John Huston Filmstruck S Director Of The Week Had A Way With Actors

Considering that director John Huston was related to three noted actors (his father, Walter Huston; his daughter, Angelica Huston; and his son Danny Huston) and acted in more than 50 films himself (including Chinatown and The Misfits), it’s no surprise that his films offer consistently strong performances. The streaming channel FilmStruck is currently featuring a selection from Huston’s nearly 50-year career, and we’ve picked five with some particularly fine acting.

The Man Who Would Be King Another John Huston parable about greed, ambition, and the bitter fruits thereof (1975), acted this time by two adventurers (Sean Connery and Michael Caine), late of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, who travel to a remote corner of Afghanistan to set themselves up as kings. Huston had been trying to film the Rudyard Kipling story for 25 years (at one point, it was to star Humphrey Bogart). Finally realized, the film has genuine wit, an appealing sense of grandeur, and very little of the overt “philosophizing” that marred much of Huston’s previous work. His eye for the strong, clear lines of landscape had never been sharper, and Oswald Morris’s photography has a fine sun-saturated brilliance. With Christopher Plummer and Saeed Jaffrey. 129 min. —Dave Kehr