The Maltese Falcon

I have been so excited to see The Maltese Falcon ever since the 2021 TCM Big Screen Classics series lineup was announced!  I had the chance last night and it was so much fun watching what is widely regarded as one of the best examples of film noir, with Humphrey Bogart as the private eye and Mary Astor as the femme fatale, on the big screen.  The story begins when a beautiful woman named Ruth Wonderley (Astor) hires detective Sam Spade (Bogart) to find a missing person.  The case takes a sinister turn when his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) and Floyd Thursby, the man he is tailing, are murdered.  Spade discovers that his client, now known as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, was once Thursby's colleague and that she, Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook, Jr.), and Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) are all in pursuit of a mysterious black statue of a falcon, purported to be a lost tribute from the Knights Templar of Malta to Charles V of Spain, which Thursby apparently found in Istanbul.  After a series of convoluted misadventures Spade eventually finds the falcon and solves the case.  This movie is incredibly suspenseful with so many twists and turns that you can't possibly guess what it going to happen next and features one of the best MacGuffins in film history.  Bogart gives a brilliant performance as the ruthless anti-hero who quips and fights his way out of every situation with a cheeky grin on his face.  Lorre is hilarious as the eccentric Cairo and Greenstreet, in his very first screen role, steals every scene that he is in as Gutman.  Astor is also fantastic as the manipulative O'Shaughnessy and her performance in the emotionally charged final scene with Spade is epic.  I loved the hard-boiled dialogue, the use of light and shadow in the cinematography, and the stylized direction by John Huston.  It is a wildly entertaining movie and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it!