Wow, just finished “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. Brilliant.

So far, “Maltese Falcon”, “Across the Pacific”, “Report from the Aleutians”, “San Pietro”, “Let there be Light”, and “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Huston starts off as a toughminded but literary Director with the Maltese Falcon, the second most perfectly written movie in History (After “The Sting”). Huston is a literature lover, which allows him to seamlessly translate Dashiell Hammett to the screen. It is, in my opinion, the first REAL “Film Noir”. That is a controversial position to take, many point to Josef Von Sternberg’s “Underworld” as the first, there are (of course) some French films that get mentioned, but here is the thing, if the French invented Noir, then why, when the Nouvelle Vague writers defined it and declared it, did they say that it was an American invention? Anyways, we are splitting hairs, John Huston is the point of this Immersion, not the bloody French. The Maltese Falcon has only one mistake in it that ALWAYS stands out to me. When shown the gun that has killed his partner, Miles Archer, Bogart says”Yeah, Webley Forsby .45 automatic, 8 shots, they don’t make ’em anymore”, the gun in Ward Bond’s hand is a SIX shot Webley REVOLVER. Only gaff in the picture as far as I am concerned.Best climactic sequence ever made. “I’m sending you over angel. I’m not gonna be your patsty.” Wow. This movie NEVER ever EVER gets old or bad. Dad took me to see it my first time, a double feature projected image at the Kalamazoo Public Library, showing with Casablanca. I was a Bogart fan for life, and “Round up the usual suspects.” was added to Dad and I’s inside-joke-language. If you haven’t seen this movie, you HATE movies, and are an uncultured piece of SCUM until you DO SEE IT.

World War 2. Quite an impact on a few people’s lives it had. John Huston’s evolution (he was called up in the middle of production on “Across the Pacific” and left just before the picture wrapped) is one of someone who is very eager for the manly experiences of the military, but is definitively changed by the real horrors of war. Many other filmmakers of the time were also profoundly and completely redirected by their service in the war, George Stevens who filmed the Death Camps, and John Ford who filmed just about EVERYWHERE (Midway and D-Day are standouts), as well as a soon to be Filmmaker who served in the 1st Infantry Division (“Big Red One” HUAH)- Samuel Fuller- who fought his way into a Death camp.

Huston starts the war with “Across the Pacific”, which is a lighthearted romantic comedy between Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, with a slightly (only slightly) menacing Sydney Greenstreet lurking in the background. A great reunion from “The Maltese Falcon”. Huston liked to work with people he liked, and was very loyal to actors, being best friends with Humphrey Bogart both on and off screen. Supported by a host of all the racially stereotypes of manifested American paranoia, specifically a hip talking Nisei traitor with grotesquely cartooned glasses, the movie is almost surreal in it’s frivolity, until we find out that disgraced American soldier Bogart is actually a deep cover operative for Army Intelligence, trying to sniff out a Japanese plot to blow up the Panama Canal. After that, standard 30’s adventure movie hijinks, decent ending, but really pretty pure propaganda.

The arc, though, is almost instant, as Huston’s first assignment is in Alaska. The japanese have invaded North American soil on the islands of Attu, Kiska, and Nattu, soon there will be 45,000 American troops in the Alaskan command and 13 airbases, leapfrogging their way out the Aleutian Island chain to attack the 5,100 Japanese on Kiska, and the 2200 on Attu. But first it all has to be built and get there. Huston is there for all of it, the construction, the raids, the horrible horrible weather. The film ends with him flying along on a bombing raid on Attu in a B24(built in Willow Run, Michigan -“Willit Run”? LOOK IT UP). He is almost killed by flak on this mission. He deals with the death of airmen he has seen and served with for the first time, the war is real. It is about to get a whole lot more real. In the actual ensuing battle, in case anyone cares, 549 Americans were killed taking Attu, and 1149 wounded, at the cost of 2128 Japanese with 28 captured. Kiska was taken at no cost since the Japanese had evacuated the garrison of 5100 3 weeks before we landed.

“San Pietro” is a film so damn raw that it was classified and suppressed by the War Department for 40 years. The initial release was a paltry 20 minute affair, barely a short subject left after reediting for censorship purposes. American’s are killed in front of you. Long montages of the faces of soldiers going into the attack are matched at the back of the footage by the same faces going into body bags, or strewn messily around the battlefield. German dead are also examined, same angles, same horrors. Wounded are brought down from the mountains on stretcher teams under mortar fire. This is the REAL war.The Italian campaign was one of the absolute worst to get stuck in if you were a servicemember in WW2. Mud, Mountains, Rivers, and VERY hardcore German elite troops killing you as fast as they can from (inevitably) the high ground. The only purpose of the campaign was to drain German strength away from the DDay landing areas and the Russian front. The secondary objective is to force Italy out of the war, and liberate what can be liberated of Italy as long as the costs aren’t too bad. The film starts with General Mark Clark, the three star American commanding General, telling you all this, lending what follows a constant “WHY??” quality to it’s brutality. This is also probably the most important film of all John Huston’s life, because in it, we see him change. This is not propaganda, this is Cinema Verite at it’s absolute peak. Sober numbers, instead of listing dead, he lists how many replacements are needed to restore the battalion we first met, then followed into battle, then buried. The restored, declassified version is as visceral an experience of war as Private Ryan, in the opposite direction stylistically, stoic, dry, raw.

“Let there be light” was actively suppressed until 1983 by the War and then Defense Departments. An attempt to show it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City was broken up by the Military Police and the print seized. This film deals with “the human salvage of war” as Walter Huston narrates, an 8 month span at a Military psychiatric hospital. There is no acting, no stylization, this is a dry look at the treatment methods then in use to deal with “battle fatigue, and neuropsychiatric disorders”. Several things jump out immediately if you are in tune with the times. First, it is 1946, 2 years before military integration by President Truman’s order, but the hospital, the therapy sessions, the baseball games, and the bus they leave on, are sprinkled with black guys. In fact, Huston makes it a point to follow 2 of these brothers through their therapy, along with a poor white kid who is psychiatrically paralyzed but regains the ability to walk (!!!). The things that are discussed reveal much about both the society of the time, one of the things one black fella talks about is how he was discouraged from playing with non-middle class kids, who his mother said were beneath him. The poor white kid talks of economic obstacles, of fights over food but can’t remember the food just the fights. This movie is straight up ANTI-WAR, PRO-EQUALITY, both racially and for the mentally damaged and for the veteran. When the War department had the official internal screening, the Generals unanimously decided to shitcan it, saying to Huston “This movie is bad for the country. This movie is Anti-War.” Huston replied: “If I ever make a pro-war movie I hope somebody takes me out and shoots me.” This is truly a very hard film to watch, since, as one psychiatrist says “these problems have been with us all throughout all time, and in all places.” You can not help remembering that times have apparently not changed as far as generating new cases, what of our soldiers now? Are they getting the care they need? These soldiers got care, and the care got results, some people -not all of course- got better.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is simply one of the best movies ever made, and I am not alone on that. This is really the cementing in a larger world view of the central theme in Huston’s work: “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it, and by getting it, NOT GET IT.” Just as the Black Bird was “the stuff that dreams are made of”, so too is the “goods” of the Sierra Madre.Human greed, and the weakness of the human mind in the face of it, are the real antagonists here. Fred C. Dobbs -Humphrey Bogart again-, Curtin, and Walter Huston “the old man”, go off to Mexico to seek their fortune prospecting for gold. They find it, and the answer to thier dreams turns out to be a real nightmare. A real nightmare. They are faced with a claimjumper(Bruce Bennett, soon to return in Key Largo as a cop), Mexican bandits, “norther” windstorms, thirst, gila monsters, and of course, the real enemy, the weakness of their own souls, or the strength of them. A fantastic book written by a mysterious writer (LOOK IT UP), was once again converted into a fantastic movie by this most literary of all Directors. Supposedly with help from the author, but noone knows for sure. We can see the continuing echoes of the Second World War at work as well, there is a harsh cynicism to it, it is almost as though Huston is trying to arrange old character structures according to a new moral realism. The wise old man is still the wise old man, but now he is also the most physically able of them all, and, as Walter says, “the most trustworthy”. Dobbs is a man obsessed who implodes with deadly consequences for all around him. Walter Huston won an Oscar for his performance, and well earned.

Next up:

Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, Red Badge of Courage, Moulin Rouge, and the African Queen

AS FAST AS I CAN WATCH EM!!