Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison: John Huston

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a strange little film in the evolution of John Huston, the director.  Widely considered to be the inventor the film noir genre with The Maltese Falcon, Huston spent the forties and most of the fifties doing cheap, pulp outings.  By the sixties he evolved into an adapter of classic literature, which superb film translations of The Night of the Iguana, Fat City, The Man Who Would Be King, Wise Blood, Under the Volcano, and The Dead.  But in this film he seems to try and make a straighter film than his usual grimy repertoire.  It was a color CinemaScope film that was made with the support of the US Armed Forces.  The problem is that Huston plays it a little too straight.  It is bereft of the cynical charm and pot-boiled mentality that made his early work so appealing.  It doesn't do anything wrong...it just doesn't do anything that great either.  The story is predictable and well-worn and carries a pro-America, pro-armed forces undertone more characteristic of John Ford.  Simply put, it doesn't feel like a John Huston film.

6/10