“The film to set the standard for private-eye pictures.” That’s how Bogey biographer Eric Lax describes John Huston’s Dashiell Hammett adap on his feature commentary here. Tall order? Perhaps, but it’s certainly on the mark. For starters, The Maltese Falcon trounced two earlier, smoother, cheerier takes on Hammett’s hardboiled source novel for shadowy cynicism, sadism (“When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it”) and danger. What’s more, think low-level shooting, off-centre compositions, a back-handed hero and a tight script, and it’s not hard to see why French critic Nino Frank had Falcon in mind when he first coined the term film noir.
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