1958 -THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, is a failed attempt to say something about elephants.

It's hard to bring any enthusiasm to writing about a film that is a boring failure.  A bestselling novel by the author Roman Gary is turned into a mess of a film by the director John Huston.  If you are going to make a movie about saving African elephants from hunters,  Probably hiring  Huston who among other things was a big game hunter may not have been a great approach

This was filmed as an independent production from Darryl F. Zanuck.  Zanuck had stepped down from running 20th Century Fox and now acting as his own producer hired Huston to direct it.  But it appears Huston didn't bring a lot of interest or enthusiasm to the film. The story moves along from one boring scene to the next.  The novel of The Roots of Heaven was a metaphor for saving humanity but the end result of this film seemed more like a poor man's 1940's Tarzan movie with Tarzan leading an elephant charge against some evil African bad guys for some reason.

Apparently the film was the typical on location troubled production.  The temperatures during the days were over 100 degrees and the nights weren't much better.  The acting is not great nor is it terrible it just has that "phoned in" or is it "paycheck" approach to performing, nobody really seems to care. The water and the heat made a lot of the cast and crew ill with the exception of the big drinkers, Trevor Howard, Erroll Flynn and Huston who fortified themselves with booze

  

The film shot for five months on location then everyone stumbled back to Paris to finish the film so Zanuck could be with his current mistress Juliet Greco who appeared in the film where she mostly struggled to act.  Orson Welles is prominently featured in the credits but he was probably in the film a whole fifteen minutes.  In interviews John Huston had spoken about how he failed to make a decent film and would have liked to remake it.  But this was a case of just being a little to late for that.

The screenplay was by Roman Gary and Patrick Leigh Fermor, the running time is 126 minutes.

1951 - THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE - interesting Civil War film

 This film is probably known more for the book "Picture," which was an account of the making of The Red Badge of Courage a film which got caught up in power struggles between MGM executives.  The director John Huston who also wrote the screenplay had been a veteran of World War II and had produced some interesting documentaries during that war.  He clearly wanted to articulate his very mixed feelings about war and battle.

Probably MGM was not the place to make this film.  By the early 1950's Hollywood was producing more films with serious content however MGM kind of stayed with the tried and true, pumping out musicals and lightweight entertainments.  Not to say that the other studios didn't generate these kinds of films but MGM was always kind of the glossy never land of films that were big on nostalgia for family values and the American way of life.

A strong director like John Huston was invariably going to clash with this type of corporate mentality.   To make a very long story short.  Huston filmed The Red Badge of Courage  and delivered a two hour cut.  After an apparently disastrous preview, MGM recut the film to it's present length of 69 minutes.  Clearly all the nuance of the story had been taken out and what was left were some very good battle scenes.  The motivations of the central character Henry Fleming who goes from coward to hero was probably left on the cutting room floor.  In the film Fleming runs from battle but then goes back to his regiment for the final fight for no apparent reason.

 

The film certainly had an interesting cast, Audie Murphy was cast as Henry Fleming.  Murphy was known as one of America's most decorated war heros.  He killed a lot of men during the war.  Murphy was one of the earliest victims of PTSD long before anyone knew what it was.  Bill Mauldin as Tom Wilson had been a cartoonist during the war for the Army newspaper " Stars and Stripes."  He had no acting experience but he did a good job playing Fleming's friend.  The rest of the cast was made up of character actors.  

 

What's left of the film is entirely watchable Huston and has cameraman Hal Rossen did an excellent job staging the scenes. The movie itself is hardly the disaster that the resulting extreme edit of the film ended up being as it's final form.

1981 - VICTORY aka ESCAPE TO VICTORY

Probably looking for a commercial hit, John Huston one of the old guard Hollywood directors got himself involved in this film.  Huston's heart didn't really seem to be into the film, it's filmed in a professional but not really involving manner.

The film is about an Allied prisoner of war camp during World War II.  To entertain themselves, the British play football (soccer).  This comes to the attention of one of the German officers who arranges for a football match between the German soldiers and the British prisoner of war soccer team.  Frankly this film is about as big a fantasy as Quentin Tarantino's fantasy World War II epic, Inglourious Basterds.

Huston and his production team put together a decent cast of British and German actors.  The leads were Michael Caine as the British soccer coach, Pele, one of the greatest players in the game, Max Von Sydow the Swedish actor playing a German yet again and Sylvester Stallone as the goalkeeper.  Apparently Stallone and Huston didn't really get along very well during the filming.  The film is also loaded with soccer stars from England.

 

The last part of the film is given over to the big game and for the most part it's fairly exciting.  The film as a whole is decent if undemanding entertainment.  An OK time killer at best.

 

Written by Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky, the running time is 117 minutes.

1984 - UNDER THE VOLCANO, later John Huston film

 The last day in the life of an alcoholic British diplomat as he wanders around a Mexican town during the Day Of The Dead festival.  From that short description you can gather this will not be a feel good type of film.  Albert Finney is the diplomat Geoffrey Firmin. Finney plays Firmin as a completely wasted drunk stumbling from one bar to another while guzzling anything with alcohol in it.

 Into the mix arrives Jacqueline Bisset as his estranged wife Yvonne Firmin and Anthony Andrews as his half brother Hugh Firmin to join in all of this fun as the film marches to its inevitable conclusion.

The director is the legendary John Huston in the later part of his career.  Huston would work on crap like Annie and Victory and then manage to pull together more interesting projects like this.  However this time I don't think that Huston was able to fine the right tone for this project.  The audience never understood why anyone should care about Albert Finney's character.  Frankly a film about a drunk wandering around drunk isn't exactly compelling viewing.

 

Guy Gallo wrote the screenplay under Huston's supervision, the film runs 112 minutes.

1975 - THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, on Blu Ray

John Huston was one of the few old style Hollywood directors who produced interesting and at times very good films late in his career.  The Man Who Would Be King was one of John Huston's dream projects.  The film reminded many critics of his 40's film The Treasure of Sierra Madre with it's story of greed and adventure.  It also has many similarities to Huston's famous Hepburn/Bogart film The African Queen.

 To play a couple of former soldiers who are essentially crooks.  Huston cast Sean Connery and Michael Caine a couple of larger than life screen personalities.  Christopher Plummer was hired to play the actual author of the original story Rudyard Kipling.  

This story has a very old fashioned feel to it.  It could have easily been made in the late 40's or early 50's.  There is a larger than life quality to the film which benefits a pretty tall tale even for Kipling who was also the author of The Jungle Book and Gunga Din.  Huston's story telling skill kept this film moving along.

John Huston certainly had his bad or indifferent films such as Annie but The Man Who Would Be King is certainly mainstream Hollywood film making at its best although it would probably be considered a slow moving film for today's audience.

123 minutes, written by John Huston and Gladys Hill.

1973 - THE MACKINTOSH MAN, a spy thriller with Paul Newman directed by John Huston.

Paul Newman takes another shot at an espionage thriller 17 years after appearing in Hitchcock's spy movie disaster Torn Curtain.  The Mackintosh Man was directed by another veteran filmmaker John Huston.  

Newman is a secret agent undercover for British Intelligence.  He is supposedly on the trail of a notorious British traitor but as in all of these serious spy films, all is not what it seems. 

The Mackintosh Man is smoothly and efficiently directed by John Huston.  Maybe a little too smoothly for that matter.  The veteran director doesn't seem to have much interest in the film.  The action scenes are tossed off so nonchalantly it's as if they were almost a second thought. 

This is a good looking film, well photographed by Oswald Morris in Ireland and Malta.  The film has a good cast beginning with Paul Newman, James Mason and Dominique Sanda.  There are also many British character actors like Michael Hordon and Harry Andrews.  It's unfortunate that Huston couldn't bring any interest to the film.  However The Mackintosh Man is still very watchable for the most part.

98 minutes, screenplay by Walter Hill and William Fairchild.

1957 - HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON, World War II drama from John Huston.

This could have been one icky film.  On remote Pacific Ocean island during World War II, a marine meets up with a nun who has been left behind during the Japanese invasion of that island.  Robert Mitchum is the marine in all his manliness.  Deborah Kerr is the nun who looks pretty good even completely covered in her habit.

Even though the film was shot in the 1950's there was still plenty of room for some subtle lascivious moments.  However the director John Huston and his writer John Lee Mahin were a couple of pros who knew how to navigate around any potential tastelessness.

The acting is very good.  Robert Mitchum was an actor with a strong presence who was known to put down the acting profession with such statements as "Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That's it." gave a very good performance as the marine.  Deborah Kerr, was an English actor who was usually cast as some kind of upper class Anglo lady.  However Kerr was always game to take on challenging roles.  Mitchum payed her the ultimate complement by stating that she was the only leading lady he worked with that he didn't also sleep with.

The film was directed by old school filmmaker John Huston who kept the whole thing interesting and very entertaining.

106 minutes.

1970 - THE KREMLIN LETTER, complex spy vs spy stuff

In this movie watching era of short attention spans you better be on your game sorting through the very intricate plot of The Kremlin Letter.

This is cold war spy vs spy stuff made during the spy movie craze of the 1960's.  Occasionally a major league director in this case John Huston would take a shot at this genre.  Huston had been one of the five directors who was mixed up in the goofy first version of Casino Royale.  But this time Huston was trying for something different, a complex cynical film about the espionage business.

Cynical can't really describe how bleak this film is.  There isn't one character that the audience can even remotely identify with and it's amazing what Huston gets away with in this film, homosexuality, drug abuse, rape and murder.

The film has a good cast, everyone in it is a first rate professional and gives an excellent performance.  The Kremlin Letter probably ranks up there with some of Billy Wilder's films like, Double Indemnity or Ace in the Hole.  But Huston certainly has one up on Wilder with this really grim film.

121 minutes, screenplay John Huston and Gladys Hill.

1969 - A WALK WITH LOVE AND DEATH, medival love story from John Huston

During the 100 Years War (circa 1300's), two young lovers wander around France doing their young lover thing which consists of prancing in the fields, singing love songs while playing a lute and saying lots of dumb things to each other.

A Walk with Love and Death was directed by John Huston who apparently saw it as a starring vehicle for his daughter Angelica who was young, pretty and couldn't act.  Huston's plan was to hire an actor to play opposite her who also couldn't act.  The actor Assi Dayan was equally inept which kept her from looking too horrible.

Besides trying to kick start his daughter's career, Huston apparently was trying to make some point about "man's inhumanity to man" in a rather heavy handed way with this innocent young lovers stuff.  He also didn't seem to have much sense of the time and place he set the story in.  Everything seems way to clean and neat for the Middle Ages especially when you contrast it to something like Monty Python and the Holy Grail .

 

If there is a lesson to be learned from this film it's probably don't hire performers with absolutely no acting experience. Also, John Huston's classic Hollywood style of film making looked pretty outdated for a late 1960's film.

90 minutes, screenplay by Dale Wasserman.

1963 - THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER good murder mystery with a stupid gimmick

Iconic American actor George C. Scott plays British detective Anthony Gethryn in this decent murder mystery.  John Huston directed this film, and considering the talent involved in this production this really should have been a better film, but it's not bad.

The film sets up the clues, Scott figures them out one by one, 90 minutes later case closed, but it's presented in an entertaining if sort of unexciting way.

 The List of Adrian Messenger has two fox hunt sequences.  At this time in his life Huston was living in Ireland and was apparently quite taken with fox hunting.  These scenes are probably the most interesting parts in the film.  Huston himself is even in one of the hunting sequences.

Burt Lancaster?

The big gimmick in The List of Adrian Messenger was the appearance of five Hollywood stars in the film under very heavy makeup.  Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra are supposedly under heavy makeup in their little cameos.

There was some question as to whether they were actually under all these rubber masks during the making of the film.  In any case these cameos are a cheap Hollywood stunt and kind of ruin the drama.

Kirk Douglas?

Even with all this movie star mask foolishness, George C. Scott still manages to out act the cast with his classy performance. 

98 minutes, screenplay by Anthony Veiller.

1960 - THE UNFORGIVEN, racism is bad.

Based on a book by Alan Le May, who wrote The Searchers.  The Unforgiven is essentially the same story flipped around.  A western family adopts a Kiowa Indian baby as their own child which causes all sorts of trouble when her actual Kiowa family wants her back. 

The director, John Huston appears to be trying to make a statement about racism but it looks like he had his hands full dealing with his all star cast (Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Lillian Gish and John Saxon).  The Unforgiven was produced by Lancaster's production company and distributed by United Artists.  With all the fish crowding into this little puddle the end result is just another western. 

The Unforgiven looks good, the cinematography was by Franz Planner who shot it widescreen, the wild west looks very flat and dry  Dimitri Tiomkin wrote one of his typical overblown scores although this one isn't as fun as usual.

Audrey Hepburn is completely miscast as the Kiowa Indian girl, Burt Lancaster gives his usual overblown performance and Audie Murphy's inexperience as an actor shows through in every scene he is in.  Only Lillian Gish manages to give a decent performance. 

John Huston was a director who made a lot of good films and a lot of bad ones, The Unforgiven is one of his not so hot films.  About the only thing that the viewer can enjoy in this film is the Indian attack at the end of this film which is fairly exciting.

125 minutes, screenplay by Ben Maddow and David Wolff.

1943 - REPORT FROM THE ALEUTIANS, documentary about the Army Air Force is fascinating stuff

During World War II, the United States military takes part in raids on the island of Kiska from their base on Adak island in the Aleutians.  John Huston films and narrates the daily routine of these soldiers.

This is absorbing stuff filmed in color.  The Aleutian islands look like no place anyone wants to be.  Cold and probably blowing constantly, the soldiers all look pretty miserable.  The military was engaged in bombing the island of Kiska which was held by the Japanese for a while.  The Japanese eventually left Kiska which turned out to have absolutely no military value for either side. 

Report From the Aleutians focuses on the repetition and weariness of military life in a remote region of the war.  Towards the end of the film, the Army Air Corp participates in a bombing raid over Kiska, even that is boring.  The flight is an hour out and an hour back, lots of tedium probably followed by sheer terror for about 5 or 10 minutes during the actual bombing run. 

That John Huston was able to put together an interesting film out of what is essentially soldiers standing around freezing their butts off in Alaska is a tribute to his skill as a filmmaker and story teller. 

47 minutes, written by an uncredited John Huston.

1942 - ACROSS THE PACIFIC, the cast of The Maltese Falcon is reunited.

Humphrey Bogart is an undercover army officer on a slow boat to China Japan.  Also on board are Mary Astor and Sidney Greenstreet.  John Huston is the director and Arthur Edeson is the cinematographer which makes Across the Pacific a reunion of some of the major principals of The Maltese Falcon but this film is far below the class and quality of that one.

This is just another cookie cutter World War II film classed up with a good cast and director.  The first part of the film isn't that bad, with Bogart basically playing Sam Spade as he attempts to figure out what the  crew and passengers of a Japanese freighter are up to.  The last part of the film involves a plot to blow up the Panama Canal by some sneaky Japanese that is about as ridiculous as can be possible.

The film is full of racial stereotypes with buck toothed Japanese and Panamanian banana planters.  Greenstreet is the usual cultured slime ball working for the Japanese government and the whole thing was clearly filmed on fake jungle sets on the Warner Brother's lot. 

The film's high points are the romance between Astor and Bogart who are very good together, the photography of Arthur Edeson and some cool montage pieces from future director Don Siegel.  Other than that, Across the Pacific is really not deserving of much respect. 

97 minutes, screenplay by Richard Macaulay.

1967 - REFLECTION IN A GOLDEN EYE, Southern gothic weirdness from Huston, Brando and Taylor

Marlon Brando is a repressed gay army colonel in the old south during the 1940's.  He's married to a bitchy southern flower played by Elizabeth Taylor who in spite of her looks would probably drive any man away.  Taylor's having an affair with Brian Keith who is married to Julie Harris who is into self mutilation and classical music.  Harris has a Philippine house boy named Anacleto who is obviously gay although no one seems to notice.

Add to this mix an army private in charge of taking care of the riding horses for the officers and their wives.  At night the private likes to sneak into Taylor's bedroom and watch her while she's sleeping.  During the day the private rides around buck naked in the woods for Brando to watch.  I think I got it.

The incredible strangeness of all of this must have appealed to Huston who in spite of being a director from the old Hollywood studio system never blinked when it came to working with oddball story material.

The level of acting is very high in this film.  John Huston believed that seventy percent of the work in directing movies was casting the right actor for the right role.  Brando gives a pretty daring performance as the colonel and Elizabeth Taylor who always seemed like a vacuous personality to me gives an equally good performance as a vacuous army wife. 

Huston photographed the whole thing with a sepia filter just to add some further strangeness to the film as if it didn't have enough strangeness in it with it's plot alone.  Warner Brothers made him release it in a standard color palette but thanks to the miracle of studio achieves and DVD releases, the current DVD  has his original color scheme. 

If you're in the mood for a very odd but well made film this is the one for you.  This film is a companion piece to Huston's other weirdo film, The Night of the Iguana which featured Elizabeth Taylor's then husband, Richard Burton.

Double feature time anyone?

108 minutes, screenplay by Gladys Hill and Chapman Mortimer.