Maltese Falcon. Established John Huston as a director and Humphrey Bogart in the kind of double-edged role that became "Bogey." The third and most faithful adaptation of Dushiell Hammett's novel dwarfed its predecessors and became the screen's classic American crime tale. Mary Astor, Peter Lerre, and Sidney Greenstreet lead a cast that's perfect right down in Captain Jacobi, modling exciting mystery around the deceptive personality of detective Sam Spade.

General Line. Sergei Eisenstein's "girl-meets-tractor" silent film projects something close to Stalin's line on mechanized agriculture.' But the filming, of course, is brilliant, and the editing represents a major refinement of the exciting montage Eisenstein had developed in Strike and Potemkin.

Stagecoach Devine is the driver, young John Wayne is the Ringo Kid. and Claire Trevor is not at all ingenuous. Everyone's carefully stereotyped--that's as is should be--and even in 1939 the film was viewed as director John Ford's personal panorama of Hollywood's rugged West, with exceptional handling of the landscape's among the boxed-in passengers change under pressure.