In The Maltese Falcon, screenwriter-turned-director John Huston created a shadowy, unreal territory where nothing is as it seems. The rules of the game keep changing during a frantic search for the famed black bird. Rapid-fire dialogue, dimly lit sets, and gritty, flawed characters are just a handful of the film’s trademarks. In this third adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel, Humphrey Bogart stars as Sam Spade, a private detective conflicted by the questionable morality demanded by his profession and the desire to bring justice to his clients. The film teams Peter Lorre as sniveling Joel Cairo and Sydney Greenstreet (in his first screen appearance after forty years as a Shakespearean actor) for the first time. The “Laurel and Hardy of crime” went on to star together in eight more films.