Gegenläufige Erzählungen. Filmische Verfertigung individueller und kollektiver Heilung und ihre Subversion – Let There Be Light (1945/6) von John Huston

The educational film Let There Be Light (1945/46), directed by the American filmmaker John Huston, was not officially shown until 1980, after having been banned for decades by the US-Army that initially had commissioned it. It portrays a larger group of so called “psychoneurotic” soldiers being ‘cured’ by therapy methods such as hypnosis, narcohypnosis (Sodium Amytal) and group psychotherapy over a period of eight weeks at the psychiatric center of the Mason General Hospital on Long Island, New York, during the Second World War under the direction of Lt. Colonel Dr. Benjamin Simon. At the same time, the film contains subtexts that subverted the trajectory of healing. The subtexts reflect the fact that the allegedly convalescent “war hysterics” were by no means always and permanently free of symptoms. In this educational film, ‘recovery’ and ‘health’ in the aftermath of psychological war trauma, which herein was characterized as a ‘normal’ reaction to the threat of death, are instead exposed as fragile, unstable, and imaginary categories. This article explores the specific cinematic aesthetics and dramaturgical means by which this counter-running double message was created.