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John Huston |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Actor / Producer |
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| 1906 - 1987 |
| Born August 5, Nevada, Missouri,
USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Drama, Adventure, Psychological Drama, Gangster Film, Crime, Adventure
Drama, Period Film |
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Key
Collaborators: Humphrey
Bogart (Leading Player), Stephen Grimes (Production Designer), Oswald Morris (Cinematographer), Ralph Kemplen
(Editor), Russell Lloyd (Editor), Alex North (Composer), Walter
Huston (Character Player), John Foreman (Producer), Roberto Silvi (Editor), Mary
Astor (Character Player) |
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Highly Recommended: The
Maltese Falcon (1941)*#, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)*, The
Asphalt Jungle (1950)*# |
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Recommended: In
This Our Life (1942), Let There Be Light (1946), Key Largo (1948)#, The African Queen (1951)*, The
Misfits (1961)*, Fat City (1972)*, The Man Who Would Be King (1975)*, Wise
Blood (1979) |
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Worth a Look: Across the Pacific (1942), The Battle
of San Pietro (1945), Let There Be Light (1946), The Red Badge of
Courage (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), Beat the Devil (1954), Moby Dick
(1956), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Unforgiven (1959), Freud
(1962), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Life and Times of Judge
Roy Bean (1972), Under the Volcano (1984), Prizzi's Honor (1985), The
Dead (1987)* |
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Approach with Caution: We Were Strangers (1949), The Night of the
Iguana (1964), The Bible (1966), A Walk with Love and Death (1969), The
Kremlin Letter (1970), The Mackintosh Man (1973), Escape to Victory
(1981) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; #
Listed in TSPDT's
250 Quintessential Noir Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference
] [
Derek
Malcolm's Century of Films: Fat City ] [
Reel
Classics Page ] [
Film
Noir Directors ] [
Who2 Biography ] [
New York Times Obituary (1987) ] [
Screen Online Biography ] [
Boston Phoenix Article (2006)
]
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Books: [
An
Open Book ] [
John
Huston: Interviews ] [
John
Huston's Filmmaking ] [
The
Hustons ] [
The Films of John Huston ] |
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"Huston was always ready to
be presented as the movie director who told manly, energetic
stories, and liked to end them on a wry chuckle. He was himself
a writer, a painter, a boxer, a horseman, a wanderer, a gambler,
an adventurer, and a womanizer. More than most, he relished the
game of getting a movie set up and the gamble of out-daring and
intimidating the studios. His best pictures reflect those tastes
and that attitude and had an expansive, airy readiness for
ironic endings, fatal bad luck, and the laughter that knows men
are born to fail." -
David
Thomson, (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
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"Huston's
protagonists often represent extremes. They are either ignorant,
pathetic, and doomed by their lack of self-understanding or
intelligent, arrogant, but equally doomed by their lack of
self-understanding. Between these extremes is the cool,
intelligent protagonist who will sacrifice everything for
self-understanding and independence. Huston always finds the
first group pathetic, the second tragic, and the third heroic.
He reserves his greatest respect for the man who retains his
dignity in spite of pain and disaster." -
Stuart M. Kaminsky (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991) |
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"'Huston,
who favoured working from literary sources, seldom made films
that seemed at all personal. Ambitious but erratic, he preferred
to ignore the restraints of genre but rarely produced anything
original or emotionally involving; often he seemed content to
shoot character actors in exotic locations, unsure as to the
thematic substance, weight or tone of his material. That said,
his finest work casts a beady eye over human aspiration, with
the allure of power and an easy life inevitably wrecking the
best-laid plans." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"In the beginning the American male in the films of John Huston
was a hard-talking idealist, but he slowly turned into a
cynical, alienated loser. The director studies men from top to
bottom and everywhere in between." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"The
directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual
loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a
small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and
move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it."
- John Huston |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958), The
Roots of Heaven (1958), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Sinful
Davey (1969), Phobia (1980), and Annie (1982). |
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