Let There Be Light

I saw this film years ago and couldn't remember what it was called so I'm glad to find it on the net at last. Some of the comments posted on this site critically analyse this amazing film applying 21st century wisdom to it and it's production. It is what it is. Most of these boys (the patients) had hardly seen a box-brownie let alone a director and film camera. Their responses are gut wrenching, awkward and the soldiers are - what would now seem - abruptly dealt with. Yet the psychiatrists show these returning soldiers the way forward. Slowly the patients gain enough mental footholds to rejoin post-war society. Just watching it will make you a better person.

In honor of Memorial Day which was yesterday, I watched the first two of John Huston's World War II documentaries, Report from the Aleutians and San Pietro. Now I've just viewed a restored version of Let There Be Light, which explored the psychological effects of war veterans that survived those battles being treated in a hospital, on the National Film Preservation Foundation site on recommendation of Leonard Maltin on his. One couldn't walk, one couldn't talk, and then there was an African-American one whose only solace came when he got something delivered to him from his girlfriend back home. Whether his skin color had something to do with his social reticence, I don't know but since the military was still segregated then, it couldn't have helped. Though it should also be noted that the place he stayed at was integrated. John's father Walter Huston provided wise narration as written by his son and Dimitri Tiomkin provided a score that didn't dominate too much of the proceedings. This film, made for the Army, might have been too realistic for them which resulted in it being kept from the public until 1980, but today it may have been a little easy solution-wise since there's no one depicted as not having been cured by the end though the Hustons make sure you know that it does take time for that. Anyway, Let There Be Light is essential viewing for anyone curious about what some veterans who survive go through in trying to go back to a normal life. They certainly deserve our utmost thanks for even braving it out in the first place!

Let There Be Light (1946)

*** (out of 4)

John Huston's third and final documentary for the U.S. Army was another controversial one, which was originally banned for over thirty years as it didn't get shown to the public until 1980. It's easy to see why the film was banned because had people watched this at the end of WW2 it's doubtful very many would want to enlist. The film centers on a group of men who are psychologically scared from their time in the war. One man can't talk, one can't walk and various other psychological problems occur. A psychiatrist is used to try and cure the men as they go through a program at the Mason General Hospital in Long Island. Walter Huston does a nice job narrating the story but for the most part the patients and the doctor are the ones talking. The documentary is a very interesting one because it gives us a view of American soldiers coming back from WW2. On that ground alone this film is worth checking out but Huston does his typical nice work and really digs in deep into the material. I'm not sure how well the practice used here would hold up today but the theories being discussed are interesting to hear about. This early look at "battle shock" is certainly a nice history lesson that fans of the director will want to check out.

I saw this film for the first time and was not surprised to learn afterwords that it was suppressed for over 30 years after being completed. I understand that the Army commissioned John Huston to make it. I have no idea what the Army authorities expected the result to be but what the got was something truly extraordinary. Nevertheless, the idea of mentally-disturbed veterans being treated by psychiatrists must have been considered a pretty sensitive subject during the immediate post-WW-II period.

Although the term "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" did not exist in the 1940s, the syndrome certainly did. In World War I it was referred to as "Shell Shock" and in World War II it was called "Battle Fatigue" or "Combat Fatigue". Put another way, the subject of this film is the men whom General George Patton would have treated by slapping. Fortunately, however, the treatment received by the soldiers depicted in this film is psychotherapy combined with hypnosis and sodium pentothal. The results are truly remarkable.

I can empathize with this film because I know that my own father returned from WW-II suffering from what was later called "PTSD". Although his symptoms were not as extreme as the soldiers depicted in this film, I know that he was shipped home before the end of the war because the doctors had declared him no longer fit for combat. I know that, after witnessing hundreds of men killed in battle, he went into shock after seeing a woman hit by a car while en route home, and came to in the hospital three days later. I know that, soon after returning home, he left town because he felt guilty about having survived the war, and he couldn't bear to see the wives, sisters and parents of people that he knew wouldn't be coming back. I know that, despite having flown numerous combat missions during the war, he couldn't bring himself to fly in an airplane for years afterwords.

Like the soldiers depicted in the film, my father eventually managed to get on with his life in a productive manner. However, I don't think he ever really did entirely get over what he experienced during the war. I don't imagine the soldiers in the film did, either.

This must be one of the most shocking movies I have ever seen. Well actually it's more like a documentary than a movie. It shows American soldiers in a hospital, after coming home from World War II. Some of them can't speak, some can but it's impossible to hear what they're saying, others can't walk. Some shiver uncontrollably, some cry. We also see the hypnotist curing patients, and like magic they're able to walk again, or talk or whatever their problem was. This film was banned for 35 years because the American government thought it was unsuitable for the American people (and I understand why, this is the most disturbing thing I've seen since the sliced eye in Un Chien Andalou), and it was shown for the first time at the Cannes festival in '81.