Highlights Archives
Screening The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon, the 1941 film noir masterpiece directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, will be shown free on a first-come, first-serve basis at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 24, in the 300-seat auditorium of the Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison. The free public screening is the first cinematic offering in the second year of the Classic Book and Movie Club series, a program intended to encourage participants to read a classic novel, then see the film adaptation.
One of the most highly regarded Hollywood detective yarns ever to hit the big screen, The Maltese Falcon was adapted from the 1930 crime novel by Dashiell Hammett. Humphrey Bogart dazzled moviegoers with his dark portrayal of the shadowy sleuth Sam Spade as he scours the seedy underbelly of San Francisco in search of an elusive black bird statuette that gave the movie its name. Along the way, Bogie rubs shoulders with the duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) and engages in a duel of wits and guile with arch villains played brilliantly by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. John Huston not only made his directorial debut with The Maltese Falcon, he also wrote the screenplay, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for screenwriting. The movie also was nominated for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (for Greenstreet in his first sound movie). John Huston's father Walter makes a cameo appearance in the film.
Professor Jim Miller, who teaches American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, will introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion of it. The next movie to be shown during the second season of the Classic Book and Movie Club will be Anna Karenina, the 1935 Hollywood Classic starring Greta Garbo and Wisconsin native Fredric March. It was adapted from the 1876 novel by Leo Tolstoy, and will be presented at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, September 25. The second year of the series will conclude with a screening of the 1963 film version of Franz Kafka's eerie 1924 classic, The Trial, on Sunday, January 22, 2006. The film stars Anthony Perkins and was directed by another Wisconsin native, Orson Welles, who regarded it as his greatest film.
The Classic Book and Movie Club is a joint venture presented by the Wisconsin Historical Society in cooperation with the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and The Capital Times newspaper.
:: Posted April 21, 2005
|
