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 Also, John Huston's classic Hollywood style of film making looked pretty outdated for a late 1960's film.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.