The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 American film noir written and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut. Based on the 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett, it is a remake of the 1931 film. Starring Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his femme fatale client, and Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet as villains, the film follows a life-and-death quest for a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette in San Francisco. The film premiered in New York City on October 3, 1941, and was an immediate success, eventually becoming one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress to be included in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 1989.