Let's be realistic.

Fantastic!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Never dull, always alive with authentic and rich scenes; unpredictable and interesting. The wooden acting of the leads is appropriate for two young people who are fresh out into the world. They are surrounded by an extravagant variety of characters of the late Middle Ages, all well portrayed and decently acted. The scenery is picturesque, the music is lilting and fair, and the plot veers between barbarisms and nobility. It has been beautifully filmed and the direction keeps the plot moving briskly. There is no fat, no wasted scenes, no stupidity. The story is believable and moving, a story of sensitive youths trying to survive in a world suddenly gone mad. The creatures who seek such chaos are trying to turn the world upside down; they seek their own order through chaos. They seek to rearrange the world into their own hideous image. This is a story of how civilized people deal with the carnage of progress.

I thought the title A Walk With Love And Death might be a metaphor – that the "walk" might stand for a journey or a quest, or perhaps even someone's lifetime, with various romances and fatalities along the way. In fact, the title is an absolutely literal description of what the film is about - the story follows a disillusioned student in the Middle Ages as he walks to the sea, encountering love and death en route. It is a very picaresque story, similar to the books that Tobias Smollett was writing in the 18th century (though in this case it is based on a novel by 20th century Dutch novelist Hans Koninsberger). John Huston is the unlikely director behind it, and he brings a modern sensibility to the proceedings – his film is more concerned with Flower-Power, Peace & Love and the 60s Youth Movement than the barbarism of the Middle Ages.During the Hundred Years War, student Heron of Fois (Assi Dayan) marches out of a lecture in Paris and decides to walk across his war-torn country to the sea. It is a long trek, and even though it takes him through beautiful landscapes there are constant reminders of the scars of war. Dead bodies drift by in rivers, cattle lies slaughtered in the fields and castles burn on the horizon. During the trip Heron meets a beautiful young noble-woman, Claudia (Anjelica Huston), who eventually joins him on his journey to the sea. Neither of them has ever set eyes on the sea before, but both share a foolish dream that if they can somehow get there all their problems will be resolved. However, the land becomes increasingly dangerous as peasant armies rise up in revolt against the soldiery, and the young companions gradually realise that their quest is doomed to fail.Huston's film is very personal, too much so to be a commercial success at the time. Having said that, some of the remarkably negative reviews that have been written about it are hardly fair. It is true that the story is very minor and insubstantial; it is true that the two leads are awfully wooden in their roles; it is true too that Dayan's character is completely unbelievable in a Middle Ages setting with his saintly "make-peace-not-war" attitude. Yet in spite of these flaws, there are still things to enjoy in A Walk With Love And Death. It is a beautifully shot film, with eye-catching colours and backgrounds captured in luscious DeLuxe by Ted Scaife (of The Dirty Dozen and Khartoum). Georges Delerue provides a haunting score, and Huston generates some fairly realistic scenes of hysteria and combat (one sequence, in which a man is quartered, is notably gruesome, albeit in a non-gratuitous way). While the film is not in the very top tier of the director's work, it certainly doesn't deserve to have been neglected as much as it has. It is perhaps best summed up as a worthy flop.

This is a fairly dry, low budget medieval picture by John Huston and starring his daughter Angelica...LOOOONG before she emerged as one of our great actresses. She's very awkward here, and the role is awkwardly written and the whole thing simply doesn't work.I have read some things Angelica herself wrote about this film -- that her father was often not active in her life, and that he wanted to do this film to sort of make things up to her, i.e., allow her to star in something he was doing. Also, that it was made to some degree to piggy-back on the popularity of Zeffirelli's '68 "Romeo and Juliet", which created a brief interest in romance films in medieval settings. That makes perfect sense, but the film "A Walk with Love and Death" doesn't work on any of those levels, unfortunately.A rather sad waste of some amazing talent. Knowing what Angelica has become, you have to wonder what she could have done acting-wise under different circumstances. Also, it's particularly unkind to cast a young woman of her looks -- interesting, but harsh and definitely not "pretty" -- in this sort of role, where her lack of prettiness seems at odds with the character. You can't help but feel sorry for her here! You can file this one under "every dad thinks his daughter is beautiful", right next to Sophie Coppola's debut in "Godfather 3". (And nothing against either amazingly talented lady, but this further proves that nepotism not only is a bad idea, but IT DOESN'T WORK.)

The movie is a thin, episodic journey through a landscape marked by battles and skirmishes and dangers - it doesn't aim for an epic quality (everything is very sparse) nor to analyze the political or social aspects of the situation (except in a brief appearance by Huston himself as a nobleman who's giving up his rank to join the peasants - he's much more vibrant and interesting than anyone else in the movie): actually it's a bit of a mystery what it DOES aim to do. Judged simply as an evocation of pure time and place, it's a bit too discreet and tidy - hardly the kind of attempt to conjure up messy verisimilitude that failed in "Revolution." Huston is fairly interesting and manages to convey both her noble blood and the idiosyncratic attitude that would have led her on this journey. The film's general discretion works against a compelling depiction of passion, and it ultimately seems to have worked its way merely to a teenage idyll of togetherness, which makes it hard to face up to the imminent tragedy. An odd item in Huston's filmography, sometimes exhibiting the awkwardness of a dubbed Continental item.