San Francisco, 1941

Like Brigid O'Shaughnessy, who enters Sam Spade's office under the alias of Ms. Wonderly, the San Francisco of The Maltese Falcon is a lie. Our opening shots are the San Francisco we know and love—happy and bright, with jaunty music and the Golden Gate Bridge. Then, almost immediately, the city transforms into something dark and seedy.

Almost all of the movie's scenes take place at night, which is perfect for the brooding detective and gaggle of criminals trying to find a relic before anyone else. We find ourselves in smoky offices, dimly lit hotel rooms, and sketchy back alleys. It feels like we don't see daylight for days (or maybe we should say "for nights") until, in one of the movie's final scenes, Gutman says,

GUTMAN: It's almost daylight, Mr. Spade. Can you start getting it now?

The sun rises, and we finally see the mysterious Maltese Falcon.

Set in the "present" of 1941, the film also shows us what life was like in San Francisco at the time. There is little diversity (one black couple is seen in the background at a hotel), and the film has what is possibly the coolest film noir slang to ever grace the silver screen.

We have no idea if normal people talked like this at the time—maybe it was just the detectives? But Spade saying things "you birds crackin' foxy" to the cops, or Effie suggesting that bringing Brigid home to her mother would "scare Mom into a green hemorrhage" are like the bae, yolo, and swag of the 1940s.

We don't even know what "green hemorrhage" means, and it's something that's a little scary to google (at least with Safe Search turned off). But we braved that scary corner of the internet and still found nothing. In 2014, someone once asked the same question on a blog, but no one answered. Perhaps the line, which is in the book, is something Hammett invented.