Let There Be Light
Home from World War II, soldiers carrying the psychological wounds of combat arrive at an Army hospital on Long Island. John Huston’s cameras follow them through interviews, hypnosis, group therapy, and recovery, until the day they are discharged. Banned by the Army for 35 years, it is one of the first films to show what is now called PTSD.
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Public domain · Source: National Film Preservation Foundation restoration, from the National Archives (via Wikimedia Commons)
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Let There Be Light is available to watch in the United States only, where IFN has confirmed its rights. Every other film on IFN plays where you are.
Browse filmsHow it was made
A U.S. government production, not an independent film: John Huston made it for the U.S. Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps, as part of the Army’s Professional Medical Film series (PMF 5019), and shot it at Mason General Hospital on Long Island. The Army kept it from the public until 1981. This is the restoration funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation from the National Archives’ negative.
- Live action
Filmed with a camera, with actors and real locations.
Produced by U.S. Army Pictorial Service.
Credits
- Director
- John Huston
- Writers
- Charles Kaufman, John Huston
- Narrator
- Walter Huston
- Music
- Dimitri Tiomkin
- Photography
- Stanley Cortez, John Doran, Lloyd Fromm, Joseph Jackman, George Smith
- Editors
- William Reynolds, Gene Fowler Jr.
- Production
- U.S. Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps
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