors but also some geographcal errors and historical references.

[edit] Geographical errors

When the La Paloma burns, a sign reading "Port of Los Angeles" is seen over a door leading onto a wharf and the logo of the Los Angeles Fire Department appears on firefighters hats though story is based in San Francisco.

[edit] Historical errors

The opening crawl begins, "In 1539, the Knight Templars[sic] of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon..."

This confuses two different religious orders of knights, both founded in Jerusalem. The Knights Hospitallers of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, known as the Order of St. John for short, have existed since 1048; they were in fact based in Malta from 1530 to 1798 and hence were also called the Knights of Malta. On the other hand, the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, also called the Knights Templar or just Templars, were founded in 1119 and became the sworn enemies of the first order. The Templars were actually disbanded by 1312, after King Philip IV of France had declared them heretics so that he could confiscate their wealth.

[edit] Continuity

When searching for the body, Sam's handkerchief is ruffled only while he is in the room, not before or after.

• Towards the end, after Brigid tells Sam she can't look at him, she covers her face with her hand. From another angle, her hand isn't there.

• When Gutman first puts the Falcon on the table he is smoking a cigar. When he begins to scratch the Falcon there is no cigar in sight.

• When Dundy and Polhaus are in the Spade's house, Spade serves a drink to them. When he begins to serve, Dundy is standing and Polhaus sitting. Then Polhaus stands up in the right side of Spade. Next shot he is in front of Spade.

• In the scene with Joel Cairo and O'Shaughnessy in the Spade's house, Cairo lights a match with his left hand. Between shots the match appears in his right hand.

• When Gutman, Cairo, and Wilmer leaves Spade's apartment, the door was left open. In the next scene however, Tom and Dundy opens the door when coming in.

• When Sam first goes to see Gutman in 12C, as he walks down the corridor we can see that directly in front of him is a chair, a table with flowers on and a silhouette of a diamond framed window and the flowers on the wall, but when he leaves we can see two chairs either side of the table and the diamond frame silhouette is not there.

• Spade doesn't wear rings or a watch throughout the movie except for one scene. At one point he walks into his office wearing a wedding band on his left hand, another large ring on his right hand and an expensive-looking wristwatch. He sits down to have a quick chat with his secretary where the rings and watch are in plain view. He then walks through a doorway into his inner office and the rings and watch are gone.

• When Gutman is slicing away energetically at the Maltese Falcon, one shot shows him standing still with his arms not moving.

• Spade gets the drop on Joel Cairo, grabbing Cairo's gun hand. As the gun drops to the floor it falls to Cairo's left side. On the close-up the gun lands near Cairo's right shoe.

• After Gutman discovers the Maltese Falcon is a fake and shakes off the shock, he puts the statue upright. A close-up of the bird and Gutman's hands shows a knife in his right hand, though in the previous long shot his hand was empty.

[edit] Visual flaws

• At the very end, as O'Shaughnessy and Dundy are leaving in the elevator, the visual effect of the elevator going down is accomplished by lowering a dark screen in front of the backlit actors. However you can clearly see that both silhouetted actors remain standing motionless at floor level as the screen drops.

At the scene where Sam hits Cairo, while he falls unconscious on the sofa we can see Cairo blinking pretty obviously.

When Spade is talking to Det. Tom Polhaus about the Webley, the sound stage ceiling can be clearly seen above the tops of the buildings.

The shadows of the film crew are also visible where Captain Jacoby stumbles into Spade's office and falls on the couch.

[edit] Audio-visual flaws

The relationship between the audio and the visual is unsynchronized when Gutman is slicing away energetically at the Maltese Falcon, his voice ("It's a fake... it's lead!) is clearly dubbed by another actor. Also when Sam's secretary Effie is on the phone with Iva, we hear her say, "No, not yet," but her mouth is closed. *When Spade and Wilmer are walking down the hall toward Gutman's apartment, the shadow of the microphone boom passes across Wilmer's coat.

[edit] Trivia

• The unbilled appearance of the great character actor Walter Huston, disguised in his small cameo role as the merchant marine captain who delivers the falcon to Spade’s office, was done as a good luck gesture for his son. Significantly, 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.
• The revolver used to shoot Miles is correctly identified by Sam as a Webley-Fosbery. All Sam says about it is, "They don't make 'em anymore." However, much more than that, it was an experiment to get a handgun to automatically reload and cock itself between shots. Many are familiar with a typical semi-automatic pistol with a moving slide, but 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. These are considered very valuable and rare and are very sought after by collectors.
• Ronson touch tip lighters were 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
• Palace Classic Films' Maltese Falcon Commentary
• The Daily Script: The Maltese Falcon