A drunken god
AS A FATHER HUST ON WAS PART FRANK GALLAGHER AND PART HEMINGWAY
He was a holy drinker, womaniser, sculptor and gambler. He was also an erratic and brilliant filmmaker. Paul Dale welcomes a season of John Huston’s films.
he prolific. gifted and deeply eccentric writer/director John Huston preferred to think that ‘God is not dead. just drunk.’ It‘s a cute quote. which fits in with the air of Irish whimsy that Huston attempted to generate around himself and his uprooted family towards the end of his life. Huston went through five wives in his XI years. two of whom bore him three children. while he also adopted a couple along the way. As a family man. if Huston has a modern day comparative he is somewhere between Frank Gallagher from the TV series Shameless and Ernest Hemingway. The director was flamboyant. reactionary. mad. irresponsible and wholly unreliable. So how did such a man create some of the true masterpieces of US cinema? No doubt. like many of the talented and unhinged. Huston did not. by his own admission. try to guess what his audience would like. he simply concentrated on what he liked. [I is this element of self-amusement that makes Huston‘s filmography so hit and miss. When he was great he was stunning. and when he hit a nadir (The Kremlin Letter. The Barbarian and the Geisha) it was deep and full of filth and rats and primordial crabs. 'I‘hankfully the eight films in this short season are at least interesting and half of them — 'I‘he 'l'reasure of the Sierra Mar/re. The Maltese I'aleott. The Asphalt Jungle and Key Largo are the works of a master. Sadly. though. Huston made 47 films in his long career. and this season is too slight to even scratch the dust of the flamboyant filmmaker’s oeuvre. With the exception of l987‘s The Dead. at Joyce adaptation of considerable scope and inventiveness.
42 THE LIST 1 if) f of) 200?
and his seminal debut The Maltese l’aleon (pictured). all these films hail from Huston‘s first golden period of 19-18—1966. Following a spell in which he had served his country during WWII (as a Signal (‘orps lieutenant and later a propagandist documentarian). Huston stunned the postwar audience with the remarkable story of isolation. gold and greed that is The 'Ii‘easure of the Sierra Mar/re. That period ended in 1966 when Huston. in his unreined madness. decided to make The Bible and cast himself as both Noah and the voice of God. Some might say ego was a bit of a problem for the great man.
Six fallow years followed. when his output varied from the putrid (Casino Royale) to the indecipherable (Re/leetions in a Golden liye).
In 1972 Huston hit his second. and for many his most influential. period. It started with Fat City. a bleak. brilliant paean to the defeated and the down and out. starring Stacy Keach as a washed up boxer and a young Jeff Bridges as his young protegee.
Thrilling adaptations of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King and Hannery ()‘Connor‘s ll’ise Bloorl. Richard Condon‘s l’rizzi's Honor and Joyce‘s The Dead followed over the course of the last decade-and— a-half of his life. I‘d like to see these films and others of that period in a later season. for they reflect the intransigence. economy. misery and despair of a man whose carousing ways were beginning to catch up with him.
John Huston on Tour is a GFT, Glasgow and Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 2 Feb.
flit >i< THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES
* Belle de Jour Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel’s brilliant 1964 satire of bourgeois sexual mores gets a brief outing in a new print. Witness the birth of arthouse porn. See review, page 45. Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 9 Feb-Wed 74 Feb only.
1‘; Play Idiosyncratic Chilean drama about isolation and connection in a world weighed down by technology. See review, page 43. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 2—Thu 8 Feb only.
=3 Running With Scissors Very quirky black comedy of familial manners in the style of Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. Annette Bening and Brian Cox star. See review, page 44. General release from Fri 2 Feb.
# Dreamgirls Exemplary stage to screen big musical transfer. See review, page 43. General release from Fri 9 Feb. * Dirty Dancing: 20th Anniversary Edition ‘Nobody puts Baby in the corner.’ See review, page 44. Cinewor/d Renfrew Street, Glasgow and selected cinemas from Fri 9 Feb.
=l= John Huston A selection of great movies from this master storyteller. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and a filmed interview with Angelica Huston get things underway. See preview, right. Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 2 Feb.
* The Last King of Scotland ldi Amin and his Scottish doctor make a great double act in Kevin MacDonald's Oscar nominated drama. General release.
* Passenger Andrzej Munk’s remarkable Holocaust drama gets a long overdue DVD release. See DVD review. page 46. Out now. (Second Run).
* Out of the Past The film that made Robert Mitchum a star. Jacques Tourneur’s white hot 1947 film noir gets a freshed-up DVD release. See DVD Round-Up. page 46. Out Mon 12 Feb. (Universal).