The Castro Theatre will screen John Huston's San Francisco-set film noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941) on Wednesday. The film will be shown at 3:15pm and 7pm as part of a double feature with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950).
Both films star Humphrey Bogart, one of the biggest stars of Hollywood's Golden Era. Named the Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute in 1999, he saw his career skyrocket around the time of The Maltese Falcon's initial release. The following year he would star in his best-known film, the classic Casablanca.
Considered by critics to be one of the best detective films ever produced, The Maltese Falcon (which is based on Dashiell Hammett's novel) features Bogart as hard-edged SF private eye Sam Spade, who finds himself surrounded by some very shady characters. They're all involved in a variety of bizarre cat-and-mouse games as they keep their eyes on the prize—the titular falcon, a centuries-old statue which is worth a great deal of money.
No one is as they appear, including Ruth Wonderly (played by Mary Astor), a woman with a past and secrets to hide. She asks Sam's help in locating her missing sister, who, she claims, is having an affair with a man named Floyd Thursby. After Thursby meets a tragic fate that same night, Wonderly reveals to Sam that she's not who she claimed to be—and that she has a connection to Thursby. Sam obviously can't trust this strange mystery woman, but their mutual attraction is obvious.
Soon after, the shady Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) offers Sam $5,000 to find the Falcon. Cairo and Wonderly, as it turns out, have had past "business dealings." Many more strange plot twists and red herrings, designed to keep viewers on their toes, follow.
Though set in San Francisco, The Maltese Falcon wasn't shot here; like most films of the era, it was made on a studio backlot. However, director John Huston does try to incorporate the fog of the film's Nob Hill setting, giving it a ghostly, spectral look as the characters dart in and out of the shadows.
Hammett, who lived in San Francisco during the '20s, based the book on his experiences working as a Pinkerton detective in the city. He gave his protagonist his birth name, Samuel (Dashiell was his middle name), and based many of the other characters on people he met during his detective years.
If you feel like making a Maltese Falcon-themed evening of it, you can head downtown after the screening for dinner at 107-year-old Union Square icon John's Grill, where Sam Spade dines in Hammett's book. (Hammett likely was a regular there himself, as he worked in the neighboring Flood Building during his SF years.)
The restaurant continues to offer the meal Hammett's detective eats in the novel as the "Sam Spade special": lamb chops with a baked potato and sliced tomatoes. A 150-pound replica of the Maltese Falcon can be found in a glass case upstairs; it's actually the restaurant's second, as the original was stolen in 2007.
For more information on the Maltese Falcon screenings, visit the Castro Theatre's website.
