When film noir comes up, most people familiar with the term at all will go straight to John Huston's adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 private detective novel, The Maltese Falcon to establish that familiarity. While Huston's take, released in 1941, is, by far, the best known and, as you'll see, the best made, it was Warner Bros. third bite at Hammett's sour apple.
