There were two reasons why Houston's movie of "The Maltese Falcon" was so good: casting (Bogey and Sidney Greenstreet specially); and the fact that the dialogue and action were all direct from the book. What helped was that the book itself is quite short. Houston started with a different script, but quickly jettisoned it and used the book, cutting out just one book character and one scene (the cut character was Gutman's daughter). There've been three movie versions of "The Maltese Falcon", but nobody remembers the other two.
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