From Glory to Destruction
John Huston's Non-fictional Depictions of War
Abstract
During the World War II John Huston became involved, together with other well-known Hollywood Iilmrnakers, in the U.S. government propaganda film production. The essay contrasts Huston's war documentaries with other propaganda films produced during the conflict, and argues that whereas Report from the Aleutians,Huston's first non-fiction film, may be incorporated within the propaganda genre and depicts war as an instance where officers and soldiers may aspire to glory, his second documentary, San Pietro, breaks free of this label and shows the ultimate destruction which war brings about. The paper also details the predictably unfavorable reaction of the War Department to Huston's anti-war stance, and the reasons why many years would have to pass before San Pietro and Let 7here be Light, his subsequent war documentary, would be released for general viewing.
Copyright (c) 2002 The Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
RSAJournal applies a CC BY-NC-ND license to all its contributions. This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
- BY: credit must be given to the creator.
- NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
- ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights for their submissions to the journal.
- Authors grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share unedited work for non-commercial purposes with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
