“‘It's heavy,' says Ward Bond as he lifts the black statuette at the end of The Maltese Falcon. ‘What is it?'
“‘The stuff that dreams are made of,' answers Bogart.
“In his first directorial effort, the 1941 Maltese Falcon, John Huston introduced us to a character that, while not entirely new to the cinema, in a sense revolutionized the detective genre.... In the first two film versions of Hammett's novel (the 1931 The Maltese Falcon and the 1936 Satan Met a Lady), there was a tendency to somewhat soften the character (of Sam Spade) with a false gentility and charm. As played by Humphrey Bogart, Huston's Spade retains the ambiguous quality of the original - a corrupt, violent individual who is merely an extension of and reaction against a corrupt and violent universe. He is the outsider, neither cop nor criminal, but in Huston's conception more honest and tragic than either....” --Jeffrey Lane, Wadsworth Atheneum note