More than anyone, Humphrey Bogart was the face of film noir. Most histories of the genre mark John Huston’s definitive adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled novel as the starting point, and Bogie’s portrait of private investigator Sam Spade encapsulates much of what makes noir so compelling: Spade is a callous cynic by experience, a louse whose dim estimate of human behaviour is his strongest professional attribute, and a closet romantic beneath it all. Huston famously said that 95% of directing was in the casting, and his first film bears that out.
See also Wim Wenders and Francis Coppola’s movie Hammett, with Frederic Forrest as the former p.i. turned author getting caught up in a mystery, screening immediately after The Maltese Falcon.
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John Huston
Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook
USA
1941
English
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