The Maltese Falcon (1931) on Netflix
In San Francisco, private detective Sam Spade takes a case from Ruth Wonderly. When his partner is killed, Spade is drawn into the hunt for a statuette called the Maltese Falcon.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Private detective Sam Spade runs an agency in San Francisco with his partner Miles Archer. They are hired by Ruth Wonderly, who says a man named Floyd Thursby has run off with her younger sister and asks them to follow him. That night Archer is killed while tailing Thursby, and after Thursby is also killed the police suspect Spade. Spade tries to learn Wonderly's real reasons, but she reveals little. Soon Dr. Joel Cairo appears at the office and offers Spade five thousand dollars to retrieve a black enamel bird called the Maltese Falcon. Spade does not know the statuette, yet he agrees to search for it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Maltese Falcon (1931)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The 1931 film kept Hammett's homosexual subtext, with Wilmer called Gutman's "boyfriend" and Effie telling Spade that Cairo is "gorgeous"; the Breen Office cut the bathing, strip-search and loaded terms from the 1941 remake.
- In 1935 Warner Bros. was denied approval to re-release the film because the Production Code Office called its content "lewd", so the studio instead made Satan Met a Lady with Bette Davis and Warren William, directed by William Dieterle.
- For several decades, unedited copies of the 1931 Maltese Falcon could not be seen in the United States; the restrictions were lifted after the Motion Picture Production Code's demise in the mid-1960s.
