The Maltese Falcon (1931)

Directed by

Roy Del Ruth

Genre

drama film, film noir, action film, crime film, mystery film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 20m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 54 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A private detective gets drawn into a dangerous search for a valuable statuette. He must navigate a web of lies and betrayals from a cast of shady characters.

moodysuspensefulcrispwryseedyfast-pacedgrittypre-code

What happens

The Maltese Falcon is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film based on the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and directed by Roy Del Ruth. The film stars Ricardo Cortez as private detective Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as femme fatale Ruth Wonderly. The supporting cast features Dudley Digges, Thelma Todd, Walter Long, Una Merkel, and Dwight Frye. Maude Fulton and Brown Holmes wrote the screenplay; one contemporaneous report said that Lucien Hubbard was assisting them. While the film was successful, its legacy was deeply hampered by the enforcement of the Hays Code. The film was remade by the studio twice, with its 1941 remake starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor overshadowing its predecessors. The film was not seen in its entirety until after the collapse of the Code in the mid-1960s. A print has been held by the Library of Congress since the 1970s. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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