Nows and Forevers

I’m not one for mysteries and true crime, maybe because I used to cover and write about it for a living and I got a bellyful years ago. But I have always liked Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and Ross McDonald in print and pretty much everything I’ve seen of film noir. “The Maltese Falcon” is the defining celluloid (and one of the best of its kind of all time) and it’s a great flick: Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre … all directed by John Huston in his first time.

Bogart, he’s a legend for this and for “Casablanca” (my mom’s favorite film and one of mine, too). A real life movie star at a time when there were a lot of them. But he’s not alone: Sidney Greenstreet (his first role, too, I think), Lorre and especially Mary Astor are at the top of their craft. This is only a small part of the film but I think you can see why with Bogart, Lorre and Astor and an assist from character actors Ward Bond and Barton MacLane, too. Mary Astor, wow, was she great in this.

To turn a phrase, “The Maltese Falcon” movie is the stuff dreams are made of.