The first movie [John Huston] directed, The Maltese Falcon, is the best private-eye melodrama ever made. San Pietro, his microcosm of the meaning of war in terms of the fight for one hill town, is generally conceded to be the finest of war documentaries. Treasure of Sierra Madre, which he developed from B. Traven's sardonic adventure-fable about the corrosive effect of gold on character, is the clearest proof in perhaps twenty years that first-rate work can come out of the big commercial studios.

Most of the really good popular art produced anywhere comes from Hollywood, and much of it bears Huston's name. To put it conservatively, there is nobody under fifty at work in movies, here or abroad, who can excel Huston in talent, inventiveness, intransigence, achievement or promise….

Risk, not to say recklessness, are virtual reflexes in him. Action, and the most vivid possible use of the...