8:00 pm
Maltese Falcon
(1941)(B&W)

Sam Spade is a partner in a private-eye firm who finds himself hounded by police when his partner Miles Archer is killed whilst tailing a man. The girl who asked him to follow the man turns out not to be who she says she is, and is really involved in something to do with the 'Maltese Falcon', a gold-encrusted life-sized statue of a falcon, the only one of its kind. Nominated for Best Picture, this outstanding detective drama stars Humphrey Bogart as Dashiell Hammett's "hero" Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his client, Peter Lorre as the evasive Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet (in his talkie film debut) as the Fat Man, Jerome Cowan as Miles, Ward Bond as Detective Sergeant Tom Polhaus, and Elisha Cook, Jr. as the neurotic Wilmer. Huston's first directorial effort (which he also scripted) moves at lighting pace, with a cameo by his father Walter Huston as Captain Jacobi. The working title of this film was "The Gent From Frisco." (The film contains several geographical and continuity errors, including a sign on the Ferry Building reading Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Fire Department wearing LA Fire Department uniforms, and Miles Archer tossing a cigarette away with his right hand only to have it reappear in his left.)


Big Sleep
(1946)(B&W)

Raymond Chandler's first novel becomes a classic mystery thriller starring Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is summoned by the dying General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), hired to deal with several problems troubling his family, most of which center around the disappearance of Sternwood's favorite employee Sean Regan, who left with Mona (Peggy Knudson), wife of mobster Eddie Mars (John Ridgely). He also becomes involved with daughter Vivian Sternwood Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) and her spoiled and uncontrollable little sister Carmen (Martha Vickers). Also features Dorothy Malone as the Book Seller, Acme Book Shop. Unforgettable dialogues springs from the script by William Faulkner, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, while Howard Hawks provides powerful direction. (Trivia: Hawks and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or committed suicide. They sent a wire to author Raymond Chandler, who replied that he didn't know either.)

Just thought it an improvement over bare-bone Intros.. the Errors in The Bird and.. an argument unresolvable by the author of the plot!
(The IGM is supposed to know all the arcanery, innit?)

(I've always thought it a Nice.. Cosmic arrangement that Bogie, as curmudgeonly an iconoclast against euphemisms as you can find -and- Lauren Bacall,
also an atypical heroine: (that's heroin + an e) Found Each Other.)
Pity that Bogie expired early-on, but.. that's a crap shoot fer ya.