Breakfast and a Movie

Join us for a light breakfast, catered by Kelly James (formerly of Sugar Cafe), at 11 a.m. and an 11:30 screening of the 1941 John Huston noir classic "The Maltese Falcon" starring Humphrey Bogart. You must purchase tickets by Thursday, February 14. Want to see the movie only? Tickets will be $7 at the door.

Thanks to the Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart achieved true stardom playing Sam Spade, a hard-boiled San Francisco private eye who can be as unscrupulous as the next guy but also adheres to his own personal code of honor. Into the offices of the Spade & Archer detective agency sweeps a Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor), who offers a large retainer to Sam and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) if they’ll protect her from someone named Floyd Thursby. The detectives believe neither Miss Wonderly nor her story, but they believe her money. Since Archer saw her first, he takes the case — and later that evening he is shot to death, as is the mysterious Thursby. Miss Wonderly’s real name turns out to be Brigid O’Shaughnessey, and, as the story continues, Sam is also introduced to the effeminate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) and the fat, erudite Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet, in his film debut). It turns out that Brigid, Cairo, and Gutman are all international scoundrels, all involved in the search for a foot-high, jewel-encrusted statuette in the shape of a falcon. Though both Cairo and Gutman offer Spade small fortunes to find the “black bird,” they are obviously willing to commit mayhem and murder towards that goal: Gutman, for example, drugs Spade and allows his “gunsel” Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.) to kick and beat the unconscious detective. This classic film noir detective yarn gets better with each viewing.

“This is one of the best examples of actionful and suspenseful melodramatic story telling in cinematic form.” — Variety

1941/Not rated/100 minutes