Following two other documentaries (both approved and financed by the US government) that were shot during the second World War (Winning Your Wings and Across the Pacific), director John Huston chose to make a film titled Let There Be Light (an intentionally hopeful title, with or without a religious subtext) about something simple but fundamental to any war experience: what comes next?
He put his focus on soldiers who were mentally and emotionally scarred by the experience (no physical scars, far as we can tell), and who had what was called "Shell-Shock" and is now more commonly referred as PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These men were in bad shape, as Huston shows us: they had the shakes, stuttering, some barely able to walk, mental blocks, memory lapses, you name it they had it. Most shameful though was that the US government, who originally financed the film, didn't like what they saw and suppressed the film from being officially screened for thirty years.
Now, however, you watch the film on DVD, or, currently for free on Amazon prime members ($2.00 to rent for non-members). The film's importance isn't just in the blanket statement of the subject matter – soldiers traumatized who need (and deserve) to get better to return to their families and start being the 'Greatest Generation' and all that jazz – but that Huston treats all of these soldiers with total dignity and humanity. This comes from just showing how they are, mostly in interviews with doctors and in their initial stages of 'therapy'. We see a soldier who breaks out crying constantly. Another is stuttering, and eventually gets hypnosis therapy to break this. Another gets a kind of medical serum injected to help him slowly but surely walk. All of them, to one degree or another, have been affected by battle and things most of us can't even imagine.
Huston sets up usually two cameras, with good (if, of course, artificial) lighting, and I believed every word that was said. If anything is exactly "staged" for the cameras it's a baseball game late in the film, where we see the subjects back on their feet and at least past the first stages of their shell-shock and having a degree of fun. But in general, Huston wants this to be an experience for the viewer into these (ex)-soldiers faces, the expressions in their eyes, and how they can possibly adjust after they return home. Some feel shame, others restlessness, and in big group discussions multiple voices are heard about what is possible for them later on.
The film is propaganda, but it's of an entirely different variety of the usual "Woo-Hoo War-Let's-Get-Them-Japs' sort of thing (though that too had its own artistic merits, like John Ford's war films, but I digress). What probably made the government anxious, and what also drew similar controversy to William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives the same year this was released, was the reality that not all was bright and rosy, that with any battle of the magnitude like WW2 carried (and so much really) that people might be screwed up in the head. There's a dignity that Huston has for these people, and it shows, and the honesty that comes through is heart-rending.
Another interesting note, and, frankly, what made me watch the film in the first place (aside from being a big Huston fan – his father, Walter Huston, I should note, adds some solid narration to the film), is that it was reportedly one of the big inspirations for Paul Thomas Anderson's new film The Master. After seeing that film, and this one, I can say that there are scenes, shots, and lines from Let There Be Light directly lifted for The Master. Does this detract? Not at all, on the contrary it's wonderful that Anderson gives such a film like this the chance to get rediscovered, but also that it reveals such a film as Let There Be Light had enough dramatic 'umph' as to lend The Master, about a once Navy soldier messed up from the war and shakily returning to American life, was the genuine article.
It's not cut and dry viewing, but this documentary, which runs just shy of an hour, is essential viewing, for WW2 documentary fans, for Huston fans, for just Americans in general (especially at a time when soldiers are coming back, and will still come back, from current over-seas battles).
He put his focus on soldiers who were mentally and emotionally scarred by the experience (no physical scars, far as we can tell), and who had what was called "Shell-Shock" and is now more commonly referred as PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These men were in bad shape, as Huston shows us: they had the shakes, stuttering, some barely able to walk, mental blocks, memory lapses, you name it they had it. Most shameful though was that the US government, who originally financed the film, didn't like what they saw and suppressed the film from being officially screened for thirty years.
Now, however, you watch the film on DVD, or, currently for free on Amazon prime members ($2.00 to rent for non-members). The film's importance isn't just in the blanket statement of the subject matter – soldiers traumatized who need (and deserve) to get better to return to their families and start being the 'Greatest Generation' and all that jazz – but that Huston treats all of these soldiers with total dignity and humanity. This comes from just showing how they are, mostly in interviews with doctors and in their initial stages of 'therapy'. We see a soldier who breaks out crying constantly. Another is stuttering, and eventually gets hypnosis therapy to break this. Another gets a kind of medical serum injected to help him slowly but surely walk. All of them, to one degree or another, have been affected by battle and things most of us can't even imagine.
Huston sets up usually two cameras, with good (if, of course, artificial) lighting, and I believed every word that was said. If anything is exactly "staged" for the cameras it's a baseball game late in the film, where we see the subjects back on their feet and at least past the first stages of their shell-shock and having a degree of fun. But in general, Huston wants this to be an experience for the viewer into these (ex)-soldiers faces, the expressions in their eyes, and how they can possibly adjust after they return home. Some feel shame, others restlessness, and in big group discussions multiple voices are heard about what is possible for them later on.
The film is propaganda, but it's of an entirely different variety of the usual "Woo-Hoo War-Let's-Get-Them-Japs' sort of thing (though that too had its own artistic merits, like John Ford's war films, but I digress). What probably made the government anxious, and what also drew similar controversy to William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives the same year this was released, was the reality that not all was bright and rosy, that with any battle of the magnitude like WW2 carried (and so much really) that people might be screwed up in the head. There's a dignity that Huston has for these people, and it shows, and the honesty that comes through is heart-rending.
Another interesting note, and, frankly, what made me watch the film in the first place (aside from being a big Huston fan – his father, Walter Huston, I should note, adds some solid narration to the film), is that it was reportedly one of the big inspirations for Paul Thomas Anderson's new film The Master. After seeing that film, and this one, I can say that there are scenes, shots, and lines from Let There Be Light directly lifted for The Master. Does this detract? Not at all, on the contrary it's wonderful that Anderson gives such a film like this the chance to get rediscovered, but also that it reveals such a film as Let There Be Light had enough dramatic 'umph' as to lend The Master, about a once Navy soldier messed up from the war and shakily returning to American life, was the genuine article.
It's not cut and dry viewing, but this documentary, which runs just shy of an hour, is essential viewing, for WW2 documentary fans, for Huston fans, for just Americans in general (especially at a time when soldiers are coming back, and will still come back, from current over-seas battles).