A cycle for Huston's 120th anniversary
Thirteen John Huston films are coming to the big screen in Buenos Aires. From Friday, November 6 through Friday, December 4, the Sala Leopoldo Lugones, which operates inside the Teatro San Martín at Avenida Corrientes 1530, devotes a four-week cycle to them. The titles were shot between 1942 and 1987.
The tribute coincides with 120 years since the birth of the American filmmaker and is staged by two institutions: the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires and the Fundación Cinemateca Argentina. Infobae, which published the lineup, sums up Huston's work as five decades in which he mastered genres such as dark crime stories, adventure and psychological drama.
The series begins with Huston's first productions for Warner and reaches the Joyce story that closed his filmography. In all there are thirteen features, with actors who left a mark on film history.
The film noir years
The first screening is The Maltese Falcon, with which Huston debuted as a director. Humphrey Bogart plays detective Sam Spade, a character from a Dashiell Hammett novel brought to the screen. Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Cuban writer, called it “a masterpiece and the most enjoyable of all Huston's films”.
Two more titles follow the same line of urban nights and ambiguous characters. Key Largo brings Bogart together with Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson; The Asphalt Jungle features Sterling Hayden and Marilyn Monroe, in one of the actress's first weighty roles. Of the latter, Huston wrote in his memoir An Open Book that it worked as a mold for many later crime films.
Adventure and drifting characters
After the urban darkness, Huston changes scenery with The African Queen. Bogart is the lead again, now alongside Katharine Hepburn, in a drama that unfolds on a river while the First World War goes on. The director admitted that none of his other films brought in as much money, even though it looked little like what he usually shot.
Extreme landscapes return in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where Walter Huston, the director's father, won an Oscar for his role, and in The Misfits, which was the last film of Clark Gable and also of Marilyn Monroe. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, with Paul Newman, joins the same run of aimless characters.
The end of a career and the rest of the lineup
The last screening is The Dead, an adaptation of a story by James Joyce, with Anjelica Huston, the director's daughter, in the cast. It was his final film behind the camera. Bertrand Tavernier and Jean-Pierre Coursodon, two critics, rank it as “the most dazzling end of a career” among the great American filmmakers.
Five more titles fill the middle. Beat the Devil, written by Truman Capote; The Night of the Iguana, with Richard Burton; Fat City, a boxing drama with Jeff Bridges and Stacy Keach; Freud, with Montgomery Clift as the Viennese psychoanalyst; and In This Our Life, with Bette Davis.
Names that recur in the lineup
Bogart appears in at least three of the titles: The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo and The African Queen. Marilyn Monroe is in two, The Asphalt Jungle and The Misfits, so the cycle also lets you follow these performers across the years.
There is a family story too. Walter Huston, the director's father, acts in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and his daughter Anjelica closes the cycle with The Dead. With Bogart, Monroe and the Hustons, the lineup combines Hollywood stars with a cinematic family line.
If you go
Screenings are at the Sala Leopoldo Lugones, inside the Teatro San Martín, at Avenida Corrientes 1530. The cycle starts on Friday, November 6 and ends on Friday, December 4, with thirteen films.
Tickets are bought at the box office and online, and sales open one week before the start, according to the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires press release. If crime stories appeal to you, begin with The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo and The Asphalt Jungle. The available information does not say which title plays each day, so it is wise to confirm dates and times with the theater before choosing a film.
Source: Infobae
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