A WALK WITH LOVE AND DEATH

US, 1969, 90 minutes, Colour.
Anjelica Huston, Assi Dayan, Anthony Higgins, Michael Gough, John Huston.
Directed by John Huston.

A Walk with Love and Death had very limited release in cinemas. It is a different work by John Huston who, at this time, made such films as Reflection in a Golden Eye and The Kremlin Letter. However, Huston’s career was extraordinary, from a writer, to a director with such films as The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Key Largo in the 1940s, The Red Badge of Courage and The African Queen at the beginning of the 50s. He would be directing until 1987, with The Dead.

This film introduces his daughter Anjelica (whom he directed to a best supporting actress Oscar in 1985 in Prizzi’s Honor). At this stage she was a teenager – and is symbolic of a young girl walking through France in the mediaeval period, looking at the results of war and politics. She is joined in the walk by Assi Dayan (the son of Israeli military leader Moishe Dayan).

The film is more an evocation of a period for audiences to reflect on its meaning rather than a compelling narrative.

1. The quality of audience response to this film? Enjoyment, interest?

2. The importance of the use of colour, the mediaeval atmosphere, locations, mediaeval music?

3. The significance of the title, its irony, indication of themes?

4. The importance of the structure of the film, a journey and a quest, audience response to sharing the journey? The picaresque adventure structure? Audience involvement in the progression of the quest?

5. The details of the mediaeval setting, the care and attention given? The atmosphere of war and death? The ballad structure and commentary of the film?

6. Heron as the everyman character, the young student for the audience to identify with? The young man of his times, his ambitions? His dream, the sea, his goals? How attractive a character? How symbolic a hero?

7. The portrayal of adventures to illustrate the varieties of aspects of the mediaeval world? The detail of each step? Heron’s involvement in each step of the world? What it revealed to him, what he learnt? The meaning of life?

8. How attractive this world? Aspects of beauty and sympathy? How ugly this world? The overtones of the title? The varieties in the visualizing of love and death?

9. Comment on each group of people that he met and their meaning for the film? The individuals and what they stood for, their impact on Heron?

10. The importance of Heron's love for the Heroine? The possibility of love within this world? Joy, disappointment, pessimistic outlook?

11. How could the film be seen as a poem about the mediaeval world and a symbol of the mediaeval world?