A Walk with Love and Death

Walk with Life and Death, A (1969)

** (out of 4)

When people discuss the great or awful films in the career of John Huston, this effort here rarely gets mentioned and that's probably because even the most die-hard Huston fan either hasn't sat through it or simply can't make it through. Apparently Huston selected to do this as something small and personal and one does have to respect him for trying a poetic movie like this but in the end the thing just didn't work for me. A man (Assaf Dayan) "hears" the "calls" of the sea and decides to leave Paris and walk to it. Along the way he encounters various forms of violence and a blooming relationship with a young woman (Anjelica Huston) who soon joins him on his journey. This film wasn't popular when it was first released and it seems very few people have bothered checking it out since then even though we've got a legendary director and his famous daughter in her first role. From the reviews I've read there appear to be a few fans of the film and it's poetic vision but for me the thing was a pretty big misfire. One of the biggest problems is Anjelica who is simply way out of her range in this type of part. This would have been a challenging role for anyone let alone someone making their first acting appearance. At times she seems all over the place while at other times she seems as if she doesn't know where to turn. Dayan doesn't fair much better but at least he seems at ease going through everything on this journey. The film moves at a rather slow pace, which I didn't really mind as Huston was trying to build some atmosphere out of it. The dialogue, cinematography and even the music score are all used to be dream-like but it just never really came together for me. This isn't an awful movie or an embarrassing one but it just felt too empty for me.

An obscure movie from the master John Huston, what's hell it happens I really don't know, but for me a forgotten gem, set place during the Hundred Years War between England and France, a young French man Heron of Fois (Assaf Dayan) distressed by such killing and madness he decides leave Paris and start a journey towards to the sea, wondering leaves the country at overseas, along the way he meets several people, peasants, soldiers and a beauty lady Claudia (Anjelica Huston) whose he wrote a poetry, in exchange she gave him her silk scarf for good luck, late he meets a bunch of men back from a failed journey to Jerusalem, this small group are gathering newcomers to try again, the Pilgrim's leader asking him about everything, including women, if he wants follow them he needs forget all sins and treat the women as Devil's creatures, very soon he realizes that they are crazy and left them for good, when he finally reach near of shore, someone talk about an uprising of the peasants against Noblemen, then he returns to helps Lady Claudia which the castle was raided, a rarest movie to be found, where John Huston implies a sort of pureness in a world collapsed by an endless wars, a man looking for peace and freedom, an anti-war picture, shrewdly done by the prolific director, a must to see!!!

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First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8

Brilliant evocation of youth in a time of social disruption. Angelica Huston's best work. Fascinating direction by John Huston. Based on an excellent novel. Well realized. Good depiction of medieval society. All in all, well worth seeing.

Filmmaking legend John Huston's visually sumptuous, rousingly full-blooded, hugely undervalued 'A Walk With Love and Death (1968) is, for me, one of the more unfairly neglected works of 60s agitprop cinema. This rather cruel, emotionally visceral, oppressively dark tale of burgeoning love set against the squalling, brutalist backdrop of 14th century France, with its increasingly malign, irreligious mania and ceaseless warmongering has retained much of its power to draw you into this especially grim and turbulent epoch.

Unlike so many bloodless, pretty-plastic cinema couples I had a great sympathy for the desperate travails of naive, haughty, yet wholly innocent Claudia of St. Jean (Angelica Huston) and her earnest young paramour Heron of Foix (Assi Dayan), and I can readily imagine Terry Gilliam, Michael Winterbottom, Andrea Arnold, and Gaspar Noe might also appreciate Huston's doomily atmospheric, frequently distressing period masterpiece. A bold, triumphant expression of refined cinematic art made ever more divine by maestro Georges Delerue's sublime score! While 'A Walk With Love and Death' is certainly not without its missteps, it is quite obvious that Huston's majestic, witheringly unsentimental film has not only endured, the galvanizing themes of an impoverished, ruthlessly exploited minority angrily rising up against their mercenary oppressors is disturbingly relevant!

Never dull, always alive with authentic and rich scenes; unpredictable and interesting. The wooden acting of the leads is appropriate for two young people who are fresh out into the world. They are surrounded by an extravagant variety of characters of the late Middle Ages, all well portrayed and decently acted. The scenery is picturesque, the music is lilting and fair, and the plot veers between barbarisms and nobility. It has been beautifully filmed and the direction keeps the plot moving briskly. There is no fat, no wasted scenes, no stupidity. The story is believable and moving, a story of sensitive youths trying to survive in a world suddenly gone mad. The creatures who seek such chaos are trying to turn the world upside down; they seek their own order through chaos. They seek to rearrange the world into their own hideous image. This is a story of how civilized people deal with the carnage of progress.