From the beginning of his film career, at the dawn of the 1940s, John Huston had only one idea: to preserve his freedom. If he knew how to free himself from Hollywood, his tour de force was to obtain from the big studios the stars he wanted and especially the colossal budgets he needed to shoot in natural settings, preferably wild ones. From "The Maltese Falcon" to "People of Dublin", directed shortly before his death in 1987, including "The Odyssey of the African Queen", "The Night of the Iguana", "Moby Dick", "The Misfits" and "Under the Volcano", the filmmaker made a specialty of bringing to the screen great literary works that were deemed unsuitable.