1941 Movies : The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name.Written and directed by John Huston, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade; Mary Astor as his femme fatale client; Gladys George, who received third billing despite having a relatively minor role; Peter Lorre; and Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut. The film was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

The story concerns a San Francisco private detective's dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers who compete to obtain a fabulous jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon.

The Maltese Falcon has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by Roger Ebert, and Entertainment Weekly,and was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain, the first major work on film noir, as the first film of that genre.
The film premiered on October 3, 1941, in New York City and was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1989.

The music to The Maltese Falcon was written by Adolph Deutsch who later went on the win an Academy Award for his incidental music for Oklahoma! in 1955.
The recording was re-released in 2002 with the soundtracks to other film works of Deutsch, including George Washington Slept Here, The Mask of Dimitrios, High Sierra, and Northern Pursuit.