The Huston film is, of course, *Let There Be Light,* filmed in
1945 by Huston and an OWI crew, but not released by the War Department and
its successor, the Defense Department, until, I believe, 1978.  The
film's original intention was to show that mental and emotional effects
caused by combat did not make those sufferers "crazy," and that those so
inflicted would still be good citizens and employable workers in
peacetime.  Huston's final product, the powers that be decided,
dismantled the carefully nurtured ideology of the American fighting man
as an invincible warrior.  The film's release was quashed.
 
        It is, truly, a remarkable film.  The film deals with the
recuperation of shell-shocked American GIs from the recently closed
European Theatre.  Huston used hidden cameras, with the soldiers' apparent
blessing (the cameras that were visible were explained to the men as part
of the overal rehabilitation process so some deception may have been
involved).  Huston documented near-miraculous recoveries, using both
hypnosis and drugs, of previously mute and paralyzed soldiers.  These
documented episodes of recovery are, to say the least, powerful.
 
        Of course, it *is* still a Huston film.  In both interviews with
psychiatrists and in "bull" sessions among themselves, led by a doctor,
the soldiers, in their own words, lay bare contradictions in class and,
particularly, race, that, ultimately, makes one wonder if it was the
fighting, or unconscious conflicts over what they were really fighting
for, that caused their psychoses and psychosomatic ills.
 
        The film is available in both 16-mm (Kit Parker, I believe) and
from several sources on VHS.
 
 
______________________________________________________________________________
                               William Lafferty
 
Department of Theatre Arts                           [log in to unmask]
Wright State University                           office (937) 775-4581 or 3072
Dayton, OH  45435-0001  USA                            facsimile (937) 775-3787
 
"I have been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody
enters it unless he has some very good reason which he is anxious to conceal."
 
                              --- Augustus Fagin, Esq., Ph.D, in Evelyn Waugh's
                                  *Decline and Fall*
 
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