• Director: John Huston
• United States, 1941
• 

Huston’s directorial debut is a detective story about the pursuit of the titular avian, a priceless ornament whose origins are engagingly described by Sydney Greenstreet’s portly treasure hunter. The bejewelled bird, lost in history between the Knights of Malta and the Crown of Spain, has popped up once more in Istanbul and by intrigues made its way across the Atlantic, where it now threatens to upstage the entire cast of a Hollywood movie.

Because despite fielding a similar line-up of actors, Maltese lacks the exotic panache of Michael Curtiz’ Casablanca (it also fails to pull off a credible love match). Even so, it does offer smart-mouthed charm in bundles, largely thanks to Bogart’s magnetic turn as private detective Sam Spade.

Both Greenstreet and Peter Lorre as literate crooks make exceptionally good copy, but Mary Astor’s Brigid is rather wooden for modern tastes. As an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s atmospheric novel Maltese qualifies as classic noir but it isn’t really dark enough.

• Director: Michael Curtiz
• United States, 1942
• 

Casablanca needs no introduction, except maybe the first few bars of As Time Goes By. It’s a masterfully told, elliptical yarn about a difficult period and after so many decades, it’s too easy to overlook the fact that it was contemporary to those times.

Bogart’s world weary ex-pat Rick Blaine runs an upmarket club frequented by a microcosm of affluent refugees, shysters and officials. A past lover who jilted Rick in Paris arrives with her Resistance leader husband of whom Rick was hitherto unaware. Should Rick help them escape Europe or try to regain her love and elope?

A relatively small cast ensures that character development is evenly spread and the plotting is detailed without being overly elaborate. Every aspect of the production is consistently excellent. As such, we can think of Casablanca as a self-contained capsule of cinematic perfection whose longevity has stretched far beyond the era of propaganda movies.