The Maltese Falcon
A jaded private detective gets entangled in a deadly game of deception and greed when he's drawn into a ruthless quest for a mysterious, priceless statuette.
“He's a Killer When He Hates!”
Synopsis
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 28
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Thomas RichardsShot by Arthur EdesonScored by Adolph Deutsch
Box Office
1941 · Box office
💰 Box-office hit — grossed 4.7× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$1.8M
Full synopsis
Also known as
- Der Malteserfalkede
- Die Spur des Falkende
- El halcón maltéses
- Le Faucon maltaisfr
- Il mistero del falcoit
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Cast & Crew
28 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Humphrey Bogart
as Samuel Spade
Mary Astor
as Brigid O'Shaughnessy
Gladys George
as Iva Archer
Peter Lorre
as Joel Cairo
Barton Maclane
as Lt. of Detectives Dundy
Lee Patrick
as Effie Perine
Sydney Greenstreet
as Kasper Gutman
Ward Bond
as Detective Tom Polhaus
Jerome Cowan
as Miles Archer
Elisha Cook Jr
as Wilmer Cook
James Burke
as Luke
Murray Alper
as Frank Richman
Supporting cast
10John Hamilton
as District Attorney Bryan
Charles Drake
as Reporter (uncredited)
Chester Gan
as Bit Part (uncredited)
Creighton Hale
as Stenographer (uncredited)
Robert Homans
as Policeman (uncredited)
William Hopper
as Reporter (uncredited)
Walter Huston
as Captain Jacoby (uncredited)
Hank Mann
as Reporter (uncredited)
Jack Mower
as Announcer (uncredited)
Emory Parnell
as Ship's Mate (uncredited)
Directors
1Writers
2Other crew
4Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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