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This film could only have been made...

Posted by Harmonia on February 5, 2010 at 11:40:10:
...by a master, a master who has lived fully and attained a certain wisdom.

When film fans discuss great American directors, and inevitably someone asks who's the "greatest", I always respond "John Huston". Some might say Ford, or Kubrick, or Coppola, or Scorsese (the French would no doubt say Hitchcock). But I say Huston, and The Dead is his masterpiece. It captures on the screen the way one feels reading the story on the page: all the texture, all the emotion, all the layers. It is an extraordinary film - something very, very rare.

Plus we have these films from the same gifted man:

The Maltese Falcon
The Treasure Of Sierre Madre
Key Largo
The Asphalt Jungle
The African Queen
The Misfits
Fat City
The Man Who Would Be King
Wise Blood
Under The Volcano
Prizzi's Honor

Huston had a flair for bringing novels to the screen (even, perhaps especially, the daunting ones), as the list above atests.

How many filmmakers can say that their first film (Maltese Falcon) and their last (The Dead) were truly great films? Since he worked mainly within the commercial Hollywood system in his long career, Huston had his share of misfires. And he also diected for hire several outright clunkers. But his list of great movies is unsurpassed IMO by any other American born director (yes, I know someone is going to say Stanley Kubrick).