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A Christie's antiquary appraises the noir classic "Maltese Falcon."

THE PLOT: Private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is hired to track down a 16th-century jeweled statuette that was once gifted to King Charles V of Spain. He is soon lured into a tangled plot by shady characters, criss-crossing allegiances and, of course, a femme fatale.

INSIDER's CREDENTIALS: G. Max Bernheimer is senior vice president and international specialist for the antiquities department at Christie's auction house in New York. He is a fifth-generation art dealer.

OVERVIEW: "I liked it a lot. I thought it had all the ingredients for a good movie, including intrigue and suspense. It's another version of the quest for the holy grail, isn't it? You replace one object with another. It's a time-honored scene."

Scene 16: Falcon lore -- Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet), the cultivated crook who hires Spade to find the falcon, explains the statue's rich history.

"People like things that have a literary connection. For example, [German millionaire] Heinrich Schliemann read Homer and took it literally. He went out in search of proof of these stories and found incredible treasures that are now in the national museum in Athens. He drew on references [in "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey"] and found gold and death masks that [may have been] placed over the heads of warriors."

Scene 23: The Maltese Falcon -- Spade, Gutman and associates get their first look at the statue, which a previous owner had coated in black paint.

"Sometimes antiques do end up being painted black. Once, when I was a young man, I was sitting with my grandfather in his art gallery, and someone brought in a Buddha sculpture. He bought it, and I said, 'Why did you buy that? It's so ugly.' But he took some acetone and a handkerchief and removed all of the ugly, horrible paint and revealed a much older, beautiful figure. My grandfather just knew that it was common for people to want a more modern look, so they would paint over [antiques]. He took a risk. And, no, it wasn't worth millions. But he was a very smart antiquary."

Scene 24: Gutman's adieu -- After finding out that the falcon is a fake, Gutman and Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) decide to travel to Istanbul to continue their quest.

"Coin collectors can be this obsessive. Let's say you collect Roman coins, and you want an example from every reign of the Roman empire. Well, some emperors hardly issued any coins because they weren't in power long enough. (In one year, there might be four emperors who were each in power for just a few months.) Those are the holy grail for coin collectors."

-- Ellen Durston