What more is there to say? This is Humphrey Bogart’s first role as a lead actor, even though he’d been a contract actor for years and had received lots of good press for The Petrified Forest and High Sierra. It was John Huston’s directorial debut. Huston also wrote the screenplay, and was smart enough to keep novelist Dashiell Hammett’s terse and evocative dialogue for his adaptation. (The Maltese falcon had already been adapted for cinema twice before, but Huston made it work, by the way.) In addition to Bogart, the film stars Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre.

It’s got a lot of the elements you expect in noir—the lighting, the camera angles, the hard-boiled detective and the femme fatale. There are witty exchanges, dark city streets, and enough smoking and drinking to make you feel positively decadent just for watching it.

A mere 1 hour, 40 minutes, you’ll wish it were longer.