Despite a filmography dotted with genre-defining and genre-changing films (detective: The Maltese Falcon, 1941; heist: The Asphalt Jungle, 1950; western: The Unforgiven, 1960 and The Misfits, 1961; Mafia: Prizzi's Honor, 1985), John Huston has tended to be regarded by film scholars as too inconsistent a director for his oeuvre to merit deep and wide-ranging study. Huston has been painted as little more than an authorial cipher (34 of his 37 features as director were adapted from other sources), or as a journeyman, remembered as much for his series of bland, inconsequential films as for his unquestioned triumphs.