Let There Be Light is an extraordinary documentary about WW II soldiers being treated for psychological war wounds. Made in 1946 by fabled director John Huston, Let There Be Light was suppressed by the US military until 1980 and had since been available only in a grainy, almost unintelligible version. Thankfully, it was restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation in 2011, and now can be viewed for free on its website.
Huston followed a group of soldiers as they entered a hospital and engaged in treatment until their release from the service eight weeks later. Huston shot 70 hours of film, which he winnowed down to this one-hour documentary. We see the doctors use individual talk therapy, group therapy, hypnosis and sodium pentathol. We know the condition as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At the time, it was popularly known as “shell-shock” or “combat fatigue” and termed “psychoneurosis” or “neuropsychosis” by the doctors.
Modern therapists will find the treatment primitive and the movie too optimistic (there’s a sense that everybody is OK after eight weeks in the hospital), but that shouldn’t obscure the compassion of the doctors and the heartbreaking stories of the men. This was a moment in medical history when the public still needed to learn that this was a psychiatric condition, not cowardice or weakness – and that the condition was treatable. The narrator (Huston’s father Walter) repeatedly emphasizes that these men have endured more than any human could be expected to bear.
Watch Let There Be Light HERE.
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