The Dead (1987) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Gabriel Conroy and wife Greta attend an early January dinner with friends at the home of his spinster aunts, an evening which results in an epiphany for both of them. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 48 titles created 12 Sep 2011 a list of 25 titles created 23 Jul 2014 a list of 39 titles created 03 Oct 2014 a list of 39 titles created 02 Jan 2015 a list of 37 titles created 22 Aug 2015 Search for " The Dead " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 2 Oscars.

Another 9 wins & 14 nominations. See more awards » Photos The last 24 hours in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a lonely, depressed English consul who retreats to alcohol for solace. Director: John Huston Two men, working as professional boxers, come to blows when their careers each begin to take opposite momentum. Director: John Huston A professional hit man and hit woman fall in love. Director: John Huston A psychiatrist involved in a radical new therapy comes under suspicion when his patients are murdered, each according to their individual phobias. Director: John Huston A Southerner--young, poor, ambitious but uneducated--determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church. Director: John Huston A major heist goes off as planned, until bad luck and double crosses cause everything to unravel. Director: John Huston A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.

Director: John Huston Truncated adaptation of Stephen Crane's novel about a Civil War Union soldier who stuggles to find the courage to fight in the heat of battle. Director: John Huston Bizarre tale of sex, betrayal, and perversion at a military post. Director: John Huston Two British soldiers in India decide to resign from the Army and set themselves up as deities in Kafiristan--a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander. Director: John Huston On their way to Africa are a group of rogues who hope to get rich there, and a seemingly innocent British couple. They meet and things happen... Director: John Huston In a story set during the Hundred Years War, a student who has abandoned his studies in Paris, pairs with a young noblewoman with whom he has fallen in love.

Director: John Huston Edit Storyline John Huston's last film is a labor of love at several levels: an adaptation of perhaps one of the greatest pieces of English-language literature by one of Huston's favorite authors, James Joyce; a love letter to the land of his ancestors and the country where his children grew up; and the chance to work with his screenwriter son Tony and his actress daughter Anjelica. The film is delicate and unhurried, detailing an early January dinner at the house of two spinster musician sisters and their niece in turn-of-the-century Ireland, attended by friends and family. Among the visiting attendees are the sisters' nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The evening's reminiscences bring up melancholy memories for Gretta concerning her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway. Her recounting of this tragic love to Gabriel brings him to an epiphany: he learns the difference between mere existence and living. The all-Irish cast and careful period detail give the piece richness... Written by Russ W.

<russwlkr@ix.netcom.com> John Huston, Film Director, Writer and Actor, Dies at 81 John Huston, Film Director, Writer and Actor, Dies at 81 By PETER B. FLINT John Huston, the legendary director and scenarist who made such classic films as ''The Maltese Falcon,'' ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,'' ''The Asphalt Jungle'' and ''The African Queen,'' died yesterday in Middletown, R.I., at the age of 81. Associates said he had died in his sleep of complications from emphysema. The film maker, who lived as hard and at times as dangerously as the protagonists of his movies, rarely slowed his pace. Though he had suffered for decades from acute emphysema, which forced him in recent years to rely on oxygen tanks to help him breathe, he continued to smoke. Mr. Huston was in Rhode Island for the filming of ''Mister North,'' a movie based on Thornton Wilder's novel ''Theophilus North,'' which he was producing and had written with Janet Roach. Mr.

Huston was admitted to Charleton Memorial Hospital in nearby Falls River, Mass., July 28 for treatment of pneumonia. He celebrated his 81st birthday there on Aug. 5, and was released last week. Mr. Huston died at 2 A.M. in a house he had rented for the duration of the filming, a family spokesman said. Early this summer he completed his last directorial work, making ''The Dead'' - as yet unreleased - from a James Joyce story. Mr. Huston's debilitating illness made him uninsurable, so the producers, who included his son Tony, had to insure another director willing to take over if necessary. Among the film maker's distinctive achievements was casting his father, Walter, in ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'' in 1948 and his daughter Anjelica in ''Prizzi's Honor'' 37 years later, in roles for which each won an Academy Award. Mr. Huston directed 41 films over 46 years and co-adapted and acted in more than 20.

He was a flamboyant raconteur, bon vivant, horseman, big-game hunter and eventually filmdom's grand old maverick. At a 1983 testimonial, Lauren Bacall, a longtime friend, described him as ''daring, unpredictable, maddening, mystifying and probably the most charming man on earth.'' The best Huston films have lean, fast-paced scripts and vibrant plots and characterizations, and many of them deal ironically with vanity, avarice and unfulfilled quests. In them, nonconformists and misfits brave danger fatalistically in a world where women are often peripheral. He directed most of Hollywood's stars with a sportive irreverence toward their images, and bucked Hollywood's penchant for happy endings by concluding an unusual number of movies with love unsatisfied. Mr.

Huston sought repeatedly to transpose the interior essence of literature to film with dramatic and visual tension, and he had the boldness to film such novels as Stephen Crane's ''Red Badge of Courage'' (1951); Herman Melville's ''Moby Dick,'' for which he won the New York Film Critics' best-director award for 1956; Flannery O'Connor's ''Wise Blood'' (1979) and Malcolm Lowry's ''Under the Volcano'' (1984). The film maker took uncommon care to preserve the writers' styles and values. Debut With 'Maltese Falcon' Mr. Huston made a dazzling directorial debut with ''The Maltese Falcon,'' which he adapted from the novel by Dashiell Hammett. The compelling 1941 movie is considered by many critics to be the best detective thriller ever filmed. ''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,'' a superb study of greed, gold and self-preservation adapted from a novel by B. Traven, gained for Mr. Huston the best-writer and best-director Academy Awards for 1948.

''The Asphalt Jungle'' (1950) is a superbly incisive tale of crime and corruption. ''The African Queen,'' a rollicking adventure movie based on a novel by C. S. Forester about a hard-drinking river trader (Humphrey Bogart) and a prim missionary (Katharine Hepburn), won Mr. Bogart a 1951 Oscar. Detractors at times accused Mr. Huston of shallowness and of lacking conviction and commitment, though they acknowledged that even his inferior films had interesting elements. Critics seemed confounded by the lack of a common, unifying theme. In rebuttal, Mr. Huston called his film making eclectic, explaining, ''I don't seek to interpret reality by placing my stamp on it. I never try to duplicate myself. One must avoid personal cliches.'' In the 1960's, his reputation was clouded by a number of movies that critics denounced as muddled and at times sloppy claptrap, and many reviewers began to underrate even his better efforts.

But in the 1970's and 80's, despite emphysema and heart disease, he filmed such works as ''Fat City'' (1972), about the gritty world of small-time boxers; ''The Man Who Would Be King'' (1975), based on a Rudyard Kipling story about two British sergeants who seek, find and lose a great treasure in a remote land; ''Wise Blood,'' an exuberant, haunting 1979 movie about religious guilt and obsession; ''Under the Volcano,'' a drama of a doomed alcoholic (with a tour de force performance by Albert Finney), and ''Prizzi's Honor,'' a black comedy about the Mafia in Brooklyn and lovers who turn out to be killers for hire. The New York Film Critics Circle voted ''Prizzi's Honor'' the best movie of 1985. Concern Over New Directors Mr.

Huston voiced concern that the large new generation of directors emerging from film schools was ''in terrible danger of cannibalism.'' Elaborating, he said, ''If you make movies about movies and about characters instead of people, the echoes get thinner and thinner until they're reduced to mechanical sounds.'' As his 80th birthday approached, he was honored with a series of career-achievement awards from many leading organizations, including the American Film Institute, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the juries at the Cannes and Venice film festivals. In 1985, Vincent Canby, the film critic of The New York Times, lauded Mr. Huston for ''the amazing endurance of his first-rate cinematic intelligence, the variety of his films and the consistency with which he has recouped his fortunes with a good film after turning out some bad ones.'' ''It may now be time to call him a master,'' Mr. Canby said. A 6-foot-2, lanky man with a craggy, kindly face, Mr. Huston said he learned to act by studying his father's performances.

In a score of roles, the son had a benign self-assurance, playing the tough but compassionate title character in ''The Cardinal'' (1963), Noah and the voice of God in his own ''Bible'' (1966), the venal father of Faye Dunaway in ''Chinatown'' (1974) and a charismatic tycoon in ''Winter Kills'' (1979). Vaudeville and Race Tracks John Huston was born on Aug. 5, 1906, in Nevada, Mo., the only child of Walter Huston and the former Reah Gore, a journalist. After their divorce, when he was 6, he often traveled with each separately - on vaudeville tours with his father and to race tracks with his mother, who worked as a sports reporter. He gave differing accounts of his childhood, perhaps because the years were unhappy. He was sickly and, at 12, was treated for an enlarged heart and a kidney ailment. However, he soon recovered and learned to box at Lincoln Heights High School in Los Angeles.

At 15, he dropped out of school to be a boxer, becoming a top-ranking amateur lightweight in California, with a broken nose to show for it. Though his formal education had ended, the young Mr. Huston continued to read voraciously. He took painting lessons in Los Angeles and in New York, where, at 19, he acted in several Off-Broadway plays. Mr. Huston then spent two years in Mexico, where an Army officer gave him riding lessons. When he could no longer pay for them, the officer gave him an honorary commission in the Mexican cavalry so he could get the lessons free. Back in New York, he wrote a short story for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury and did reporting for The Daily Graphic, where his mother also worked. His articles sometimes contained glaring factual errors, and he was soon dismissed.

Wrote for Early Talkies His father then helped him get writing contracts for early talkies in Hollywood, and his first script credits were for two films starring the elder Huston - ''A House Divided'' (1931) and ''Law and Order'' (1932) - and for ''Murders in the Rue Morgue'' (1932). The writer quickly gained a Hollywood reputation as a lusty, hard-drinking libertine. In an autobiography, ''An Open Book'' (1980), he recalled his life at the time as a ''series of misadventures and disappointments,'' culminating in a 1933 accident in which a car he was driving struck and killed a young woman. A coroner's jury absolved him of blame, but, traumatized, he left Hollywood and spent almost a year living a drifter's life in London and Paris. Back home, he got occasional writing, editing and acting jobs in New York and Chicago. In late 1937 at 31, nearly five years after the auto accident, he returned to Hollywood to become a serious writer at Warner Brothers, determined to direct his scripts.

Over the next four years, he co-wrote the scripts for such hits as ''Jezebel,'' ''The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse,'' ''Juarez,'' ''Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet,'' ''High Sierra'' and ''Sergeant York.'' Mr. Huston won a director's contract in 1941 and filmed ''The Maltese Falcon,'' starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. The movie, made in eight weeks for $300,000, was an immediate artistic and commercial success that continues to win new fans four decades later. In 1942, he directed two more hits, ''In This Our Life,'' starring Bette Davis, and ''Across the Pacific,'' another Humphrey Bogart thriller. He then joined the Army Signal Corps as a captain.

Three Wartime Films While in uniform, he directed and produced three films that critics rank among the finest made about World War II: ''Report from the Aleutians'' (1943), about bored soldiers preparing for combat; ''The Battle of San Pietro'' (1944), a searing (and censored) story of an American intelligence failure that resulted in the deaths of many soldiers, and ''Let There Be Light'' (1945). The last, about psychologically damaged combat veterans, was suppressed for 35 years for being too antiwar. It had its first public showing in 1981 and won critical approval. Mr. Huston rose to the rank of major and received the Legion of Merit for courageous work under battle conditions. After the war, Huston movies included ''Key Largo'' (1948), for which Claire Trevor won a supporting-actress Oscar; ''Beat the Devil'' (1953), a wildly roguish comedy classic; ''Heaven Knows, Mr.

Allison,'' a 1957 war story; ''The Misfits'' (1961), an introspective melodrama that was the last film made by Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable; ''Freud'' (1963); ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1964); ''The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean'' (1972) and ''Annie'' (1982), a lavish, rambling production of the Broadway musical. In making movies, Mr. Huston favored sequential shooting on location. He shot economically, eschewing the many protective shots favored by timid directors, and edited cerebrally so that financial backers would have trouble trying to cut scenes. He made brilliantly evocative use of color, particularly in ''Moulin Rouge'' (1953) and ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'' (1967), closely supervising all stages of production and invariably working under budget. He shot a picture intensely six days a week and, on Sundays, played equally intense poker with the cast and crew. He was a thoughtful, patient craftsman who drew the best work from performers And crews.

''When I cast a picture,'' he said, ''I do most of my directing in finding the right person. It's a practice of mine to get as much out of the actor as I can, rather than to impose myself upon his performance.'' He said he never tried to demolish an actor's ego. Mr. Huston's consideration for performers was recounted by Lillian Ross in a 1952 series of New Yorker articles that detailed his making of the Civil War movie ''The Red Badge of Courage.'' In his final instruction to actors before a downhill marching scene, he ordered: ''If anybody slips, he must be sure to protect the men in front from his bayonet.'' Disturbed by Blacklisting Politically, Mr. Huston called himself a Jeffersonian Democrat. In the postwar years, he was increasingly disturbed by the Government's frantic search for Communists and by the industry blacklisting that destroyed many careers. Citing ''moral rot'' at home, he moved to Galway, Ireland, in 1952 and made that his home until 1975, when he moved to Las Caletas, a remote hideaway on the west coast of Mexico.

There, when not making movies, he spent his time reading, painting, snorkeling, caring for animals, and whale-spotting with ''my back to the jungle and my face to the sea.'' A reporter who interviewed him there in 1985 wrote that, despite serious illnesses, he was ''still a vigorous, unvanquished man.'' Looking back, he said he missed the major studio era when people savored making movies, not just money. Mr. Huston was married five times; his wives included the actress Evelyn Keyes and Enrica Soma, a ballet dancer. He was divorced from all his wives except Miss Soma, who was killed in an auto crash in 1969 after a 10-year marital separation. Speaking of his wives last month, Mr. Huston told an interviewer, ''They were a mixed bag: a schoolgirl, a gentlewoman, a motion picture actress, a ballerina and a crocodile.'' Surviving are three natural children, Tony, Anjelica and Danny; two adopted children, Pablo and Allegra, and three grandchildren. A private funeral service for family members will be held in Los Angeles. A memorial service is to be arranged.

10 Essential John Huston Films You Need To Watch « Taste of Cinema - Movie Reviews and Classic Movie Lists 12 July 2014 | Features , Film Lists | by Emilio Santoni One of Hollywood’s true legendary directors, screenwriters and actors, John Huston is part of Hollywood royalty. He was the son of Walter Huston, a renowned stage and screen actor, and the father of actress Anjelica Huston. They are the only family that can make the claim of having won Academy Awards in three separate generations as Walter received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son John Huston, who himself won Best Director and Best Screenplay for the same film, whilst Anjelica Huston received the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor, once again directed by John Huston, her father. Possibly best described as the Ernest Hemingway of directors, John Huston was a macho, grander than life type of man, who had studied painting, been an amateur boxer, reporter and author before he turned his attention to the film business, directing feature films and some documentaries as well as screenwriting and acting.

Like Hemingway, he also enjoyed to hunt and when on location in Uganda and the Congo to film The African Queen, he got distracted from shooting his movie as he became obsessed with hunting elephants, a story which later served as the basis for Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter, Black Heart. Over the course of his career John Huston directed more than 35 feature films, wrote about as many screenplays, racked up 54 acting credits and found himself nominated for no less than 15 Academy Awards. It should also be noted that he started his directorial career by directing a true masterpiece when he made The Maltese Falcon in 1941. Without a doubt one of Hollywood’s greatest American directors. 10. The Misfits (1961) The Misfits is a remarkable film for various reasons. First of all it was obviously directed by one of Hollywood’s legendary old school directors, John Huston. It was also the last film for two of Hollywood;s legendary stars, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, as well as one of the last films for third one, Montgomery Clift, all of whom gave outstanding performances.

On top of that it’s also the only original screenplay ever written by Arthur Miller whose marriage to Monroe was breaking down during the shooting of the film. The result is a uniquely dark drama about a divorced woman spending time in the Nevada desert with some cowboys, the disappearance of the old west and mortality itself. The film revolves around Gay Langland (Clark Gable), an aging cowboy and his friends Guido (Eli Wallach) and Perce (Montgomery Clift), a rodeo rider. They meet young ex-stripper and recently divorced Roslyn Taber (Marilyn Monroe), who has come to the country to forget about her woes, and her friend Isabelle (Thelma Ritter) who is accompanying her. They invite the women over to Gay’s house, which is only half finished as construction halted after his wife died during childbirth. Soon after, Roslyn moves in with Gay but both Guido and Perce also have eyes for Roslyn and matters complicate even further when Roslyn finds out that the three men are planning to sell some mustangs only to be processed into dog food.

For such a high profile film with so much star power, The Misfits, with its bleak and depressing subject matter, did not do well at the box-office at the time of release even though Huston was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Director’s Guild of America. Nowadays however, it’s considered a classic and well worth seeking out for fans of the director or any of its stars. 9. The Dead (1987) Based on the same name story from James Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners, The Dead turned out to be John Huston’s final film and a fitting end to the director’s lengthy and distinguished career. The film is also noteworthy for dealing with warmer and more intimate subject matter than most of Huston’s previous work, which probably has a lot to do with the fact the director knew his days were numbered even going as far as predicting himself that The Dead would be his last movie. The story, which is set at a Christmas party held by two elderly sisters in 1904 Dublin, focuses on their cousin Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) and his wife Gretta (Anjelica Huston).

During the course of the night, Gabriel finds out about a previous dead lover of Gretta and how he died out of love for her. As a result Gabriel ends up pondering about mortality and one’s ultimately lonely journey through life. John Huston directed the movie from a wheelchair and hooked up to oxygen tanks at the age of 80. The film was released posthumously as it came out three months after Huston’s death. A small, beautiful and thoughtful film on one’s mortality and loved ones, starring his daughter and co-written by his son, the film was a truly fitting end to his legendary career. The Dead won various international awards and picked up two Oscar nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Adapted Screenplay. A small, beautiful and intimate film from a director whose career had largely consisted of far more stout-hearted fare. 8. The Night of the Iguana (1964) Based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana is yet another highly successful adaptation to the screen of the famous playwright’s work. The film tells the story of an alcoholic defrocked clergyman, Reverend Shannon (Richard Burton), who now works as a tour guide in Mexico.

As he’s taking a group of Baptist school teachers on one of these tours he gets accused of trying to seduce the young niece of one of the teachers (Sue Lyon). In an attempt to stop the women from calling his superiors, he takes the tour to a cheap hotel on the coast owned by a widow (Ava Gardner), mistakenly thinking they have no phone there. During their stay sexual tension between Shannon, the niece, the widow and another female guest (Deborah Kerr) plays out in the hot sweltering climate. The film won an Oscar for Best Costume Design and received three more nominations for Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. It was also renowned for the tensions on set as the cast was stuck on location in a small Mexican village for quite some time and the fact that Burton brought his soon to be second wife Elizabeth Taylor along to the shoot, whilst still being married to his first wife, Sybel Burton. 7. The Man Who Would Be King (1975) The Man Who Would Be King is a largely forgotten adventure movie, adapted from a short story of the same name by Rudyard Kipling.

Huston had been planning to make the movie since the mid fifties, originally envisioning Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart in the leads. Throughout the years other actor combinations were considered, amongst them Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole and even Robert Redford and Paul Newman, but the project never materialised until the seventies when Sean Connery and Michael Caine were finally signed to take on the lead roles. The story is bookended by two scenes of Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer) working in his newspaper office in 1885 as he is visited by a ragged vagabond who turns out to be his old acquaintance Peachy Carnahan (Michael Caine). Peachy tells him the story of how he and his companion Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery), both con men, planned to obtain great riches from Afghanistan after their service for the British Empire in India had left them empty-handed. The two travel to Afghanistan and swindle the locals as Dravot pretends to be the incarnation of Alexander the Great and is consequently seen as a god.

This scam initially brings them great fortunes but as time passes, power goes to Dravot’s head and he starts to believe he’s actually divine. Both Michael Caine and Sean Connery turned out to be perfected as the arrogant, snobbish and slightly strange British imperialists and complemented each other perfectly. The film was a throwback to the adventures of yesteryear and consequently a bit of an oddity at a time when Hollywood was breaking with much of its past. An epic and often hilarious and thrilling adventure, The Man Who Would Be King ended up being nominated for four Oscars (Best Adapted Screenplay, Editing, Art Direction and Costumes) and is a must-see film for lovers of grand old school adventure. 6. The Asphalt Jungle (1950) Based on the novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett, The Asphalt Jungle is a classic heist flick, which was groundbreaking in a number of ways. First of all it was one of the first movies to present its “crime does not pay” story from the perspective of the criminals. Secondly, it starred a little known starlet at the time by the name of Marilyn Monroe in a minor part, just before she would hit the big time.

Master criminal Erwin “Doc” Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) has just been released from prison after a seven year stretch and immediately gets involved in a planned jewellery heist by crooked lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) . Doc assembles a team, which includes a hooligan named Dix (Sterling Hayden), a driver called Gus(James Whitmore) and professional safecracker Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso). The job is meticulously planned and executed but on their way out Louis get shot in the belly when Dix slugs a security guard whose gun drops and goes off accidentally. From there on in, the team’s perfect plan slowly starts to unravel as the police close in and the men start double-crossing each other. A classic film noir with a fantastic heist sequence, which takes up about 11 minutes of screen time, The Asphalt Jungle is a suspenseful and gritty caper.

Beautifully shot in moody black and white and featuring a great cast, the film managed to pick up four Academy Award nominations (Best Director, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography) as well as winning Huston Best Director at the National Board of Review and Sam Jaffe Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. The Dead Movie Review & Film Summary (1987) | Roger Ebert Tweet John Huston was dying when he directed "The Dead." Tethered to an oxygen tank, hunched in a wheelchair, weak with emphysema and heart disease, he was a perfectionist attentive to the slightest nuance of the filming. James Joyce's story, for that matter is all nuance until the final pages. It leads by subtle signs to a great outpouring of grief and love, but until then, as Huston observed, "The biggest piece of action is trying to pass the port." He began shooting in January 1987, finished in April, and at the end of August, he died. He was 81.

Advertisement All of this I have from The Hustons, by Lawrence Grobel, a biography that charts a scattered and troubled family, yet one that gathered Oscars in three generations, for Walter, John and Anjelica. John's daughter won hers for a supporting role in his previous film, " Prizzi's Honor " (1985), and now she was playing the crucial role in "The Dead." John's son Tony, then 37, was nominated for his screenplay for "The Dead," and served as his father's assistant, aware of the secret being kept from the world, which was how ill John really was. Joyce's "The Dead" is one of the greatest short stories in the language, but would seem unfilmable. Its action takes place in Dublin in 1904 at a holiday party given by two elderly sisters and their niece, who have spent their lives performing or teaching music. The guests arrive, we observe them as they observe one another and listen to talk that means more than it says.

At the end of the long evening, Gabriel Conroy ( Donal McCann ), nephew of the Misses Morkan, leaves with his wife, Gretta ( Anjelica Huston ), to go back to the hotel where they will spend the night before going home to a far suburb in the morning. All was prologue to their cab ride and an hour or so in the hotel. She tells him a story he has never heard, about a boy who was sweet on her when he was 17, a boy named Michael Furey, who died. He was a sickly boy, who stood in the rain on the night before she was to leave Galway and go to a convent school. "I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain," she remembers. "But he said he did not want to live." When she was only a week in the convent school, he died. "What was it he died of so young?" asks Gabriel.

"Consumption, was it?" She replies, "I think he died from me." In his final pages, Joyce enters the mind of Gabriel, who thinks about the dead boy, about his wife's first great love, about how he has never felt a love like that, about those who have died, and about how all the rest of us will die as well -- die, with our loves and lusts, our hopes and regrets, our plans and secrets, all dead. Advertisement Read with me James Joyce's last paragraph: A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.

It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. There is, as John Huston realized, no way to translate this epiphany into the action of a movie script. It exists resolutely as thoughts expressed in words. He and Tony in their screenplay did what they had to do, and made it an interior monologue, spoken by the actor Donal McCann, as his wife, having wept, now sleeps on their bed. We note that he thinks of "his" journey, although she will accompany him. He thinks of himself as alone. When I first saw "The Dead," I thought it brave and deeply felt but "an impossible film," and I wrote: "There is no way in the world any filmmaker can reproduce the thoughts inside Gabriel's head." But of course there was. Huston could do the same thing Joyce did, and simply tell us what Gabriel was thinking. Advertisement The film follows the story with almost complete fidelity.

A few details are transposed; Gabriel's story about his grandfather's horse is moved forward in the story, and given to Freddy Malins ( Donal Donnelly ), who arrives drunk but, as Gabriel reassures Mrs. Malins, "nearly all right." Line for line and scene for scene, the movie faithfully reflects the book, even to such details as two young men slipping into the next room for a drink during a piano recital and then returning at its close to applaud loudly. The turning point comes as everyone is leaving. Gabriel has already descended the stairs when the famous tenor Bartell D'Arcy ( Frank Patterson ) is finally prevailed upon to sing. Gabriel looks up and sees a figure paused listening on the stair, and eventually realizes it is his wife: "There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something," and he thinks, "if he were a painter, he would paint her in that attitude." John Huston is a painter, and does. The song is the same one Michael Furey used to sing, and awakens Gretta's whole sad train of memory.

There is one line in the story that neither Huston nor anyone else could get into a film, because it is not the thought of Gabriel, but of Joyce. He tells us that as Gabriel regards his sleeping wife in the hotel, "a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul." That is the phrase upon which the whole story wheels. He has been married for years and thinks he knows her, but suddenly he sees Gretta not in terms of wife, lover or their history together, but as another human being, one who will also be alone on her journey westward. Advertisement "The Dead" ends in sadness, but it is one of the great romantic films, fearless in its regard for regret and tenderness. John Huston, who lived for years in Ireland and raised Anjelica there until she was 16, had an instinctive sympathy for the kindness with which the guests at the Misses Morkan's party accepted one another's lives and failings. They have all fallen short of their hopes, and know it. Freddy Malins is a drunk, but as we see him seated beside his mother, we suspect that she has forced him to pursue defeat. Mr.

Brown ( Dan O'Herlihy ) is a drunk in the classic mold, because of uncomplicated alcoholism. Molly Ivors (Maria McDermottroe), who supports the Republican cause, hurries off early to a meeting, still convinced their problems have political solutions. Aunt Julia ( Cathleen Delany ), who confesses she had a decent voice years ago, is persuaded to sing, and does so, not very well. Freddy lurches forward to blurt out praise that is so effusive, it embarrasses her in front of the party, but everyone understands that Julia's voice has failed, and that Freddy means well. Gabriel is the witness to it all. An early shot shows the back of his head, regarding everyone in the room. Later he will see his wife, finally, as the person she really is and always has been. And he will see himself, with his ambitions as a journalist, the bright light of his family, the pride of his aunts, as a paltry fellow resting on unworthy accomplishments. Did these thoughts go through John Huston's mind as he chose his last film and directed it? How could they not?

And if all those sad things were true, then he could at least communicate them with grace and poetry, in a film as quiet and forgiving as the falling snow. Popular Blog Posts John Huston's The Dead - Finale - YouTube John Huston's The Dead - Finale Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Oct 29, 2009 "Upon all the living and the dead"... The final scene of John Huston's "The Dead", adapted from James Joyce's unequaled masterpiece. Simply one of the best pieces of writing of all times. Category

Question: What was John Huston's last movie?
Answer: The Dead