I recently watched Under the Volcano and Wise Blood and enjoyed both quite a bit. The Man Who Would be King is one of the more entertaining movies around, in my opinion, but I hate African Queen and thought The Dead merely OK.
He was certainly prolific, and I definitely will try and watch a few more of his movies.
Bumped this one up. Early tomorrow morning, at 7:55 a.m., Sundance will broadcast Huston’s “The Dead”. It will repeat later Tuesday afternoon (June 30th). Since there’s not a DVD available for this title, here’s your chance to see Huston’s last film or DVR it.
A terrible, inept, overblown director — extremely ham-fisted.
Thanks for the reminder, Cineaste! DVR has been set!
One of those filmmakers whose work is preternaturally suited to TV syndication and then to cable rerun schedules. I keep no tally of the number of times I’ve seen for instance The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or The Man Who Would Be King—every time is enjoyable-as-hell, and just like the first.
John Huston is one of my favorite director ever, for ====> Key Largo, The Man Who Would Be King, Night of the Iguana, Under the Volcano (wonderful Albert Finney !!), Wise Blood, Beat the Devil ( an “unwedged” and very humourus film noir ), Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Asphalt Jungle (which certainly inspired Kubrick for “The Killing”), Moby Dick, Heaven Knows Mr Allison ( I love this one ), Reflections in a Golden Eye, Fat City.
His late period was especially good I thought… Man Who Would Be King is a classic. Fat City is wonderful and I just did the Criterion Wise Blood a couple of weeks back, stunning.
I do one of him eating spaghetti.
One of the all-time greats. It is impossible to make a list of “greatest films ever made,” no matter how you slice it, without at least a couple of his pictures in there: The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, Moby Dick, The Man Who Would Be King.
>>And whoever said that Huston was an asshole, is way off.<<
That was pretty much the opinion of quite a few people who worked with him. Ray Bradbury’s experiences while writing MOBY DICK (related in THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES) are not flattering. Huston also added his name to the screenplay credit despite doing no actual work on it.
But his personal side … uh … aside, I find that his CV has more misses than hits for me. The whole Hemingway-macho trip interests me not at all, so there may be some very good films he’s made that simply are not my cuppa. Mostly I concur with Justin’s “ham-fisted” assessment, though there are several of his films I like quite a bit – NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, especially (for once his approach is damn nigh delicate).
Fun actor, though, especially when playing a bastard. His turn is DE SADE almost makes the film worth watching.
I agree with Justin above. Huston is one of the more overrated Hollywood directors. He’s a smug and pompous director who made smug and pompous films. The Maltese Falcon is awful. The African Queen is even worse. Night of the Iguana is abysmal. And his lesser known films are generally forgettable. That said, I can’t deny enjoying Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Well, if The Maltese Falcon isn’t a good enough film for you, I don’t know what to say…
Perhaps so. And I love film noir but I really don’t like the Maltese Falcon. I’d venture to say that it’s because I love film noir that I don’t like the Maltese Falcon. I think Huston butchers the tone of Dashiell Hammett’s novel.
Where the hell do you get smug and pompous in his films? It sounds as if you’re more into a character assassination than a proper analysis of his film work!
We can look at Huston as being a larger-than-life director, in his way, but that just may be the booze talking, since he was obviously quite the drinker, and his not wanting to suffer fools lightly. And who can blame him? He might even have been pompous and smug, but given that he’s made some still-classic films, I don’t think you can equate the pompousness and smugness as something that you see in his works.
I don’t particularly favour films like the African Queen, and Night of the Iguana, but they aren’t terrible. And if you just add up such examples as Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Man Who Would Be King, Under the Volcano, and yes, The Maltese Falcon, then they far outweigh any films that were less appealing or memorable, and show a remarkably confident director, when given the right material, etc.
And on a final note, I don’t think The Maltese Falcon would’ve been considered such a classic book if Huston hadn’t done the film version, despite the skills of Dashiell Hammett.
“The Maltese Falcon is awful.”
Okay, come on. I can see not being a fan. But awful? Really?
I consider Maltese Falcon more of a straight ahead private detective film as opposed to film noir, it’s not as conflicted in its delivery or as morally ambiguous as others that I would classify, like The Big Sleep. However, what it loses in ambiguity it makes up for in entertainment. I think Huston got much better as his career went along in terms of substance (i.e. The Dead is hands down the greatest Joyce adaptation of all time), but there are few films as upfront and entertaining as Maltese Falcon, not to mention the visual mastery he displays. Frame by frame that film is visually stunning.
And how does Huston butcher Hammett’s novel? It’s pretty unabashedly similar to the terse, almost regretful tone Hammett plays with. It’s not as gritty or as disturbing, but I doubt any film made at that time could be. You want to see butchery see the 30’s version. Huston just alters it for the medium.
“the maltese falcon” isnt just a classic crime film, its actually one of the high points of classic hollywood cinema in general. it doesnt get much better than that. its paradigmatic.
huston’s noirs are beyond reproach. “the asphalt jungle” is brilliant. and its really the first true caper film ever made. “key largo” is a tour de force. nothing but excellent heavyweights of actors going at it from scene to scene. the extended sequence in the hotel room where we first meet rocco and he starts terrorizing everyone is one of my favorite scenes in all of cinema. i can watch it over and over again.
and how effective was huston in “chinatown”? for all these reasons, i have to call huston a great artist.
High point of classic Hollywood cinema? Jeez, way to take a cliched detective film and elevate it into something it’s not. Yes, Huston misses out on Hammett’s sparse prose entirely (he makes it way too baroque and it’s not only missing out on the moral ambiguity of Hammett’s prose but also on his style). I’m glad you can put The Maltese Falcon next to the Big Sleep and recognize the greatness of the latter. (BTW to call something is greatest Joyce adaptation is faint praise indeed since Joyce is notoriously unadaptable – that’s like calling something the best Faulkner adaptation). Sure, Huston was fine as an actor in Chinatown. I’ll give him credit in front of the screen. But he’s an overrated hack. Yes, I’m being mildly polemical here but so what? I concur with Andrew Sarris that Huston was more about technique than actual substance and it shows in every frame he filmed.
The Maltese Falcon is awful. It’s talky and incredibly dull. Compared to The Big Sleep, it’s extremely remedial filmmaking, straining for significance at every moment, commenting on myth instead of just making it.
To be honest I prefer the novel The Big Sleep to the novel The Maltese Falcon by leaps and bounds so it never surprised me that The Big Sleep came out better. This combined with the fact that Hawks is a filmmaker of the rarest ilk, able to make masterpieces in every genre made it almost impossible for Huston to be able to make a better film, especially on his first time out. However, Huston is a more-than-capable director even this early in the game and Maltese Falcon is ‘talky’ sure, but that’s hardly a negative aspect of films like Maltese Falcon, its dialogue is sharp and pointed and rather than ‘straining for significance’ it takes a leisurely route, mostly focused on entertainment for entertainment sake, leaving in the more metaphorical aspects of the search for the bird itself from the novel. I find it a strong adaptation because it is assured and believable while at the same time being highly stylized and a very inventive film in a genre that had been strip-mined by that point. I don’t get where you’re getting ‘dull’ because no matter what I am always at least riveted.
Huston’s own substantial touches were more evident as he became more comfortable in his role and by 1948 he was at the top his game, making films like The Treasure of The Sierra Madre which stands as the second best performance elicited from Bogart of all time (In A Lonely Place being number 1).
you guys dont get it. youre not thinking with enough perspective. a cliched detective film?? “maltese falcon” wrote the book on the detective film! (no irony intended) its impossible for it to be cliched. its actually all the millions of other films that have turned its tropes into cliches. thats like calling “metropolis” a cliched sci-fi film. or “the great train robbery” a cliched western.
and i dont know that huston has ever been overrated. by who? in fact, its probably about time that his career gets a proper appraisal. thats painfully apparent if you guys cant see how important a film “the maltese falcon” is. first might not mean best, but it does mean incredible visionary creativity. and mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery. nothing without merit deserves flattery.
i agree that “big sleep” is better than “maltese falcon”. i enjoy it more for a lot of different reasons. but i dont compare the two for the purposes of elevating or submerging one or the other. different directors, different source novels and authors, different approaches. “maltese” is talky, yes, but the film is about spades’s winning words and cleverness through intelligence.
as far as it being remedial filmmaking, id call it restrained classicism. again, its a paradigmatic classical hollywood film. how can something be remedial and reaching for significance at the same time? lofty aspirations would be reflected in aesthetic choices. but “maltese” doesnt reach. it proceeds with lucidity and self-effacing effectiveness. its plays by the rules of the genre that it creates at the same time. i dont understand how one could say it strains for significance. where?
commenting on myth instead of making it. “the stuff that dreams are made of.” huston has answered you. myths cant be made, and its foolish to attempt to. because at the end of the day, theres just lead underneath. deconstruction of the hollywood dream factory while at the same approaching perfection with and through its postulates.
the real maltese falcon in “the maltese falcon” is the film itself.
I think you’re proving my point about Huston being overrated. But, eh, I get what you are saying but you’re not convincing me here (but I will appreciate the contradiction that the “Big Sleep” is better than “the Maltese Falcon” when you already admitted that it doesn’t get any better than the Maltese Falcon).
Anyway, you accuse me of lacking perspective in not acknowledging the Maltese Falcon as the first of its kind but I think you’re the one lacking perspective and simply believing what the “film canon” tells you to believe about the Maltese Falcon’s importance. In terms of detective films, we have The Thin Man films or The Glass Key – the George Raft and not the Allan Ladd one – in the 1930s (both Hammett adaptations and far more foundational, even if the Thin Man plays it for laughs as well). Hell, I’d even say some of the Charlie Chan films from the 1930s are more “foundational” than the Maltese Falcon. And there are far more foundational noir or proto-noir films in my opinion (that capture the noir sensibility and fatalism much better than the Maltese falcon) that are underrecognized like Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once or Michael Curtiz’s Angel With Dirty Faces. Or if you want to talk about someone who should be better known than Huston, talk about Raoul Walsh and his Bogart collaborations before Huston’s, They Drive By Night and the Roaring Twenties. Both of those films are better than anything Huston has done (and feature better Bogie performances as well). Hell, Walsh made High Sierra (incidentally co-written by Huston) the same year as the Maltese Falcon and it’s also better than anything Huston made.
Well, for the record, Bobby didn’t say “it doesn’t get any better than The Maltese Falcon”, he did say, “it doesn’t get much better than The Maltese Falcon” which leaves room for The Big Sleep. They are both fantastic films and great movie making in my opinion. And both are at the very top of my list of greatest noir films ever made.
but the detective film wasnt the detective film until “the maltese falcon”. the detective film wasnt the detective film until classic film noir. for that, we can point the finger at “the maltese falcon”. this is the film that stands the test of time, above everything else you mentioned.
i’m talking about hard-boiled, pulpy, detective films. modern(ist) detective films. of course we had the thin man and charlie chan and the early “glass key”. but to me, those are something different. but, no need to argue about the true birth of the detective film. back to the worth of the “maltese falcon”, and huston.
be careful of the irony of arguing for the superiority of walsh to huston on the basis of a film that huston, as you so insightfully pointed out, co-wrote (not incidentally, and not coincidentally either). i’m not saying one is better than the other. i’m just saying be careful. perhaps YOU proved MY point about huston being a great talent.
I’m not sure there’s any irony in acknowledging that Huston co-wrote a film that was far better than anything he himself did. I mean, John Milius co-wrote Apocalypse Now but that doesn’t make, uh, Red Dawn a good film or Milius a talented director.
The Hemingway of the cinema.
nobodys talking about john milius. and nobody said a good writer automatically makes a good director.
i say huston has made some good films. brilliant even. you say he wrote a good film. one of us is right, possibly both. but either way, doesnt that make him talented?
I differed with Bobby Wise on film noir in the past, but he’s clearly right here (especially about The Roaring Twenties and the lack of contemporary discussion about Raoul Walsh).
Huston was certainly one of the best writers in the history of Hollywood cinema and certainly one of the best directors. You need only turn to IMDB, his filmography speaks for itself.
I’ll some up his detractors on this site succinctly and in a way they’re sure to hate: “how will people know you’re smart if you like Hollywood films people have heard of?”
Maudlin, meandering, and dependent on characters who are gratuitously weird without substance — these are other faults of Huston.
He’s just not as good as Walsh, Hawks, Fuller, Welles, Hitchcock at his best… He’s a minor director, and film would be just fine if he had never directed. Sorry, that’s what I think.
Justin, I would agree with you to a certain extent that Huston can be maudlin and meandering, but dependant on characters who are gratuitously weird? I’ve never really found Humphrey Bogart to be weird necessarily and that’s a big chunk of Huston’s filmography.
As far as Reflections in a Golden Eye (which has SEVERAL strange characters), I think it’s one of his best films and certainly has substance. Wise Blood is also one with several strange characters and I would agree that many of them are substanceless. Beat the Devil is just weird all the way around, so I guess that would qualify as well. Night of the Iguana (my favourite Huston film by far) doesn’t really have strange characters, they are many of them, neurotic, egotistical, and scheming, but that’s not really weird…is it? Ok, maybe that qualifies too, but there’s substance!
Huston wrote/directed a wide variety of films, so there’s bound to be differing opinions.
As far as Jim Miller’s comment about Huston being the Hemingway of cinema … I wouldn’t go that far.
Francisco J. Torres
“Mackintosh Man though….don’t rush to rent it.”
Same for The Kremlin Letter. What was about him and spy movies?