Mystery · Crime · Thriller
American
1941 · Directed by John Huston · 100 min
San Francisco, 1941. Private detective Sam Spade is drawn into a case that begins with a simple request and quickly fills with aliases, false stories and people who all want the same mysterious object. A dry, fast, talky thriller where nobody says quite what they mean.
Why it matters in cinema history
A founding text of film noir and the hard-boiled detective film, and the debut of one of Hollywood's great directors, it showed that a literary crime story could be filmed with almost no softening.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a film about lying: nearly every conversation is a performance, and the pleasure is working out who is playing whom.
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