King Huston

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2001)

This movie seems to have been made by a young man.It took the adventure genre to its peak ( it was to be cheapened by Spielberg in the eighties with I.Jones and co).The screenplay is marvelous,now funny ,now dramatic,now parodic ,now epic.John Huston runs the whole gamut of emotion,suspense and humor.Abetted by two peerless actors,he tells us a tale so weird that only a first-rate director could have pulled it off. A metaphor on the power,on man's conceit (wasn't it the case for such early gems as "Sierra Madre" or late masterpieces like "the dead"?),a conceit that knows no bounds.Actually,Connery's character doesn't want to be a king,he wants to be adored and worshipped as a God.(In a famous scene,he asks Caine to bow low before him;it's comic admittedly,but it's a dark spooky humor:in a nutshell,the "Divinity" is losing His mind) Comedy and tragedy walk hand in hand is this subtile work.See how Connery's imposture is being found.Then we have the sublime final confrontation Connery/Caine ,when the former is to be executed.It's difficult to hold back your tears! And as for the very end of the movie,when Caine returns,it's more terrifying than the whole of "the exorcist"."Vanity of vanities,all is vanity" Huston seems to whisper in the gloom.