A bejeweled bird of a different feather

Noir is French for black.

The headline plays on the phrase “film noir,” which describes a genre that explores the dark side of human character.

I betcha the hed writer was thinking of The Maltese Falcon, a 1941 classic starring Humphrey Bogart as private detective Sam Spade.

“The story concerns a San Francisco private detective's dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers who compete to obtain a fabulous jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon,” according to Wikipedia. “The Maltese Falcon has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by Roger Ebert and Entertainment Weekly, and was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain, the first major work on film noir, as the first film of that genre.”

To solve the mystery of where black swifts disappear each winter, check out 1B of today’s Sentinel.

Photo of theatrical release poster courtesy of Wikipedia