It’s time for another edition of Revisiting John Huston. This week it’s the 1942 film In This Our Life.

Huston’s second film, In This Our Life seems to be somewhat lost to history, and, coming after The Maltese Falcon, that’s understandable. I’m not sure what the prevailing mood was in the ‘40s, but if a director were to offer a similar follow-up today, I imagine that more than a few critics would likely be salivating to label him a one-hit wonder.

That’s not to say that In This Our Life is a bad movie, it’s just okay. The story, adapted from the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel about two sisters, one good, Roy (Olivia de Havilland), one bad, Stanley (Bette Davis). The significance of their masculine names is unclear.

Roy is married to Peter, a doctor, while Stanley’s engaged to Craig, a lawyer. However Peter’s carrying on an affair with Stanley. The night before her wedding, Stanley elopes with Peter, who subsequently divorces Roy, leaving her and Craig to find comfort with each other, and the two eventually get married.

So, Stanley and Peter = bad; Roy and Craig = good. Rounding out the dichotomies are William, the girls’ racist, hard-drinking uncle, who harbors a rather disturbing crush on and shares an incestually suggestive relationship with his bad niece (the scene where she greets him with a flurry of tickles and he mentions the “present” in his pocket is only one among many that tiptoe the censor’s pen), and Asa, the girls’ kindly father.

As we’ve done with Western Wednesdays Again, this series of articles discusses the films of one of the greatest directors of all time: John Huston. Originally titled John Huston Thursdays, we’ve changed it up just a bit.

Instead, we’re calling it Revisiting John Huston. And to kick things off we’re starting with a major classic: The Maltese Falcon. Fortunately, it’s still the same great content written by the same talented writer, Nat Almirall. So, please enjoy the first installment of Revisiting John Huston.

– Chris

This marks the first in a series of articles looking at the films of John Huston. He is one of the most celebrated filmmakers of the 20^th Century and a fascinating man.

It seems sensible to start at the beginning, and an impressive beginning at that, with his first film, 1941’s The Maltese Falcon. So much has been written about this film, so I’ll confine myself to some observations on my most recent rewatching and a few points I haven’t yet seen anyone else touch on.

Perhaps most surprising is that this was Huston’s directorial debut. Prior to Falcon he’d written screenplays, among them High Sierra, the film widely regarded as Bogart’s first big picture.

Knowing that, it’s surprising how established the film is, in that it doesn’t look like a director’s first film. Bogie’s Sam Spade is well crafted and believable, but it’s when the camera pans down to the silhouette of “Spade and Archer” that you know this is no amateur.

There are more than a few transitions like this—the spinning tire of the police car also comes to mind—but it never feels overdone. Many first-time directors would be too eager to show off, often to the detriment of the film, but while Falcon certainly has its share of complicated shots, they’re all made to serve the scene rather than the filmmaker.

So many mysteries inhabit the film, and they all come from the characters. Each one harbors a sordid past that’s only suggested. For all the questions surrounding it, we know much more about the flacon itself than we do the people surrounding it.

This week’s pick is the 1941 Howard Hawks classic Sergeant York which stars Gary Cooper as the back woods Tennessee hero of World War I. The supporting cast include Walter Brennan (Pastor Pile), Joan Leslie (Gracie Williams), George Tobias (“Pusher” Ross), Ward Bond (Ike Botkin), Stanley Ridges (Maj. Buxton), Dickie Moore (George York), June Lockhart (Rosie York), and Margaret Wycherly (Mother York).

The film was adapted by Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, and actor/director John Huston, from York’s own memoirs about his experiences.

It was Alvin York himelf who insisted on Gary Cooper taking the role. Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan were also considered for the part, but York still insisted that Cooper was the right choice for the role.

The film is an autobiographical account of York’s upbringing in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee where he is struggling to make enough money so that he may be able to buy a plot of land for himself. He is young, rambunctious, a drinker, and brawler who has good intentions, but is a burden on his poor family who share a tiny shanty.

Pastor Pile (Brennan) sees good in Alvin and tries to convince him to put his faith in god. Alvin is at first against the idea of religion and asks why he should trust in god. An epiphany overcomes Alvin one night after a night of hard drinking and fighting, which makes him change his ways and to put faith in the lord, in order to marry his sweetheart Gracie (Leslie) and acquire a piece of land in order to be a good husband and provider for her.

Happy New Year to all you faithful War Movie Monday fans, and thank you for a fantastic year of classic war films. This week’s pick to ring in the start of a new year is the John Milius 1975 classic The Wind and the Lion, which was loosely based on an international incident which led to possible war between the U.S. and European powers in 1904 Morocco. The film stars Sean Connery (Raisuli), Candice Bergen (Eden Perdicaris), Brian Keith (President Theodore Roosevelt), John Huston (Sec. of State John Hay), Geoffrey Lewis (American Ambassador to Morocco Samuel R. Gummere), Steve Kanaly (Captain Eugene Jerome, USMC), and Vladek Sheybal (The Bashaw of Tangier).

The film open up with a sweeping score from famed composer Jerry Goldsmith, who sets the stage for a fantastic adventure film with a tone of modern era warfare between desert tribesmen and the imperial powers of Germany, France, and Great Britain who are trying to establish their own spheres of influence throughout the Arab world.

Mulai Amhed er Raisuli (Connery) is the leader of a band of Berber tribesmen who are opposed to the Sultan and his Uncle (Sheybal) the Bashaw of Tangier who are corrupt and easily influenced by the European powers. The Raisuli plans to embarrass the rulers of Morocco by having his men kidnap an American woman, Eden Perdicaris (Bergen) and her two children from their home in Tangier, and hold them for ransom for gold, rifles, and sovereignty from the Europeans.

Milius wrote and directed the film which was loosely based on an actual account which was known as the “Perdicaris incident” in 1904. An American man and his stepson were kidnapped by Barbary pirates and were ransomed. Both were unharmed and the incident gave President Theodore Roosevelt a platform to wield the “big stick” of foreign policy for his re-election to office that year in November.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is Huston’s foray into the wonderful of what we happily refer to as “Nuncore.” Well, maybe not too explicit, but there is some latent sexual tension pervading the film.

Rusty-voiced Hollywood badboy Robert Mitchum plays the titular Mr. Allison, a U.S. marine stranded on a small island in the South Pacific, which happens to be populated solely by the comely and angelic Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr). Allison and Angela bond on a fishing excursion to catch a sea turtle and life goes about as usual on the island until some Japanese land and make an impromptu camp.

The two set up camp in a cave before Allison runs some recon but gets stuck in one of the shelters when two Japanese soldiers decide to take their break and play a game of Othello and a few rounds of sake.

Allison returns the next morning and Angela makes him promise never to worry her like that again. One day the Japanese mysteriously leave the island—and their provisions—behind. One thing leads to another and eventually Allison discovers that Angela has not yet taken her final nun vows. He tries to convince her to marry hi, but she resists, prompting Allison to break open the sake and in a drunken rant chase off Angela, who spends the night in the cold, catching a bout of pneumonia.

Moby Dick is probably the pinnacle of 1950s Huston. Moving from his ‘40s adaptations of contemporary American pulp (The Maltese Falcon) and popular works (In This Our Life) to more ambitious projects (The African Queen, The Red Badge of Courage, Moby Dick, and, eventually even The Bible), the decade marks a grandiose turn in Huston. It’s a bittersweet transformation. On the one hand, these works have a high spirit of adventure to them that still holds up and stay true to the original material. On the other, they lack the deeper, personal, more profound humanity of his earlier films.

Moby Dick is grounded firmly in the former, and, watching it now in 2010, nearly 55 years after it was made, it’s still a fun watch. Moby Dick is among the finest novels this country has ever produced and has held a special place in this English majors’ heart since college, when I took an hour-a-week class on it taught by my grizzled advisor “Uncle” Vic, a mid-fortiesh Virginian with a dusty leather jacket, beady horse eyes, and a half-kempt beard.

The class was only an hour long and held once a week, but in it, we exhausted nearly every theme, brought in a biology professor whose specialty was cetology, and garnered an appreciation for Melville’s epic prose.

Beat the Devil, despite it’s 1953 release, may be the most relevant Huston film for our current Age of Self-Parody Performances. You know: once-serious actors who now seem to coast by on playing offsetting exaggerations of former roles–Christopher Walken, Gary Busey, and, of course, William Shatner, spring to mind.

I’m sure there’s plenty more, but these three are the front-runners (Nick Cage doesn’t quite make the cut because I don’t think he’s ever doing a parody of himself–it’s just him). Walken led the way somewhat accidentally, revealing a comic side on Saturday Night Live and showing the world that this creepy, Oscar-winning skeleton man can dance in Spike Jonze’s music video of Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” (ahh 2001…).

Reading The Three Little Pigs; The Country Bears, “Poker Face.” Busey kind-of, sort-of predates even that with his cameo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (“Gimme a kiss”), but with his recent Vitamin Water ads it’s become pretty full blown. Aaaaaaand then there’s Shatner.

But whatever the reason for our love of character actors mocking their early, legitimate stuff, it’s nothing new, because Beat the Devil is essentially the same thing, and one of the oddest entries into Huston’s filmography (a phrase I feel I’ve been typing a lot).

The African Queen is kind of an odd duck in the Huston pantheon. And I’m not just saying that because I love the phrase “…is an odd duck.” Seriously! The next time you’re with your friends and see a flabby middle-aged man, balding, with glasses and a briefcase looking like he’s regretted every decision he’s ever made in his life, point at him and say, “That’s an odd duck.” Guaranteed laugh every time.

Anyway, African Queen. It’s Huston’s first “comedy,” or at least there’s a great deal more humor in it than you’d expect from Huston coming off The Red Badge of Courage and Key Largo. And much of the laughs come from the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

Actually maybe it’s more notable for being Huston’s first stab at a romantic drama. I don’t know, it’s weird. On the one hand, you have Katharine Hepburn who was known for screwball comedies, then you have Bogie who was known for being the stoic hero. The two don’t naturally seem to go together in the first place, but then Huston reverses their roles and makes Hepburn the wise-cracking tough guy and Bogie the straight man.

The Plot: Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother are British missionaries in German East Africa on the eve of World War I. All but isolated, their only contact with the civilized world is crude slob of a deliveryman Charlie Allnut (Bogart), who brings them supplies and mail with the use of his dilapidated boat, The African Queen.

The war breaks out, and, after some manhandling from the Germans, Rose’s brother dies. With nothing left, Rose joins with Charlie and the two voyage downriver, careful to evade German fortresses and gunboats, crocs and leeches, and the other’s personality.

What’s Good About It: I’m not a fan of Katharine Hepburn (who, if you ever see Dick Cavett’s interview with her, was every inch of bitch in real life as she played on screen), but she and Bogie do have chemistry. Hepburn was born to play the uptight, domineering Rose, and Bogie’s happy-go-lucky hard-drinking Charlie was probably the closest he ever came to playing himself. It also earned him his only Oscar.

After tackling two contemporary classics (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), a few other popular works (In This Our Life, We Were Strangers, Key Largo), and three war documentaries (Report from the Aleutians, Battle of San Pietro, Let There Be Light), in 1951, Huston delved into America’s literary past and adapted Stephen Crane’s 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage.

Clocking in at a miniscule 69 minutes and starring war hero Audie Murphy, veteran and two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Andy Devine, Royal Dano, among others, Badge is among the more forgotten than remembered of Huston’s filmography. It’s more or less faithful to the novel, following the young Henry Fleming from his first experience in combat to his flight, his wounding from the rifle butt of a fellow soldier, on up through his final heroics as flag bearer, and seems appropriate for its time, coming relatively soon after the end of World War II.

Almost everyone, Huston included, speaks of Badge as though it was in line to become his next masterpiece had it not been for the meddling studio and their insistence on cuts. Whether that’s true or not, and whether the excised footage had been restored, honestly, I don’t get much of a sense of greatness from Badge.

For one, this is one Huston film where the narration seems wholly unnecessary. Maybe that was a studio decision, but I have yet to read anything that says it was. Huston’s a talented enough director to show everything the narrator mentions, so when he does, it’s overkill. Fleming has just shown the audience he’s brave by carrying the American flag head first into combat, do we really need this ponderously officious voice to confirm it?  And I’m not one of those viewers who dislikes narration in any form, because I usually don’t mind it—just that here it’s repetitive.

The shortness is a detriment as well. Fleming sort of drifts through the narrative hazily wanting to achieve true courage on the battlefield and going from coward to braggart to hero all in the span of around 20 minutes. This is the main focus of the story—to show Henry’s transformation from recruit to warrior, boy to man—but it just sort of happens. The narrator may make some comment about how it was at this or that moment that Henry understood the nature of war or manhood or whatever, but it feels haphazard.

This is one of those films that makes me happy about doing a retrospective on John Huston. Just when I think it’s going to get boring, I stumble on a movie like The Asphalt Jungle, and it blows me away.

The Asphalt Jungle, for a cinemaphile today, is a study in influence—not what it was influenced by, rather what it influenced later and still influences now. I can’t think of any other Huston film I’ve seen that so readily ignites callbacks (call-forwards?) to so many films I’ve seen before seeing this.

If I were pitching it to a studio today, I’d say, “It’s like Reservoir Dogs meets The Seven Samurai meets David Mamet.” You can’t watch it without hitting your head and saying, “So that’s where that’s from.”

And to say this is Huston at the height of his powers” isn’t enough. You must say, “This is Huston at the height of his powers in the 1950s.”

And it is. Structurally, Jungle is air tight. It takes chances, but they’re carefully controlled to provide maximum shock, at least retrospectively—I can’t know how shocking they were in 1950, but I do know that in the context of the film they’re surprising and clearly deliberate—the gun falling on the floor and nailing one of the gang members, the abrupt execution of the double-crosser, the delightful close-up of teenage boobies…

Is this the same guy who made The Maltese Falcon? It doesn’t quite feel that way. Falcon seemed a little tighter, more rigid. Here Huston feels more relaxed—the dialogue isn’t a rapid-fire barrage of quips and one-liners. The characters aren’t as grotesque—they seem a little more human.

Here’s a quick recap: Several men of various means and personalities join together to pull off one big score that will set them for life.