Although the standard of Huston's output in a 46 year directorial career was distinctly varied,he will be long remembered for several genuine classics.Citizen Kane wasn't the only outstanding debut of 1941;Huston's The Maltese Falcon is a tremendously assured film noir masterpiece,and as with Welles, still widely considered his best film.He teamed again with Bogart,an off-screen drinking partner,most notably in the terrific Western adventure The Treasure of the Sierra Madre(also starring his father Walter,1948),and the ever-popular The African Queen(1951).In between came the taut,punchy heist thriller The Asphalt Jungle(1950),with a young Marilyn Monroe.After a lengthy period of relatively mediocre work,Huston made a memorable appearance as Faye Dunaway's incestuous father in Roman Polanski's Chinatown(1974),before finding form again the following year with the hugely entertaining Kipling adventure,The Man who Would be King(surprisingly neglected despite starring Michael Caine and Sean Connery!).Prizzi's Honour(1985),with his daughter Anjelica opposite Jack Nicholson,was an excellent,humorously eccentric addition to the gangster genre.Huston's final film The Dead(again starring Angelica)is a fitting send-off.Based on a vignette from Joyce's Dubliners,centring on a New Year dinner party in 1905,it is consummately refined and exquisite,with a tenderness belying his earlier hard-drinking,Game-hunting tough image.One for curling by the winter fireside with the snowflakes softly drifting.
