Rating: 
Summary: Should I stutter?
Review: In order to follow merely the plot of this story the first time round you need a brain that goes clickety-click fast enough to match Bogart's machine-gun-like delivery. I can't believe anyone ever talked as fast as he did on film. Partly because the plot is so intricate, it gets better each time you see it: everything eventually falls into place with perfect logic. But there's very much more to it. There's a terrific undertow of all kinds of deeper meanings below the surface: the campy amorality of the misfit crooks with their greed and false values, pursuing nothing. The ferocious bitterness in Bogart's staccato angel, precious, darling, sweetheart. It's as if he hated the whole female race. There's no love here, just off-screen pairing. It's pointless to complain that Mary Astor is melodramatic. That's the whole point of her character: she doesn't lie in order to gain some advantage, it's her feminine nature to put on an act, deceive and mislead. Her opposite is the role of the staunch and loyal secretary: "You're a good man, sister!" In fact the whole movie is suffused with gender-bending confusion. The cops are a couple of boyfriends. The womanising jerk, Archer, is Bogart's partner. Add to this the fantastic character-acting of, especially, Sydney Greenstreet. An amazing screen presence, he really was. This is a film which matures the more you see it, and it is definitely for the mature. I didn't think much of it, the first time I saw it.
Rating:
Summary: Sit back and enjoy
Review: Colorize the Maltese Falcon? HAH! Wonderful joke, Leonard. I do appreciate your twisted sense of humour.
Seriously, how can you go wrong with the combination of Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet?
Rating: 
Summary: A film noir classic from John Huston
Review: Brigid O'Shaughnessy hires Sam Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, to bring back her sister who's been living with a "dangerous" man. Miles sets off to tail the man, but winds up murdered. Trying to discover who killed his partner before the police can lay blame on him, Spade gets more involved with Brigid's search for a missing statue, the Maltese Falcon. She must find it before the nervous Joel Cairo or the mysterious Kaspar Gutman can get their hands on it.Director John Huston, who also wrote the screenplay based on Dashiell Hammett's novel, a crafted one of the finest examples of film noir to hit the screen. Humphrey Bogart's star-making turn as Detective Sam Spade is full of sharp-tongued intelligence as he plays each of the characters against themselves to get to the truth. Peter Lorre is devious as the nervous Joel Cairo, determined to locate the Maltese Falcon for his employer, Kaspar Gutman, played with finesse by Sydney Greenstreet. Mary Astor does a fine job as Brigid, but to me, she comes across as a bit too melodramatic. I found it hard to take her seriously in the role of a woman out to use whatever it takes to get the statue. The script is fast paced with excellent dialogue, especially the scenes between Spade and Gutman. The DVD transfer has some satisfactory extras, such as movie trailers and a history of the film. I'm a bit surprised at the picture quality. Many grainy spots, noise lines, and other imperfections. I hope they release a restored version of this in the near future. "The Maltese Falcon" is a marvelous film and is a must for any cinephile.
Rating:
Summary: A Bonafide Classic!
Review: The Maltese Falcon is a superb film. A bonafide classic masterpiece with top notch acting from the entire cast, Bogart, Lorre, etc! Being a film buff who is against colorizing black and white movies I have to totally disagree with the review I just read from some guy saying that this movie needs to be colorized! Black and white movies are beautiful works of art and should remain that way!
Rating:
Summary: I really like how this movie feels "outside of time"
Review: Some older people mention Bogart's name with far more awe than Cary Grant's, Rock Hudson's, Douglas Fairbanks', etc. They tell of how he was the big name back then, was the real marquee player, etc. All I know is this movie has aged even better than Casablanca imho, and in fact feels like it's in many ways truly timeless. Bogart's acting is great imho, and doesn't look simplistic at all (although I do love his acting in Casablanca maybe a bit more, it's just that the scenery/setwork here seems to add more to the timelessness). I love a lot of the old flics - they really are shockingly good sometimes.
Rating:
Summary: The Mislaid Ornament
Review: The Maltese Falcon (black and while; running time 101 minutes; not rated) stars Academy Award winner actor, Humphrey Bogart, along with Mary Astor, Jerome Cowan, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. The Maltese Falcon was expertly directed by John Huston in 1941 for Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. In this film, suspense, murder and mystery surround the search for the Maltese falcon.
When a beautiful woman, Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), enters the private investigation offices of Archer and Spade and asks for help, little do Samuel Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) know the effect she will have on their lives. Miles is murdered while working for Ms. O'Shaughnessy and Sam Spade must now find who killed his partner. While strongly attracted to the beautiful Ms. O'Shaughnessey, he soon realizes that she has difficulty with the truth. As events unfold, and more are murdered, Sam Spade discovers that everything revolves around the search for a rare and valuable statute of a falcon, the Maltese falcon. Not only is this what is behind the beautiful Brigid O'Shaughnessy's plea for help, but he also finds that Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) and Kasper Gutman, "the Fat Man" (Sydney Greenstreet), will do anything to put their hands on the "mislaid ornament". Through a twist of fate, Sam ends up in possession of the Maltese Falcon and then uses the statute to pull together all the people and all the information he needs to reveal the murderers. However, is this the real Maltese falcon, or does it remain "the mislaid ornament"?
This film is rated five stars (*****). The suspense, twists and turns, will keep you on the edge of your seat; and the direction by John Ford and the performance by Humphrey Bogart are timeless and classic.
Rating:
Summary: The birth of Hollywood's original noir anti-hero.
Review: Like few other actors, Humphrey Bogart ruled the Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s - epitome of the handsome, cynical and oh-so lonesome wolf and looking unbeatably cool in his fedora and trenchcoat, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth; endowed with a legendary aura several times larger than his real life stature, and still admired by scores of women wishing they had been born 50+ years earlier, preferably somewhere in California and to parents connected with the movie business, so as to have at least a marginal chance of meeting him. The American Film Institute recently elected him the No. 1 film legend of the 20th century; and looking back, indeed no other actor seems to have been surrounded by the same kind of darkly magical aura as the one surrounding Bogart. "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), directed by John Huston, based on Dashiell Hammett's 1930 like-named novel and itself also ranking in the top quarter of the AFI's list of the 100 best 20th century movies, laid the groundwork for Bogart's lasting image, by transforming his on-screen persona from the tough, often two-dimensional gangsters he had portrayed before; beginning with the 1936 adaptation of Robert Sherwood's "Petrified Forest" where, like in its 1934 stage production, Bogart had starred opposite Leslie Howard, with Bette Davis as the female lead. Now imbuing his tough guy shell with a softer core, in "The Maltese Falcon" Bogart became not only Hammett's Sam Spade but, moreover, the film noir anti-hero per se; a role that stayed with him throughout the rest of his career, and in which he still remains virtually unparalleled. The movie's long-famous story centers around the mysterious statute of a falcon made from solid gold, diamonds and other precious stones; the 16th century Maltese Knights' immeasurably precious gift of thanks to Emperor Charles V for the protection he had granted them. Stolen by pirates, blackened on the outside in order to conceal its true value and passed on through the centuries by a number of unsuspecting possessors, it finally attracts the attention of two rivaling pairs of equally cunning, ruthless and high-flying scoundrels, who chase each other and the statue halfway around the world and finally end up in Sam Spade's San Francisco office - not without getting both Spade's partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) and one of their own killed in the process; thus also causing additional grief for Spade, whom the police soon suspect of being behind the murders himself - or at least behind that of Archer - in order to make off with Archer's widow Iva (Gladys George). And of course, it doesn't exactly help that he has had his office sign changed from "Spade & Archer" to "Samuel Spade" within mere hours of his partner's death. Looking at the movie and its stars' almost mythical fame, it is difficult to imagine that, produced at the height of the studio system era, this was originally just one of the roughly 50 films released by Warner Brothers over the course of one year. But mass production didn't equal low quality; on the contrary, the great care given to all production values, from script-writing to camera work, editing, score and the stars' presentation in the movie itself and in its trailer, was as responsible for its lasting success as were Humphrey Bogart and his outstanding costars; first and foremost Mary Astor as the double-crossing and now partner-less Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (in their first of several appearances opposite Bogart) as Joel Cairo and Kaspar Guttman, O'Shaughnessy/Astor's competitors for possession of the precious statue, and Elisha Cook, Jr., as Guttman's rough but inept bodyguard Wilmer Cook. Genre-defining and the first truly giant highlight of Bogart's career, "The Maltese Falcon" is an unmissable piece of Hollywood history, captivating you from the first moment you spend in Sam Spade's office all the way to its cynical conclusion, and a thrill to watch over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: One of The Best Old Films!
Review: The Maltese Falcon is one of the best old films I have ever seen and I recommend it. Bogart is great as always! I don't think he ever made a bad film! FYI: Ed Begley Jr was not in this movie, I doubt that he would have even been born yet or if he was he would have been just a little baby and his father Ed Begley Sr wasn't in it either, that was Elisha Cook Jr who played the crazy Wilmer Cook. Ed Begley Jr (son of actor Ed Begley Sr) played one of the young doctors on the 80's hospital drama St.. Elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I saw The Maltese Falcon on TCM and I thought it was excellent and had an outstanding cast, Humphrey Bogart as private eye Sam Spade, Mary Aster as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Guttman (AKA The Fat Man) and Elisha Cook Jr as the neurotic and vicious Wilmer Cook. This is a wonderful mystery and suspence movie with a lot of red herrings. Highly recommended. I taped The Maltese Falcon when it was on TCM but I could definitely see myself buying the DVD!
Rating:
Summary: Let's talk about the black bird
Review: John Huston's 1941 remake of The Maltese Falcon became the definitive version as it opened the doors for the film noir genre. And noir movies opened up with The Glass Key, The Postman Rings Twice, Key Largo, and Dark Passage. The dark mood of these movies were put to best effect with black-and-white film, with dimly lighting in nighttime scenes reflecting the grimness of the genre. Sam Spade becomes involved in the search for the title artifact with the introduction of three characters--Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Joel Cairo, and Kaspar Guttman. All three are involved in one way or another with the title object. The cynical Spade though, shows his loyalties to no one, but the one who pays him the most. He is also quick to strike out at anyone menacing him, such as a pistol-wielding Joel Cairo or Wilmer, a hired gun. His steel heart extends to his relationship with his partner, whose wife Iva he has an affair with, and even that is passionless. Only Ebbie, his loyal secretary with a nice personality who can handle Spade, gets the less hard part of his hard edge. However, two murders entangled themselves in the web. The first is that of Spade's partner Miles Archer, who charmed by Brigid, offered to shadow a man she wanted followed. The second is Thursby, the object of his hunt. And Spade's caught up also because he is suspected of his partner's murder due to his affair with Iva, and he's got to fend off the police and D.A.'s office.
Certain camera shots get great mention, such as the shadow of the "Spade and Archer" sign cast from the window to the floor. Another is the bright spotlight effect shown on Miles's surprised face as he gets shot. And the way the camera focuses on the Fat Man's belly shows the weight he has, both physically and in terms of power. The lights and shadows enhance the costumes as well. Most of the characters are dressed in black. This was the film that pushed Bogart to film legend status, making it his biggest success since The Petrified Forest. Ahead of him lay greater roles such as Rick (Casablanca), Phil Marlowe (The Big Sleep), Allnutt (The African Queen), Queeg (The Caine Mutiny), and Linus Larrabee (Sabrina). Mary Astor (Brigitte) needed this kind of film, especially to counter the 1936 headliner scandal made over her sexual exploits with playwright George Kaufman, made public with the splashing of her diary across newspapers. Sydney Greenstreet as the plummy but dangerous "Fat Man", i.e. Guttman, Peter Lorre as the slightly effeminate Cairo, and Ed Begley Jr. as the neurotic gunsel Wilmer all add to this classic. He speaks in a low but quivering and menacing tone: "Keep on riding me, they'll be picking iron out of your liver." Cinematically, a classic, and remember that line, "the stuff that dreams are made of."
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