Prize fighter, artist, ex-pat, actor, big-game hunter, Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter and recipient of the 21st AFI Life Achievement award John Huston was one of the most colorful, bankable and brilliant directors in Hollywood history. His five decades-long legacy spans gritty noir (THE MALTESE FALCON) and poetic allegory (THE DEAD). He propelled Humphrey Bogart into stardom with THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, KEY LARGO and THE AFRICAN QUEEN. He acted, most famously as the demented tycoon Noah Cross in CHINATOWN. Friends with Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Miller, his screenwriting was never less than consummately literate, whether adapting literature like Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King or pulp fiction like W.R. Burnett's Asphalt Jungle. He is the only person to direct both his father and his daughter in Oscar-winning roles.

AFI presents a retrospective of some of Huston's most beloved films.

AFI member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the John Huston Series

THE MALTESE FALCON

Huston's astonishing debut was nominated for three Academy Awards, including a nomination for himself for Best Screenplay, and helped define the genre of film noir. Humphrey Bogart's hard-boiled private eye Sam Spade's life is turned upside down when femme fatale Mary Astor walks through his door. When Bogart's partner is murdered hours later, he becomes enmeshed in an international jewel thieving operation involving Astor, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet — with more double crosses and betrayals than you can shake an elusive jewel-encrusted falcon at.

DIR/SCR John Huston, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. US, 1941, b&w, 101 min. NOT RATED

Friday, July 6, 2:15, 7:00; Sunday, July 8, 3:00; Monday, July 9, 2:15; Tuesday, July 10, 2;15; Thursday, July 12, 2:15

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

Huston directs his father Walter to Oscar gold for Best Supporting Actor, nabbing Best Screenplay and Best Direction honors for himself. This treasure-hunting classic finds Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Humphrey Bogart obsessively pursuing gold in Mexico. TREASURE is that rare combination of action-adventure and astute character study: greed and violence personified by Bogart in a signature performance as the volatile and murderous prospector, Fred C. Dobbs.

DIR/SCR John Huston, based on the novel by B. Traven; PROD Henry Blanke. US, 1948, b&w, 126 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Friday, July 6, 4:20; Sunday, July 8, 5:00; Monday, July 9, 4:20; Tuesday, July 10, 4:20, 7:00; Wednesday, July 11, 4:20; Thursday, July 12, 4:20

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE

The ultimate heist film and the template for all that came after — from the assembly of the team to the painstakingly chronicled break-in to the tell-tale slip up. Huston's expertly orchestrated urban crime story is one of the rare film noirs to attract Oscar recognition, garnering four nominations. Crooked lawyer Louis Calhern, desperate to keep nubile mistress Marilyn Monroe, employs just-out-of-jail Sam Jaffe and small timers Anthony Caruso, James Whitmore and Sterling Hayden for a big score. Everything goes right the night of the break-in — until everything starts to go wrong.

DIR/SCR John Huston; SCR Ben Maddow, based on the novel by W.R. Burnett; PROD Arthur Hornblow Jr. US, 1950, b&w, 112 min. In English and German with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Friday, July 13, 2:30; Saturday, July 14, 7:45; Sunday, July 15, 8:15; Thursday, July 19, 3:00

KEY LARGO

"Confidently directed, handsomely shot."

— The New Yorker   

Claire Trevor won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as the faded, alcoholic torch singer girlfriend of Edward G. Robinson, a gangster holding war vet (Humphrey Bogart) and the father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall) of his wartime buddy hostage in a Florida hotel, with a hurricane about to blow in.

DIR/SCR John Huston; SCR Richard Brooks, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson; PROD Jerry Wald. US, 1948, b&w, 100 min. NOT RATED

Friday, July 13, 4:40; Saturday, July 14, 3:10; Sunday, July 15, 6:00; Thursday, July 19, 1:00

HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON

Oscar nominations for Deborah Kerr and co-scripters Huston and John Lee Mahin. Salty marine Robert Mitchum and nun Kerr are marooned on a small Pacific island during World War II, battling each other until they have to put their heads together to outwit an expedition of Japanese soldiers. The pairing of Kerr and Mitchum — the Scottish beauty's favorite leading man — produced terrific screen chemistry.

DIR/SCR John Huston; SCR John Lee Mahin, based on the novel by Charles Shaw; PROD Buddy Adler and Eugene Frenke. US, 1957, color, 108 min. In English and Japanese with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Friday, July 27, 4:45; Saturday, July 28, 3:00; Monday, July 30, 2:45; Tuesday, July 31, 4:45; Wednesday, August 1, 2:15; Thursday, August 2, 4:45

THE MISFITS

John Huston and Arthur Miller's poignant modern Western was the last film of two silver screen icons: "the king of Hollywood" Clark Gable and the legendary Marilyn Monroe. Sad-eyed divorcée Monroe is courted by three men's men — aging cowboy individualist Gable, injured rodeo rider Montgomery Clift and widowed WWII pilot Eli Wallach. Miller's densely metaphorical and ahead-of-its-time screenplay was penned as an homage to his wife Monroe, but the marriage disintegrated before the film began shooting.

DIR John Huston; SCR Arthur Miller; PROD Frank E. Taylor. US, 1961, b&w, 124 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, July 28, 12:30; Monday, July 30, 9:00; Tuesday, July 31, 2:15; Wednesday, August 1, 4:20; Thursday, August 2, 2:45

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

Huston's Academy Award-winning adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Tony Award-winning play received three Oscar nominations — Art Direction, Cinematography, and Best Supporting Actress for Grayson Hall — in addition to a Best Costume win. The all-star cast includes Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Richard Burton, who smolders as an alcoholic minister eking out a living as a tour guide in Mexico after being defrocked due to impropriety with a young woman.

DIR/SCR John Huston; SCR Anthony Veiller, based on the play by Tennessee Williams; PROD John Huston, Ray Stark. US, 1964, b&w, 125 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Saturday, August 4, 1:00; Monday, August 6, 7:00

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE

Huston's adaptation of Carson McCullers's uncanny masterpiece culminates in one of movie history's most shocking endings. Controversial and misunderstood in 1967, the film is ripe for rediscovery as one of the director's best. Army officers Marlon Brando and Brian Keith enjoy a boozy country club lifestyle on their sleepy Southern base, except Brando's a closet case and Keith a neglectful husband having an affair with Brando's bitchy wife Elizabeth Taylor. Fascinating fiery performances and the story's progressive delirium create an unsettling atmosphere.

DIR/SCR John Huston; SCR Gladys Hill and Chapman Mortimer, based on the novel by Carson McCullers; PROD Ray Stark. US, 1967, color, 108 min. NOT RATED

Sunday, August 5, 3:10; Tuesday, August 7, 7:00

FAT CITY

Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges anchor this unsentimental and fiercely underrated tale of two boxers slugging their way through a down-and-out amateur boxing circuit for chump change. Iconoclastic actress Susan Tyrell's portrayal of a feisty barfly brought her a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

DIR/PROD John Huston; SCR Leonard Gardner, based on his novel; PROD Ray Stark. US, 1972, color, 100 min. RATED PG

Saturday, August 11, 1:00; Sunday, August 12, 1:00; Monday, August 13, 9:00

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

As a young man, Huston dreamed of adapting this Rudyard Kipling adventure yarn with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart as the reprobate British soldiers who conquer and lose fictional Kafiristan. Decades later, the 70-year-old Huston realized his vision with the inspired pairing of Michael Caine and Sean Connery as the bickering buddies, resulting in a comeback hit for Huston and an enduring fan favorite for movie lovers.

DIR/SCR John Huston; SCR Gladys Hill, based on a story by Rudyard Kipling; PROD John Foreman. UK/US, 1975, color, 129 min. RATED PG

Friday, August 17, 4:20; Saturday, August 18, 1:10; Sunday, August 19, 2:45; Monday, August 20, 4:10; Tuesday, August, 21, 4:10; Wednesday, August 22, 4:10; Thursday, August 23, 4:10

THE DEAD

Based on James Joyce's classic novella, this was Huston's last film before his 1987 death from emphysema. Huston's son penned the adapted screenplay, and daughter Angelica is directed to perfection in a quiet but powerful performance in this poetic meditation on the transience of memory, lost love and death.

DIR John Huston; SCR Tony Huston, based on the novella by James Joyce; PROD Wiseland Schulz-Keil and Chris Sievernich. UK/Ireland/US, 1987, color, 83 min. RATED PG

Friday, August 31, 5:25; Tuesday, September 4, 7:00; Thursday, September 6, 7:00