December 19 – January 11

Long before striding in front of the camera to show Jack Nicholson’s character in Chinatown what men at the right place and time are capable of, John Huston established himself as one of the 20th century’s most accomplished film artists. With over a decade of writing credits by the time he assumed the director’s chair, he would later add producing and acting to his arsenal, racking up 15 Oscar nominations that spanned five decades and four categories. (Father Walter and daughter Anjelica both earned statuettes under his baton, making for one of the medium’s most formidable and collaborative dynasties.) He has been called “cinema’s Ernest Hemingway… never afraid to tackle tough issues head on,” and though he was by no means a “message man” like Stanley Kramer, a glance at his filmography reveals incisive treatments of racism, sexual identity, religion, alcoholism, psychoanalysis, and war. A renaissance man unbound to genre, Huston was also a painterly stylist attuned to the look of each scene. From his iconic debut, The Maltese Falcon, to his magisterial final work, The Dead, his films continuously circle back to questions of faith and doubt, concealment and revelation, failure and victory, empathy and the limits of consciousness. And though one of Huston’s great talents was for finding robust, flexible cinematic vocabularies for literary texts, his films were consistently imbued with a wise, reflective, open-minded voice entirely his own.

Special holiday pricing: $10 General Public / $7 Student, Senior & Member. Plus, see five or more films for just $5 each with our even more discounted Discount Package!

From Sam Spade to Annie, read up on John Huston's rogue-loving films with Film Comment magazine's 88-page digital anthology, just $2.99.

John Huston by Lillian Ross, seven pieces from the New Yorker collected for the first time, will be on sale exclusively at our theaters during the retro for just $10.