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John Huston

John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1980.

Son of actor Walter Huston, he studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris. He then moved to Mexico and began writing, first plays and short stories, and later working in Los Angeles as a Hollywood screenwriter, and was nominated for several Academy Awards writing for films directed by William Dieterle and Howard Hawks, among others. His directorial debut came with The Maltese Falcon (1941), which despite its small budget became a commercial and critical hit; he continued to be a successful, if iconoclastic, Hollywood director for the next 45 years.

Huston directed acclaimed films such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Misfits (1961), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Annie (1982), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987). During his 46-year career, Huston received 14 Academy Award nominations, winning twice. Huston acted in numerous films receiving nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for The Cardinal (1963), and Chinatown (1974) respectively. He also acted in Casino Royale (1967), Myra Breckinridge (1970) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). He voiced the wizard Gandalf in The Hobbit (1977).

Huston has been referred to as "a titan", "a rebel", and a "renaissance man" in the Hollywood film industry. He traveled widely, settling at various times in France, Mexico, and Ireland. Huston was a citizen of the United States by birth but renounced this to become an Irish citizen and resident in 1964. He eventually returned to the United States, where he lived the rest of his life. He was the father of actress Anjelica Huston, whom he directed to an Oscar win.

Early life
John Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. He was the only child of Rhea (née Gore) and Canadian-born Walter Huston. His father was an actor, initially in vaudeville, and later in films. His mother worked as a sports editor for various publications but stopped after John was born. Similarly, his father ended his stage acting career for steady employment as a civil engineer, although he returned to stage acting within a few years. He later became highly successful on both Broadway and then in motion pictures. He had Scottish, Scots-Irish, English and Welsh ancestry.

Huston's parents divorced in 1913 when he was six years old. For much of his childhood, he lived and studied in boarding schools. During summer vacations, he traveled separately with each of his parents – with his father on vaudeville tours, and with his mother to horse races and other sports events. Young Huston benefited greatly from seeing his father act on stage, and he was later drawn to acting.

Some critics, such as Lawrence Grobel, surmise that his relationship with his mother may have contributed to his marrying five times, and seeming to have difficulty in maintaining relationships. Grobel wrote, "When I interviewed some of the women who had loved him, they inevitably referred to his mother as the key to unlocking Huston's psyche." According to actress Olivia de Havilland, "she [his mother] was the central character. I always felt that John was ridden by witches. He seemed pursued by something destructive. If it wasn't his mother, it was his idea of his mother."

As a child, Huston was often ill; he was treated for an enlarged heart and kidney ailments. He recovered after an extended bedridden stay in Arizona and moved with his mother to Los Angeles, where he attended Abraham Lincoln High School. He dropped out after two years to become a professional boxer. By age 15 he was a top-ranking amateur lightweight boxer in California. He ended his brief boxing career after suffering a broken nose.

He also engaged in many interests, including ballet, English and French literature, opera, horseback riding, and studying painting at the Art Students League of Los Angeles. Living in Los Angeles, Huston became infatuated with the new film industry and motion pictures, as a spectator only. To Huston, "Charlie Chaplin was a god."

Huston returned to New York City to live with his father, who was acting in off-Broadway productions, and had a few small roles. He later remembered that while watching his father rehearse, he became fascinated with the mechanics of acting:

"What I learned there, during those weeks of rehearsal, would serve me for the rest of my life."

After a short period of acting on stage, and having undergone surgery, Huston travelled alone to Mexico. During two years there, among other adventures, he obtained a position as an honorary member of the Mexican cavalry. He returned to Los Angeles and married Dorothy Harvey, a girlfriend from high school. Their marriage lasted seven years (1926–1933).

1930–1939: Early career and directorial debut
During his stay in Mexico, Huston wrote a play called Frankie and Johnny, based on the ballad of the same title. After selling it easily, he decided that writing would be a viable career, and he focused on it. His self-esteem was enhanced when H. L. Mencken, editor of the popular magazine American Mercury, bought two of his stories, "Fool" and "Figures of Fighting Men." During subsequent years, Huston's stories and feature articles were published in Esquire, Theatre Arts, and The New York Times. He also worked for a period on the New York Graphic. In 1931, when he was 25, he moved back to Los Angeles in hopes of writing for the blossoming film industry. The silent films had given way to "talkies", and writers were in demand. His father had earlier moved there and already gained success in a number of films.

Huston received a script editing contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions but, after six months of receiving no assignments, quit to work for Universal Studios, where his father was a star. At Universal, he got a job in the script department, and began by writing dialogue for a number of films in 1932, including Murders in the Rue Morgue, A House Divided, and Law and Order. The last two also starred his father, Walter Huston. A House Divided was directed by William Wyler, who gave Huston his first real "inside view" of the filmmaking process during all stages of production. Wyler and Huston became close friends and collaborators on a number of leading films.

Huston gained a reputation as a "lusty, hard-drinking libertine" during his first years as a writer in Hollywood. Huston described those years as a "series of misadventures and disappointments". In 1933 he was in a romantic relationship with actress Zita Johann. While driving drunk, with Johann as passenger, he hit a parked car sending Johann through the glass windshield. She suffered head trauma and Huston was charged with driving while intoxicated. His brief career as a Hollywood writer ended suddenly when he struck and killed actress Tosca Roulien, wife of actor Raul Roulien, while driving. There is a rumor that actor Clark Gable was responsible for the accident, but that MGM general manager Eddie Mannix paid Huston to take the blame. Gable was on location filming a movie, however, proving that rumor untrue. A coroner's jury absolved Huston of blame, but the incident left him "traumatized". He moved to London and Paris, living as a "drifter."

By 1937, the 31-year-old Huston returned to Hollywood intent on being a "serious writer." He married again, to Lesley Black. His first job was as scriptwriter with Warner Brothers Studio, and he formed his personal longterm goal to direct his own scripts. For the next four years, he co-wrote scripts for major films such as Jezebel, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Juarez, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, and Sergeant York (1941). He was nominated for Academy Awards for his screenplays for both Ehrlich and Sergeant York. Huston wrote that Sergeant York, which was directed by Howard Hawks, has "gone down as one of Howard's best pictures, and Gary Cooper had a triumph playing the young mountaineer."

Huston was recognized and respected as a screenwriter. He persuaded the Warners to give him a chance to direct, under the condition that his next script also became a hit.

Huston wrote: "They indulged me rather. They liked my work as a writer and they wanted to keep me on. If I wanted to direct, why, they'd give me a shot at it, and if it didn't come off all that well, they wouldn't be too disappointed as it was to be a very small picture."

His next script was High Sierra (1941), to be directed by Raoul Walsh. The film became the hit Huston wanted. It also made Humphrey Bogart a star with his first major role, as a gunman on the run. Warners kept their end of the bargain and gave Huston his choice of subject. For his first directing assignment, Huston chose Dashiell Hammett's detective thriller, The Maltese Falcon, a film which failed at the box office in two earlier versions by Warners. However, studio head Jack L. Warner approved of Huston's treatment of Hammett's 1930 novel, and he stood by his word to let Huston choose his first subject.

Huston kept the screenplay close to the novel, keeping much of Hammett's dialogue, and directing it in an uncluttered style, much like the book's narrative. He did unusual preparation for his first directing job by sketching out each shot beforehand, including camera positions, lighting, and compositional scale, for such elements as closeups.

He especially benefited by selecting a superior cast, giving Humphrey Bogart the lead role. Bogart was happy to take the role, as he liked working with Huston. The supporting cast included other noted actors: Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet (his first film role), and his own father, Walter Huston. The film was given only a small B-movie budget, and received minimal publicity by Warners, as they had low expectations. The entire film was made in eight weeks for only $300,000.

Warners was surprised by the immediate enthusiastic response by the public and critics, who hailed the film as a "classic", with many ranking it as the "best detective melodrama ever made." Herald Tribune critic Howard Barnes called it a "triumph." Huston received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay. After this film, Huston directed all of his screenplays, except for one, Three Strangers (1946). In 1942, he directed two more hits, In This Our Life (1942), starring Bette Davis, and Across the Pacific, another thriller starring Humphrey Bogart.

1942–1946: Army years during World War II
In 1942 Huston served in the United States Army during World War II, making films for the Army Signal Corps. While in uniform with the rank of captain, he directed and produced three films that some critics rank as "among the finest made about World War II: Report from the Aleutians (1943), about soldiers preparing for combat; The Battle of San Pietro (1945), the story (censored by the Army) of a failure by America's intelligence agencies that resulted in many deaths, and Let There Be Light (1946), about psychologically damaged veterans. It was censored and suppressed for 35 years, until 1981.

Huston was promoted to the rank of major and received the Legion of Merit award for "courageous work under battle conditions." All of his films made for the Army were "controversial", and were either not released, were censored, or banned outright, as they were considered "demoralizing" to soldiers and the public. Let There Be Light was the most controversial as the Army banned the film from public viewing due to the ethics of filming the soldiers' recovery and the lack of written permission supplied by Huston. Years later, after Huston moved to Ireland, his daughter, actress Anjelica Huston, recalled that the "main movies we watched were the war documentaries."

Huston performed an uncredited rewrite of Anthony Veiller's screenplay for The Stranger (1946), a film he was to have directed. When Huston became unavailable, the film's star, Orson Welles, directed instead; Welles had the lead role of a high-ranking Nazi fugitive who settles in New England under an assumed name.

1947–1951: Breakthrough and acclaim
 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Huston's next picture, which he wrote, directed, and briefly appeared in as an American asked to "help out a fellow American, down on his luck", was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). It would become one of the films that established his reputation as a leading filmmaker. The film, also starring Humphrey Bogart, was the story of three drifters who band together to prospect for gold. Huston gave a supporting role to his father, Walter Huston.

Warners studio was initially uncertain what to make of the film. They had allowed Huston to film on location in Mexico, which was a "radical move" for a studio at the time. They also knew that Huston was gaining a reputation as "one of the wild men of Hollywood." In any case, studio boss Jack L. Warner initially "detested it." But whatever doubts Warners had were soon removed, as the film achieved widespread public and critical acclaim. Hollywood writer James Agee called it "one of the most beautiful and visually alive movies I have ever seen." Time magazine described it as "one of the best things Hollywood has done since it learned to talk." Huston won Oscars for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay; his father won for Best Supporting Actor. The film also won other awards in the U.S. and overseas.

Decades later, Film Comment magazine devoted four pages to the film in its May–June 1980 edition, with author Richard T. Jameson offering his impressions:

"This film has impressed itself on the heart and mind and soul of anyone who has seen it, to the extent that filmmakers of great originality and distinctiveness like Robert Altman and Sam Peckinpah can be said to have remade it again and again ... without compromising its uniqueness."

 Key Largo (1948)

Also in 1948, Huston directed Key Largo, again starring Humphrey Bogart. It was the story about a disillusioned veteran who clashes with gangsters on a remote Florida key. It co-starred Lauren Bacall, Claire Trevor, Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore. The film was an adaptation of the stage play by Maxwell Anderson. Some viewers complained that it was still overly stage-bound. But the "outstanding performances" by all the actors saved the film, and Claire Trevor won an Oscar for best supporting actress. Huston was annoyed that the studio cut several scenes from the final release without his agreement. That, along with some earlier disputes, angered Huston enough that he left the studio when his contract expired.

 The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

In 1950 he wrote and directed The Asphalt Jungle, a film which broke new ground by depicting criminals as somewhat sympathetic characters, simply doing their professional work, "an occupation like any other". Huston described their work as "a left-handed form of human endeavor." Huston achieved that effect by giving "deep attention" to the plot, involving a large jewelry theft, by examining the minute, step-by-step details and difficulties each of the characters had of carrying it out. Some critics felt that, by this technique, Huston had achieved an almost "documentary" style.

His assistant director Albert Band explains further: "I'll never forget it. We got on that set and he composed a shot in which ten elements were working all at the same time. Took half a day to do it, but it was fantastic. He knew exactly how to shoot a picture. His shots were all painted on the spot ... He had a great eye and he never lost his sense of composition."

Film critic Andrew Sarris considered it to be "Huston's best film", and the film that made Marilyn Monroe a recognized actress. Sarris also notes the similar themes in many of Huston's films, as exemplified by this one: "His protagonists almost invariably fail at what they set out to do." This theme was also expressed in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where the group foundered on their own greed.

It starred Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe, a personal friend of Huston. Marilyn Monroe had her first serious role in this film. Huston said, "it was, of course, where Marilyn Monroe got her start." Monroe said Huston was the first genius she had ever met; and he made her feel that she finally had a chance of becoming a professional actress: "Even though my part was a minor one, I felt as if I were the most important performer in the picture—when I was before the camera. This was because everything I did was important to the director."

The film succeeded at the box office, and Huston was again nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay and best director, along with winning the Screen Directors Guild Award. This became a model for many similar movies by other filmmakers.

 The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

Huston's next film, The Red Badge of Courage (1951), was of a completely different subject: war and its effect on soldiers. While in the army during World War II, he became interested in Stephen Crane's classic American Civil War novel of the same title. For the starring role, Huston chose World War II hero Audie Murphy to play the young Union soldier who deserts his company out of fear, but later returns to fight alongside them. MGM was concerned that the movie seemed too antiwar for the postwar period. Without Huston's input, they cut down the running time of the film from eighty-eight minutes to sixty-nine, added narration, and deleted what Huston felt was a crucial scene.

The movie did poorly at the box office. Huston suggests that it was possibly because it "brought war very close to home." Huston recalls that at the preview showing, before the film was halfway through, "damn near a third of the audience got up and walked out of the theater." Despite the "butchering" and weak public response, film historian Michael Barson describes the movie as "a minor masterpiece."

At the same time, the film was also the cause of a growing feud between MGM founder Louis B. Mayer and Producer Dore Schary to the point where Huston felt like stepping down to avoid growing the conflict. However, Mayer encouraged Huston to stay on telling him to fight for the picture regardless of what he thought of it.

 The African Queen (1951)

Before The Red Badge of Courage opened in theaters, Huston was already in Africa shooting The African Queen (1951), a story based on C. S. Forester's popular novel. It starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in a combination of romance, comedy and adventure. Barson calls it "one of the most popular Hollywood movies of all time." The film's producer, Sam Spiegel, urged Huston to change the ending to allow the protagonists to survive, instead of dying. Huston agreed, and the ending was rewritten. It became Huston's most successful film financially, and "it remains one of his finest works." Huston was nominated for two Academy Awards—Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Bogart, meanwhile, won his only Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Charlie Allnut.

Hepburn wrote about her experiences shooting the film in her memoir, The Making of the African Queen: Or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and almost lost my mind. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the film White Hunter, Black Heart, based on Peter Viertel's novel of the same name, which tells a fictional version of the making of the film.

1952–1966: HCUA period
In 1952 Huston moved to Ireland as a result of his "disgust" at the "witch-hunt" and the "moral rot" he felt was created by investigation and hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), which had affected many of his friends in the movie industry. Huston had, with friends including director William Wyler and screenwriter Philip Dunne, established the "Committee for the First Amendment", as a response to the ongoing government investigations into communists within the film industry. The HCUA was calling numerous filmmakers, screenwriters, and actors to testify about any past affiliations.

He later described, in general, the types of people who were alleged communists: "The people who did get caught up in it were, for the most part, well-intentioned boobs from a poor background. A number of them had come from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and out in Hollywood, they sort of felt guilty for living the good life. Their social conscience was more acute than the next fellow's."

Huston took producing, writing, and directing credits for his next two films: Moulin Rouge (1952); and Beat the Devil (1953). Moby Dick (1956), however, was written by Ray Bradbury, although Huston had his name added to the screenplay credit after the completion of the project. Although Huston had personally hired Bradbury to adapt Herman Melville's novel into a screenplay, Bradbury and Huston did not get along during pre-production. Bradbury later dramatized their relationship in the short story "Banshee". When this was adapted as an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, Peter O'Toole played the role based on John Huston. Bradbury wrote more poems, essays, and stories on his time in Ireland, but was reluctant to write a book because he did not want to gossip about Huston. It was not until after he read Katharine Hepburn's memoir, The Making of the African Queen, that he decided that he could write "a book which is fair, which presents the Huston that I loved along with the one that I began to fear on occasion." He published Green Shadows, White Whale, a novel about his time in Ireland with Huston, almost 40 years after he wrote the screenplay for Moby Dick.

Huston had been planning to film Herman Melville's Moby-Dick for the previous ten years, and originally thought the starring role of Captain Ahab would be an excellent part for his father, Walter Huston. After his father died in 1950, Huston chose Gregory Peck to play the role. The movie was filmed over a three-year period on location in Ireland, where Huston was living. The fishing village of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was recreated along the waterfront; the sailing ship in the film was fully constructed to be seaworthy; and three 100-foot whales were built out of steel, wood, and plastic. In the film, Huston's voice was dubbed for the voice of actor Joseph Tomelty and a Pequod lookout. But the film failed at the box office. Critics such as David Robinson suggested that the movie lacked the "mysticism of the book" and thereby "loses its significance."

Of Huston's next five films, only The Misfits (1961), gained critical approval. Critics have since noted the "retrospective atmosphere of doom" associated with the film. Clark Gable, the star, died of a heart attack a few weeks after the filming was completed; Marilyn Monroe never finished another film, and died a year later after being suspended during the filming of Something's Got to Give; and costars Montgomery Clift (1966) and Thelma Ritter (1969) also died over the next decade. But two of the Misfits stars, Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy, lived another 50 years. During the filming, Monroe was sometimes taking prescribed drugs, which led to her arriving late on the set. Monroe also sometimes forgot her lines. Monroe's personal problems eventually led to the breakup of her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller, the scriptwriter, "virtually on set." Miller dramatized the making of The Misfits in his final play, Finishing the Picture, where Huston is represented as the director. Huston later commented about this period in Monroe's career: "Marilyn was on her way out. Not only of the picture, but of life."

He followed The Misfits with Freud: The Secret Passion, a film quite different from most of his others. Besides directing, he also narrates portions of the story. Film historian Stuart M. Kaminsky notes that Huston presents Sigmund Freud, played by Montgomery Clift, "as a kind of savior and messiah", with an "almost Biblical detachment." As the film begins, Huston describes Freud as a "kind of hero or God on a quest for mankind":

"This is the story of Freud's descent into a region as black as hell, man's unconscious, and how he let in the light."

Huston explains how he became interested in psychotherapy, the subject of the film:

"I first got into that through an experience in a hospital during the war, where I made a documentary about patients suffering from battle neuroses. I was in the army and made the picture Let There Be Light. That experience started my interest in psychotherapy, and to this day Freud looms as the single huge figure in that field."

For his next film, Huston again traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, after meeting an architect, Guillermo Wulff, who owned property and businesses in the town. The filming of The Night of the Iguana took place in a beach cove called Mismaloya, about thirty minutes south of town. Huston adapted the stage play by Tennessee Williams. The film stars Richard Burton and Ava Gardner, and was nominated for several Academy Awards. The production attracted intense worldwide media attention, due to Burton bringing his celebrity mistress, actress Elizabeth Taylor (who was still married to singer Eddie Fisher at the time) to Puerto Vallarta. Huston liked the town where filming took place so much that he bought a house near there, as did Burton and Taylor. Guillermo Wulff and Huston became friends and always spent time together while Huston was in town, more frequently at Wulff's El Dorado Restaurant on Los Muertos Beach.

Producer Dino De Laurentis traveled to Ireland to ask Huston to direct The Bible: In the Beginning. Although De Laurentis had ambitions for a broader story, he realized that the subject could not be adequately covered and limited the story to less than the first half of the Book of Genesis. Huston enjoyed directing the film, as it gave him a chance to indulge his love of animals. Besides directing he also played the role of Noah and the voice of God. The Bible earned rentals of $15 million in North America, making it the second highest-grossing film of 1966. However, because of its bloated budget of $18 million (which made it the most expensive movie of Huston's career ), 20th Century Fox ended up losing $1.5 million.

Huston enjoyed describing details about the filming: "Every morning before beginning work, I visited the animals. One of the elephants, Candy, loved to be scratched on the belly behind her foreleg. I'd scratch her and she would lean farther and farther toward me until there was some danger of her toppling over on me. One time I started to walk away from her, and she reached out and took my wrist with her trunk and pulled me back to her side. It was a command: 'Don't stop!' I used it in the picture. Noah scratches the elephant's belly and walks away, and the elephant pulls him back to her time after time."

1967–1969: Involvement with the Irish film industry
"I think the politicians who supported building the studio can take consolation in the fact that it's brought a lot of money to Ireland. We're spending more than a million dollars in Ireland and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for Ardmore."

While working on Casino Royale (1967), Huston took interest in the Irish film industry, which had historically struggled to attain domestic or international success. There were rumours that he would buy Ireland's premiere film location, Ardmore Studios in Bray, County Wicklow. In 1967, Huston gave Taoiseach Jack Lynch a tour of Ardmore and asked to form a committee to help foster a productive Irish film industry. Huston served on the resulting committee with Irish filmmakers and journalists.

Lynch also ultimately agreed to offer tax breaks to foreign production companies if they shot on location in Ireland, and signed the Film Act of 1970.

Huston was interviewed in Irish journalist Peter Lennon's Rocky Road to Dublin (1967), where he argued that it was more important for Irish filmmakers to make films in Ireland than for foreign production companies to make international films.

In 1969, he shot Sinful Davey in Ireland using a mixed Irish and British cast.

1972–1987: Later career and final films
After several films that were not well received, Huston returned to critical acclaim with Fat City. Based on Leonard Gardner's 1969 novel of the same name, it was about an aging, washed-up alcoholic boxer in Stockton, California, trying to get his name back on the map, while having a new relationship with a world-weary alcoholic. It also featured an amateur boxer trying to find success in boxing. The film was nominated for several awards. It starred Stacy Keach, a young Jeff Bridges, and Susan Tyrrell; she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Roger Ebert stated Fat City was one of Huston's best films, giving it four out of four stars.

Perhaps Huston's most highly regarded film of the 1970s, The Man Who Would Be King was both a critical and commercial success. Huston had been planning to make this film since the '50s, originally with his friends Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable. Eventually, the lead roles went to Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The movie was filmed on location in North Africa. The film was praised for its use of old-fashioned escapism and entertainment. Steven Spielberg has cited the film as one of the inspirations for his film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After filming The Man Who Would Be King, Huston took his longest break between directing films. He returned with an offbeat and somewhat controversial film based on the novel Wise Blood. Here, Huston showed his skills as a storyteller, and boldness when it came to difficult subjects such as religion. Under the Volcano, Huston's last film set in Mexico, stars Albert Finney as an alcoholic ambassador during the beginnings of World War II. Adapted from the 1947 novel by Malcolm Lowry, the film was highly praised by critics, most notably for Finney's portrayal of a desperate and depressed alcoholic. The film was a success on the independent circuit.

John Huston's final film, 1987's The Dead, is an adaptation of the classic short story by James Joyce. This may have been one of Huston's most personal films, due to his citizenship in Ireland and his passion for classic literature. Huston directed most of the film from a wheelchair, as he needed an oxygen tank to breathe during the last few months of his life. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards and was praised by critics. Roger Ebert eventually placed it in his Great Movies list; a section of movies he claimed to be some of the best ever made. Huston died nearly four months before the film's release date. In the 1996 RTÉ documentary John Huston: An t-Éireannach, Anjelica Huston said that "it was very important for my father to make that film." She contends that Huston did not think that it was going to be his last film, but that it was his love letter to Ireland and the Irish.

As an actor
While he had done some stage acting in his youth and had occasionally cast himself in bit parts in his own films. Earlier in his career, he had played bit parts in his own films, such as the unnamed rich American in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Towards the end of his career, Huston began to play more prominent roles in films by other directors. In 1963, director Otto Preminger asked if he would portray a Boston prelate in The Cardinal, and, writes author Philip Kemp, he "virtually stole the picture." He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role. He had a little participation (as did many others) in 1967's Casino Royale as actor and director. He acted in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) as the film's master villain, Noah Cross. For his performance he earned a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. He also acted as President Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of state John Hay in The Wind and the Lion. Huston enjoyed acting and denied that he took it all that seriously. "It's a cinch," he once said, "and they pay you damn near as much as you make directing."

He continued to take prominent supporting roles for the next two decades, including 1974's Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski), and he lent his booming baritone voice as a voice actor and narrator to a number of prominent films. His last two films, 1985's Prizzi's Honor, and 1987's The Dead, filmed while he was in failing health at the end of his life, were both nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He died shortly after completing his last film. Huston said he did not regard himself very highly as an actor, saying he was proud only of his performance in Chinatown. But he had also greatly enjoyed acting in Winter Kills. He also played the Lawgiver in Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Huston is famous to a generation of fans of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories as the voice of the wizard Gandalf in the Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980).

Huston played the lead in Orson Welles's last completed film, The Other Side of the Wind. In it he played an aging filmmaker named Jake Hannaford who was having great problems getting financing for his latest uncompleted film. Much of his portrayal was filmed in the spring of 1974 in Carefree, Arizona, at Southwestern Studio and a nearby mansion. But due to political and financial complications, The Other Side of the Wind was not released until the fall of 2018.

Movie themes
Author Ian Freer describes him as "cinema's Ernest Hemingway"—a filmmaker who was "never afraid to tackle tough issues head on." Huston's films were insightful about human nature and human predicaments. They also sometimes included scenes or brief dialogue passages that were remarkably prescient concerning environmental issues that came to public awareness in the future, in the period starting about 1970; examples include The Misfits and The Night of the Iguana (1964). Huston spent long evenings carousing in the Nevada casinos after filming, surrounded by reporters and beautiful women, gambling, drinking, and smoking cigars.

According to Kaminsky, Huston's stories were often about "failed quests" by a group of different people. The group would persist in the face of poor odds, doomed at the outset by the circumstances created by an impossible situation. However, some members of the doomed group usually survive, those who are "cool" and "intelligent", or someone who "will sacrifice everything for self-understanding and independence". Those types of characters are exemplified by Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, and Montgomery Clift in Freud.

Another type of quest often seen in Huston's films involves a pair of potential lovers trying to face a hostile world. Flint adds, however, that he "bucked Hollywood's penchant for happy endings", and many of his stories ended with "love unsatisfied".

Film historian James Goodwin adds that in virtually all of his films, there is some type of "heroic quest – even if it involves questionable motives or destructive alliances". In addition, the quest "is preferable to the spiritless, amoral routines of life". As a result, his best films, according to Flint, "have lean, fast-paced scripts and vibrant plots and characterizations, and many of them deal ironically with vanity, avarice and unfulfilled quests".

In the opinion of critics Tony Tracy and Roddy Flynn, "... what fundamentally fascinated Huston was not movies per se – that is, form – but the human condition ... and literature offered a road map for exploring that condition." In many of his films, therefore, he tried to express his interest by developing themes involving some of the "grand narratives" of the twentieth century, such as "faith, meaning, truth, freedom, psychology, colonialism, war and capitalism".

To Jameson, all of Huston's films are adaptations, and he believes that through his films there was a "cohesive world-view, not only thematically but also stylistically; there is the Huston look". The "Huston look" was also noted by screenwriter James Agee, who adds that this "look proceeds from Huston's sense of what is natural to the eye and his delicate, simple feeling for space relationships." In any case, notes Flint, Huston took "uncommon care to preserve the writer's styles and values ... and sought repeatedly to transpose the interior essence of literature to film with dramatic and visual tension", as he did in Red Badge of Courage, Moby Dick, and Under the Volcano.

Religion is also a theme that runs through many of Huston's films. In The Night of the Iguana, Kaminsky notes how Richard Burton, while preaching a sermon to his congregation, seems "lost, confused, his speech is gibberish", and leads his congregation to turn away from him. In other films, adds Kaminsky, religion is seen as "part of the fantasy world", that the actors must overcome to survive physically or emotionally. "These religious zealots counsel a move away from the pleasure of the world and human love, a world that Huston believes in," concludes Kaminsky. Such religious themes were also seen in The Bible, and Wise Blood, for example.

To Barson, however, Huston was among the "least consistent" filmmakers, although he concludes that he was one of the "most interesting directors of the past sixty years". Throughout his long career, many of his films did poorly and were criticized as a result. To a writer in 1972 he commented, "Criticism isn't a new experience for me. Pictures that are now thought of as, forgive the term, classics, weren't all that well thought of at the time they came out." After an interview a few years before he died, the reporter writes that "Huston said he missed the major studio era when people savored making movies, not just money."

According to Roger Ebert, in his review of Fat City, "His fascination with underdogs and losers. The characters in Huston movies hardly ever set out to achieve what they're aiming for. Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon, Huston's first film, ends up minus one partner and one woman he thought he could trust. Everyone is a loser in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the gold blows back into the dust and is lost in it. Ahab, in Moby Dick. Marlon Brando's career Army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye, even Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen – they all fall short of their plans. The African Queen does have a happy ending, but it feels tacked-on and ridiculous, and the Queen destroys itself in destroying the German steamer. So this [Fat City] is a theme we find in Huston's work, but rarely does he fit it to characters and a time and place so well as in Fat City. Maybe that's because Huston knows the territory: he was a professional boxer himself for a while, and not a very good one."

Directing techniques
He explored the visual aspects of his films throughout his career, sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. While most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, with little editing needed. Some of Huston's films were adaptations of important novels, often depicting a "heroic quest", as in Moby Dick, or The Red Badge of Courage. In many films, different groups of people, while struggling toward a common goal, would become doomed, forming "destructive alliances", giving the films a dramatic and visual tension. Many of his films involved themes such as religion, meaning, truth, freedom, psychology, colonialism, and war.

George Stevens, Jr. notes that while many directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot: "I don't even know the editor of my films most of the time," Huston said. Actor Michael Caine also observed the same technique: "Most directors don't know what they want so they shoot everything they can think of — they use the camera like a machine gun. John uses it like a sniper." Danny Huston confirmed as much when he recalled what Huston said to him as the then-youngster was fooling around with a Kodak Super 8: "and I was shooting all these various things. He said, 'Stop it, stop doing that.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'When you go from left to right and right to left, what do you do?' So I looked from left to right and right to left. I said, 'I give up. What do I do?' He said, 'You blink. That's a cut.'"

Film writer Peter Flint pointed out other benefits to Huston's style: "He shot economically, eschewing the many protective shots favored by timid directors, and edited cerebrally so that financial backers would have trouble trying to cut scenes." Huston shot most of his films on location, working "intensely" six days a week, and "on Sundays, played equally intense poker with the cast and crew."

When asked how he envisions his films while directing and what his goals are, Huston replied:

"To me the ideal film — which I've never succeeded in making — would be as though the reel were behind one's eyes and you were projecting it yourself, seeing what you wish to see. This has a great deal in common with thought processes ... That's why I think the camera is an eye as well as a mind. Everything we do with the camera has physiological and mental significance."

According to Kaminsky, much of Huston's vision probably came from his early experience as a painter on the streets of Paris. While there, he studied art and worked at it for a year and a half. Huston continued painting as a hobby for most of his life. Kaminsky also notes that most of Huston's films "reflected this prime interest in the image, the moving portrait and the use of color." Huston explored the use of "stylistic framing", especially well-planned close-ups, in much of his directing. In his first film, The Maltese Falcon, for instance, Huston sketched out all of his scenes beforehand, "like canvases of paintings". Anjelica Huston recalled that even for his subsequent films, he sketched storyboards "constantly... it was a form of study, and my father was a painter, a very good one... there was an extremely developed sensory quality about my father, he didn't miss a trick."

Personal life
To producer George Stevens, Jr., Huston symbolized "intellect, charm and physical grace" within the film industry. He adds, "He was the most charismatic of the directors I knew, speaking with a soothing, melodic voice that was often mimicked, but was unique to him." Huston loved the outdoors, especially hunting while living in Ireland. Among his life's adventures before becoming a Hollywood filmmaker, he had been an amateur boxer, reporter, short-story writer, portrait artist in Paris, a cavalry rider in Mexico, and a documentary filmmaker during World War II. Besides sports and adventure, he enjoyed hard liquor and relationships with women. Stevens describes him as someone who "lived life to its fullest". Barson even suggests that Huston's "flamboyant life" as a rebel would possibly make for "an even more engaging tale than most of his movies".

1933 car accident
While driving drunk on Sunset Boulevard on September 25, 1933, Huston struck and killed a pedestrian, a Brazilian dancer named Tosca Roulien, wife of Raul Roulien. The resulting media frenzy forced Huston to retreat temporarily from public performance and instead work as a screenwriter. A subsequent inquest absolved Huston of any blame for the accident. Prior to this accident – also while driving drunk – Huston crashed into a parked car injuring his passenger Zita Johann. Johann suffered head trauma as she was thrown through the windshield. Huston was charged with driving while intoxicated.

Beliefs
It has been suggested that John Huston was an atheist, but his religious beliefs are hard to determine. He claimed that he had no orthodox religion. His daughter, Anjelica, was raised Roman Catholic, and said that he did not like Hollywood, and "especially despised Beverly Hills ... he thought it was just fake from the ground up. He didn't like any of that; he was not intrigued or attracted by it." She said that, in contrast, "he liked to be in the wild places; he liked animals as much as he liked people."

Marriages
Huston married five times. His wives were:

 * 1) Dorothy Harvey (1906–1982) — This youthful marriage ended after seven years (October 17, 1926 – January 10, 1933).
 * 2) Lesley Black  — (m. 1937; div. 1945) — During his marriage to Black he embarked on an affair with a married New York socialite, Marietta FitzGerald. While her lawyer husband was helping the war effort, the pair were once rumoured to have made love so vigorously they broke a friend's bed.
 * 3) Evelyn Keyes (1916–2008) – (m. 1946; div. 1950) – They adopted a son Pablo, who John discovered orphaned in Mexico.
 * 4) Enrica Soma (1929–1969) – (m. 1950; died 1969) – Huston & Soma were married until she died at age 39 in a car accident. They had two children: Walter Anthony "Tony" Huston (b. 1950), screenwriter and attorney, father of actor Jack Huston; and a daughter, actress Anjelica Huston (b. 1951). During the marriage, Huston fathered a son, Danny Huston (b. 1962), with author Zoe Sallis. Danny became an actor. Soma also had a child from an extramarital affair during their marriage. Her daughter, Allegra Huston (b. 1964), is the child of John Julius Norwich. After Soma died at the age of 39, Huston treated the girl as one of his own children.
 * 5) Celeste Shane – (m. 1972; div. 1977) – In his autobiography, An Open Book, Huston refers to her as a "crocodile", and says that if he had his life to do over, he would not have married a fifth time.

Huston visited Ireland in 1951 and stayed at Luggala, County Wicklow, the home of Garech Browne, a member of the Guinness family. He visited Ireland several times afterwards and on one of these visits, he purchased and restored a Georgian home, St Clerans, of Craughwell, County Galway. Between 1960 and 1971 he served as Master of Fox Hounds (MFH) of the County Galway Hunt, whose kennels are at Craughwell. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and became an Irish citizen in 1964. His daughter Anjelica attended school in Ireland at Kylemore Abbey for a number of years. A film school is now dedicated to him on the NUI Galway campus.

Painting
Huston was an accomplished painter who wrote in his autobiography, "Nothing has played a more important role in my life". As a young man, he studied at the Smith School of Art in Los Angeles but dropped out within a few months. He later studied at the Art Students League of New York. He painted throughout his life and had studios in each of his homes. He had owned a wide collection of art, including a notable collection of Pre-Columbian art.

Illness and death
A heavy smoker, Huston was diagnosed with emphysema in 1978. By the last year of his life he could not breathe for more than twenty minutes without needing oxygen. He died on August 28, 1987, in his rented home in Middletown, Rhode Island, from pneumonia as a complication of lung disease, aged 81. Huston is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood with his mother. His friends included George Hodel, Orson Welles, and Ernest Hemingway. Humphrey Bogart was one of his best friends, and Huston delivered the eulogy at his funeral.

Archives
The moving image collection of John Huston is held at the Academy Film Archive. The film material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by production files, photographs, and personal correspondence found in the John Huston papers, 1932–1981, at the academy's Margaret Herrick Library. The film archive preserved several of John Huston's home movies in 2001.

Awards and honors
Huston received 15 Oscar nominations in the course of his career and became the oldest person ever to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar when, at 79 years old, he was nominated for Prizzi's Honor (1985), a record he would hold until 2023, when Martin Scorsese attained a nomination at the age of 81 for directing Killers of the Flower Moon. Huston won two Oscars, for directing and writing the screenplay for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Huston also won a Golden Globe for that film. He received the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1983, and the Career Achievement Award from the U.S. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures in 1984.

He also has the unique distinction of directing both his father Walter and his daughter Anjelica in Oscar-winning performances (in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Prizzi's Honor, respectively), making the Hustons the first family to have three generations of Academy Award winners. He also directed her in Sinful Davey in 1969.

In addition, he also directed 13 other actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Sydney Greenstreet, Claire Trevor, Sam Jaffe, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, José Ferrer, Colette Marchand, Deborah Kerr, Grayson Hall, Susan Tyrrell, Albert Finney, Jack Nicholson and William Hickey.

In 1960, Huston was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to motion pictures. In 1965, Huston received the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America. In 1981, his film Escape to Victory was nominated for the Golden Prize at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival. A statue of Huston, sitting in his director's chair, stands in Plaza John Huston in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

title: John Huston


text:
Talk:Ozone hole

Please relate the ozone hole to increases in cancer, and provide figures. Otherwise, this article will be biased toward the environmentalist anti-CFC point of view instead of being neutral. User:Ed Poor

Here is some information I found on the web. Perhaps it can be added to the article: User:Ed Poor

External references:

The amount of ozone above a point on the earth's surface is measured in Dobson units (DU) - typically ~260 DU near the tropics and higher elsewhere, though there are large seasonal fluctuations.

It's ironic that at ground level, ozone is a health hazard - it is a major constituent of photochemical smog. However, in the stratosphere we could not survive without it. Up in the stratosphere it absorbs some of the potentially harmful ultra-violet (UV) radiation from the sun (at wavelengths between 240 and 320 nm) which can cause skin cancer and damage vegetation, among other things.

The Ozone Hole often gets confused in the popular press and by the general public with the problem of global warming. Whilst there is a connection because ozone contributes to the greenhouse effect, the Ozone Hole is a separate issue.

The first global agreement to restrict CFCs came with the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987 ultimately aiming to reduce them by half by the year 2000. Two revisions of this agreement have been made in the light of advances in scientific understanding, the latest being in 1992.

However, unlike the sudden and near total loss of ozone over Antarctica at certain altitudes, the loss of ozone in mid-latitudes is much less and much slower - only a few percentage per year.

Many of these findings have since been reinforced by a variety of internationally supported scientific investigations involving satellites, aircraft, balloons and ground stations, and the implications are still being quantified and assessed. -- I have found one website at NASA that list the ozone layer as absorbing 95-99% of UV radiation. It listed a study that claimed that since 1969, total worldwide stratospheric ozone had declined 5.5% which should led to an 11% increase in UV-B reaching the surface and a 20% increase in basal carcinomas and 30%increase in squamous-cell carcinomas[Graedel&Crutzen]. These are the most easily cured skin cancers and there is less evidence relating melanoma to UV-B exposure. The site also listed another article which pointed out that a 10% increase in UV-B could be achieved by moving 60 miles south from any location. S.F.Singer Ozone, skin cancer and the SST Aerospace America July 1994. S.Fred Singer is director of the Science&Environmental Policy Project. --rmhermen

 * Thanks for the info. Now, for the hard part: adding that to the article. --User:Ed Poor

There are two problems with this article:
 * 1) Advocacy and science are mixed together and need to be separated. If there is a real connection between CFCs, ozone depletion and increased surface UV -- leading to more cancer cases -- let's document the science. Or at least quote some scientists.
 * 2) We need to reduce the overlap between the article and ozone depletion and CFC.

User:Ed Poor

(William M. Connolley 19:47 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)) I've added links to the ozone faq - which everyone should read :-) - and Jon Shanklins Ozone page. I've removed some skeptical text *from certain places*. Now for some pontificating: there is no scientific doubt about the connection between CFCs and Antarctic ozone depletion. None at all (once you ignore far-out loonies). One way to see this is to look at the weakness of the doubts raised on the page: doubt number 1 is that when the satellite data was first processed, there was an artificial low cut-off, so the hole wasn't seen! This is feeble indeed (and I've added a note about it). *However* where there is room for doubt (IMHO) is the link between ozone depletion and biological effects. So if you want to be doubty, focus on that.

 * Good for you. One sad consequeence of NPOV is that we spend far too much time on wacky lies shamelessly peddled by quacks in the pockets of corporations with vested interests. You can all quote me on that. -- Tarquin 20:39 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree completely. However, in my edits, I did not want to remove the objections completely, because somebody would only reinstate them in the insidious form in which every mainstream and well-attested piece of science was attacked all the way through the article. I instead moved them instead into a separate section of their own, so that they get an airing as required by NPOV, but with suitable caveats about Dr Singer, because his credentials really are very poor.  On the subject of credentials, I note that William M. Connolley (who further toned down the objections, which I welcome) is a scientist at British Antarctic Survey.  Hopefully his viewpoint as expressed above will be given due weight.  User:Ed Poor says above "Let's at least quote some scientists" -- well now we have one!
 * --Trainspotter 11:20 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I'm a scientist (I confess) but I claim no special credentials on the ozone hole: I'm only an informed layman on that (who happens to be able to walk down the corridor and ask two of the co-authors of Farman, Gardiner and Shanklin '85 what they think...). To be fair to EP, he was asking for the article to quote scientists who were involved in the research (William M. Connolley 11:48 26 Jun 2003 (UTC))

Dr. Connolley, please write from a neutral point of view when describing scientists with whom you disagree. If Fred Singer has said something which other scientists have contradicted, please point out the contradiction rather than saying Singer is wrong.

Otherwise, I'm going to start citing you personally as a scientist who disagrees with Singer, rather than letting you "contribute" to the article posing as a disinterested editor. --Ed Poor

Points for swiftness... However, you should be watching your own objectivity.

Anyway: I thought what I'd added was clear enough. I'll add some more to "beat it to death".

On second thoughts, lets try it here. I'm presuming that you object to the "controversial" bit, not the "percolate" bit. Singer says:

 * "CFCs with lifetimes of decades and longer" this is not controversial

 * "become well-mixed in the atmosphere" nor is this

 * ", percolate into the stratosphere," nor is this, if you say "are transported" rather than percolate, S's own page says "Contrary to the claims of some skeptics, CFCs do indeed reach the stratosphere..."

 * "and there release chlorine." Not controversial either.

So: could you please clarify what you are complaing about?

(William M. Connolley 09:51, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)) No answer?

Merge proposal
There's considerable overlap between ozone depletion and ozone hole, and somebody already deleted ozone depletion theory. So I think a merge is needed.

Let's try to cover the following ideas:
 * 1) ozone's protective role - keeps too much UV from reaching the surface
 * 2) destruction of ozone - by CFC (mostly) but also sunlight, et al.
 * 3) connection of ozone depletion to increased UV at surface and harmful consequences of it

We may or may not choose to keep ozone hole as a separate article, but anything about the three points above should go primarily in another article.

I think we need at least articles, something like:
 * ozone depletion -- research on theory and actual observations of how stratospheric ozone has been going down each year -- no controversy, no politics: just the facts (heavy on peer-reviewed articls)
 * ozone depletion theory -- argument or "theory" relating CFC to ozone loss to UV increase to cancer increase + extent to which this theory has been (a) accepted and/or (b) actually proven (good place for Singer's objections) -- good place to mention Montreal Protocol

Care to have a go, William? --Uncle Ed 15:47, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * (William M. Connolley 21:43, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)) User:Deglr6328 appears to be hacking it around at the moment and its getting late... I'll rty to look tomorrow before I go on hols again.

I believe this should have it's own article. 'Ozone hole' is an important scientific topic for today and there's a difference besides ozone depletion. Wethar555 (talk) 05:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Keep merge with Ozone depletion - or not?
There's considerable overlap between ozone depletion and ozone hole, and somebody already deleted ozone depletion theory. So I think a merge is needed.

Let's try to cover the following ideas:
 * 1) ozone's protective role - keeps too much UV from reaching the surface
 * 2) destruction of ozone - by CFC (mostly) but also sunlight, et al.
 * 3) connection of ozone depletion to increased UV at surface and harmful consequences of it

We may or may not choose to keep ozone hole as a separate article, but anything about the three points above should go primarily in another article.

I think we need at least articles, something like: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simon Chabrillat (talk • contribs) 04:51, 5 March 2013
 * ozone depletion -- research on theory and actual observations of how stratospheric ozone has been going down each year -- no controversy, no politics: just the facts (heavy on peer-reviewed articls)
 * ozone depletion theory -- argument or "theory" relating CFC to ozone loss to UV increase to cancer increase + extent to which this theory has been (a) accepted and/or (b) actually proven (good place for Singer's objections) -- good place to mention Montreal Protocol

 * (--Simon Chabrillat (talk) 04:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)) 'Ozone hole' is indeed a more specific topic than ozone depletion which also covers the fate of ozone in the upper stratosphere and outside the polar regions. The words "ozone hole" are more oriented towards the general public, which may justify a separate article using more mundane language.

I like the idea of redirecting to "Ozone Depletion." That article is easy enough to understand, and better written than this one. It should at least be clear in this article that that one exists. (Wayne Bosma, 19 Aug 2014)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Ozone hole


text:
Cantata

A cantata (literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb cantare, "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.

The meaning of the term changed over time, from the simple single-voice madrigal of the early 17th century, to the multi-voice "cantata da camera" and the "cantata da chiesa" of the later part of that century, from the more substantial dramatic forms of the 18th century to the usually sacred-texted 19th-century cantata, which was effectively a type of short oratorio. Cantatas for use in the liturgy of church services are called church cantata or sacred cantatas; other cantatas can be indicated as secular cantatas. Several cantatas were, and still are, written for special occasions, such as Christmas cantatas. Christoph Graupner, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach composed cycles of church cantatas for the occasions of the liturgical year.

Historical context
The term originated in the early 17th century, simultaneously with opera and oratorio. Prior to that, all "cultured" music was vocal. With the rise of instrumental music, the term appeared, while instrumental art became sufficiently developed to be embodied in sonatas. From the beginning of the 17th century until late in the 18th, the cantata for one or two solo voices with accompaniment of basso continuo (and perhaps a few solo instruments) was a principal form of Italian vocal chamber music.

A cantata consisted first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative, held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals. Fine examples may be found in the church music of Giacomo Carissimi; and the English vocal solos of Henry Purcell (such as Mad Tom and Mad Bess) show the utmost that can be made of this archaic form. With the rise of the da capo aria, the cantata became a group of two or three arias joined by recitative. George Frideric Handel's numerous Italian duets and trios are examples on a rather large scale. His Latin motet Silete Venti, for soprano solo, shows the use of this form in church music.

Differences from other musical forms
The Italian solo cantata tended, when on a large scale, to become indistinguishable from a scene in an opera, in the same way the church cantata, solo or choral, is indistinguishable from a small oratorio or portion of an oratorio. This is equally evident whether one examines the church cantatas of Bach, of which nearly 200 are extant (see List of Bach cantatas) or the Chandos Anthems of Handel. In Johann Sebastian Bach's case, some of the larger cantatas are actually called oratorios, and the Christmas Oratorio is a collection of six church cantatas actually intended for performance on six different days, though together they form as complete an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.

Baroque
During the baroque era, the term "cantata" generally retained its original Italian usage to describe a secular vocal piece of extended length, often in different sections, and usually Italianate in style. At the same time, vocal pieces of similar scope, often with several singers, and various instruments, were in great demand for the services of the Lutheran church. Such pieces were usually called geistliche Konzerte (singular: geistliches Konzert, meaning sacred concerto). Many of these pieces were simply called by their opening text. Such pieces for the liturgy or other occasions were not only composed by Bach but also by Dieterich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel and Georg Philipp Telemann, to name a few. The editors of the Bach Gesellschaft adopted "sacred cantata" as a convenient catchall for most of Bach's liturgical pieces. The term was then retroactively applied by Philipp Spitta to refer to comparable works by composers from Heinrich Schütz onwards. Many secular cantatas were composed for events in the nobility. They were so similar in form to the sacred ones that many of them were parodied (in parts or completely) to sacred cantatas, for example in Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Bach cantatas
Johann Sebastian Bach, almost 200 of whose cantatas survive, is a notable contributor to the genre.

His cantatas are usually written for a baroque orchestra consisting of a string section, an oboe section, and a continuo group, timpani and brass were sometimes added on festive occasions such as Christmas or Easter. The vocal forces consisted of a four-part choir and soloists. Bach also wrote some cantatas for only one solo singer (ex. BWV 51).

Graupner's cantatas
Christoph Graupner was Hofkapellmeister at the court of Hesse-Darmstadt and provided over 1,400 cantatas during his nearly 50 years of employment there, making him the most significant contributor to the genre. While only a handful of Bach's cantatas contain accompanied chorales (the vocal parts are usually doubled by the instrumental parts), nearly all of Graupner's chorales feature elaborate ritornello sections. This is possibly due to the fact that Bach's Leipzig congregation was expected to sing along with them, but the Darmstadt court was not. Also, many of Graupner's cantatas exploit elaborate orchestral effects and use exotic instrumentation, such as chalumeau, flûte d'amour, oboe d'amore, viola d'amore, trumpets, horns and timpani. See: List of cantatas by Christoph Graupner.

Classical and romantic period
The term "cantata" came to be applied almost exclusively to choral works, as distinguished from solo vocal music. In early 19th-century cantatas, the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than in oratorio, not excluding the possibility of a brilliant climax in a fugue as in Ludwig van Beethoven's Der glorreiche Augenblick, Carl Maria von Weber's Jubel-Kantate, and Felix Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht. Anton Bruckner composed several Name-day cantatas, a Festive Cantata and two secular cantatas (Germanenzug and Helgoland). Bruckner's Psalm 146 is also in cantata form. Mendelssohn's Symphony Cantata, the Lobgesang, is a hybrid work, partly in the oratorio style. It is preceded by three symphonic movements, a device avowedly suggested by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; but the analogy is not accurate, as Beethoven's work is a symphony of which the fourth movement is a choral finale of essentially single design, whereas Mendelssohn's Symphony Cantata is a cantata with three symphonic preludes. The full lyric possibilities of a string of choral songs were realized by Johannes Brahms in his Rinaldo, which, like the Walpurgisnacht—was set to a text by Goethe. Other cantatas, Beethoven's Meeresstille, works of Brahms and many notable small English choral works, such as cantatas of John Henry Maunder and John Stanley, find various ways to set poetry to choral music. The competition for the French Prix de Rome requires that each candidate submit a cantata. Hector Berlioz failed in three attempts before finally winning in 1830 with Sardanapale. While almost all of the Prix de Rome cantatas have long since been forgotten (along with their composers, for the most part), Debussy's prize-winning L'enfant prodigue (1884, following his unsuccessful Le gladiateur of 1883) is still performed occasionally today. Late in the century, Gustav Mahler wrote his early Das klagende Lied on his own words between 1878 and 1880, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor created a successful trilogy of cantatas, The Song of Hiawatha between 1898 and 1900.

Twentieth century and beyond
Cantatas, both of the chamber variety and on a grand scale, were composed after 1900 as well. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that one of the most popular pieces of classical music of the 20th century to the layman's ears, is a cantata, namely Carmina Burana (1935–1936) by the German composer Carl Orff.

In the early part of the century, secular cantatas once again became prominent, while the 19th-century tradition of sacred cantatas also continued. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed both kinds: "festival" cantatas such as Toward the Unknown Region (1907), Five Mystical Songs (1911), and Five Tudor Portraits (1936), and sacred cantatas including Sancta civitas (1926), Benedicite (1930), Dona nobis pacem (1936), and Hodie (1954). Joseph Ryelandt also composed secular and sacred cantatas, such as Le chant de la pauvreté Op. 92 in 1928 and Veni creator Op. 123 in 1938. Béla Bartók composed the secular Cantata Profana, subtitled "The Nine Splendid Stags" and based on a Romanian folk tale, in 1930. Although it began as a song cycle (as reflected also by its title), Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder (1900–1903/1910–11) evolved into one of the century's largest secular cantatas. Paul Hindemith composed three works he designated as cantatas: Die Serenaden, Op. 35, for soprano, oboe, viola, and cello (1924), Mahnung an die Jugend, sich der Musik zu befleissigen (from the Plöner Musiktage, 1932), and Ite angeli veloces for alto and tenor, mixed chorus, and orchestra, with audience participation (1953–55). Of Anton Webern's last three compositions, two are secular cantatas: Cantata No. 1, Op. 29 (1938–39), and Cantata No. 2, Op. 31 (1941–43), both setting texts by Hildegard Jone. Webern had begun sketching a Third Cantata by the time he was killed in 1945. Ernst Krenek also composed two examples: a "scenic cantata", Die Zwingburg, Op. 14 (1922), and a Cantata for Wartime, Op. 95, for women's voices and orchestra (1943). Sergei Prokofiev composed Semero ikh (1917–18; rev. 1933), and in 1939 premiered a cantata drawn from the film music for Alexander Nevsky. He wrote two festival cantatas, the Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op. 74, and Flourish, Mighty Homeland, Op. 114, for the thirtieth anniversary of the same event

Patriotic cantatas celebrating anniversaries of events in the Revolution or extolling state leaders were frequently commissioned in the Soviet Union between 1930 and the middle of the century, though these occasional works were seldom among their composers' best. Examples include Dmitri Shostakovich's Poem of the Motherland, Op. 47 (1947) and The Sun Shines over Our Motherland, Op. 90 (1952), and three works by Prokofiev, Zdravitsa! [Hail to Stalin] (1939). Dmitry Kabalevsky also composed four such cantatas, The Great Homeland, Op. 35 (1941–42), The Song of Morning, Spring and Peace, Op. 57 (1957–58), Leninists, Op. 63 (1959), and About Our Native Land, Op. 82 (1965).

In 1940, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos created a secular cantata titled Mandu çarará, based on an Indian legend collected by Barbosa Rodrigues. Francis Poulenc composed in 1943 Figure humaine, FP 120, a cantata for double mixed choir of 12 voices on poems by Paul Éluard. Igor Stravinsky composed a work titled simply Cantata in 1951–52, which used stanzas from the 15th-century "Lyke-wake Dirge" as a narrative frame for other anonymous English lyrics, and later designated A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961) as "a cantata for alto and tenor soli, speaker, chorus, and orchestra". Luigi Nono wrote Il canto sospeso in 1955–56. Hans Werner Henze composed a Cantata della fiaba estrema and Novae de infinito laudes (both in 1963), as well as a number of other works that might be regarded as cantatas, such as Kammermusik (1958, rev. 1963), Muzen Siziliens (1966), and El Cimarrón (1969–70). Momente (1962–64/1969), one of the most important works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, is often described as a cantata. Benjamin Britten composed at least six works he designated as cantatas: The Company of Heaven (1937), Rejoice in the Lamb, Op. 30 (1943), Saint Nicolas, Op. 42 (1949), the Cantata academica, Op. 62 (1959), the Cantata Misericordium, Op. 69 (1963), and Phaedra, Op. 93 (1975). Alberto Ginastera also composed three works in this form: the Cantata para América Mágica, Op. 27 (1960), Bomarzo, Op. 32 (1964), and Milena, Op. 37 (1971), and Gottfried von Einem composed in 1973 An die Nachgeborenen based on diverse texts, the title taken from a poem of Bertolt Brecht. Mikis Theodorakis composed the cantatas According to the Sadducees and Canto Olympico. Herbert Blendinger's Media in vita was premiered in 1980, his Mich ruft zuweilen eine Stille (Sometimes a silence calls me) in (1992), and Allein den Betern kann es noch gelingen (It can only be achieved by those who pray) in 1995. Iván Erőd wrote in 1988/89) Vox Lucis (Voice of the Light), Op. 56. Ivan Moody wrote in 1995 Revelation. Cantatas were also composed by Mark Alburger, Erik Bergman, Dave Brubeck, Carlos Chávez, Osvald Chlubna, Peter Maxwell Davies, Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Roy Harris, Arthur Honegger, Alan Hovhaness, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Libby Larsen, Jón Leifs, Peter Mennin, Dimitri Nicolau, Krzysztof Penderecki, Allan Pettersson, Daniel Pinkham, Earl Robinson, Ned Rorem, William Schuman (A Free Song), Roger Sessions, Siegfried Strohbach, Michael Tippett, Kurt Weill and Jörg Widmann (Kantate) and Jan Ryant Dřízal (Christmas Cantata).

title: Cantata


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Talk:Cantata

Article originally from 1911 enc.
Frankly, I don't see the point of pasting in stuff from the 1911 encyclopedia. You find it all over Wikipedia and some of it is really bad. In any case, it's all available on the web already so what's the point of reproducing it here?

BevRowe 18:22 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree with you basically, but what we have here is better than nothing, I think (this perhaps isn't always the case with 1911 articles though). Feel free to write an article of your own to replace the 1911 text. --Camembert

 * You would say that, wouldn't you! I'm not qualified to do it. But I think my point about 1911 already being on the web is valid. BevRowe 18:43 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

I agree that this article is better than nothing, but its origin really does show, and not always in a good way. E.g.:
 * 1. "The music was far more coherent than is possible in the Anglican church." (ok for 1911 Britannica, but parochial for wikipedia)
 * 2. "There has, perhaps, been only one kind of cantata since Bach which can be recognized as an art form and not as a mere title for works otherwise impossible to classify." (very POV)

And finally:
 * 3. "Brahms has probably said the last word on this subject." (POV and dated)

-- 67.174.192.178 07:30, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I just removed those three meaningless sentences, but the article still needs some heavy editing. Apus 13:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Bach
Bach's congregation did not sing along with the final chorale -- this is a Romantic-era myth that has long been dispelled and no serious Bach scholar argues that this occured. The problem is finding a cite for this. Because no serious Bach scholar believes it, they don't really bother taking the time to specifically refute it (as just one among many Romantic-era myths of Bach and his musical practices). However, I think the entire section that mentions that could be justifiably removed since it's mostly a NPOV defense of Bach's cantatas against phantom (uncited) allegations that the final chorale represents an anticlimax.

 * Please sign your post --TimothyJacobson (talk) 12:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The writer who didn't sign is right twice: the congregation didn't join singing the chorale, and the Bach section is covered in Bach cantata and could be shortened here. Talking about myths: in BWV 172 Bach himself marked to repeat the opening chorus after the chorale, that was in 1714 when he was young. (DYK 7 April 2010) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

"Cantata"

It is problematic that this article does not mention the fact that Bach and his German contemporaries and predecessors did not normally call their church pieces cantatas. The term was used in Italy for secular vocal pieces and was applied as a catchall category in the latter half of the 19th century to German baroque sacred vocal pieces that were typically "geistliche Konzerte" (pl. or "geistliches Konzert (sing.)) by their composers. Any good article on the topic, such as the one at Grove Music Online, will mention that calling these works cantatas is a convenient convention, but not what baroque German composers called them. --HenryPurcell (talk) 13:26, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

 * Go ahead, add that, you can find some on Bach cantata. Bach called very view sacred solo cantatas "Cantata", others mostly "Concerto" or just the incipit. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:58, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Lights
Should there be a disambiguation link (should such a page exist) to Strand Cantata, the light--TimothyJacobson (talk) 12:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Linked music files
The example OGG files are a little confusing. They seem to be solely instrumental, but the article goes on at great length about the vocal aspect of a cantata. --Gwern (contribs) 19:52 12 January 2010 (GMT)
 * The music files now have vocals, but they might benefit from moving to another place on the page. Currently they are between the 'Differences from other musical forms' and 'Baroque' sections. Maybe they should be moved to the Baroque section, since both examples are from that era? CelloCello1 (talk) 00:05, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

MaCarther Park
I think Webb'.s MaCarther Park is a cantata Jackhammer111 (talk) 10:55, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

 * I've added a link – I initially saw this comment as frivolous. Rwood128 (talk) 21:50, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

 * According to that linked article, "MacArthur Park" is not a cantata in itself but, rather, one movement of a cantata. The article fails to say anything further about the complete cantata (how many movements, what was the title, etc.), which seems a pity.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:21, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Cantata


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Metric system

The metric system is a decimal-based system of measurement. The current international standard for the metric system is the International System of Units (Système international d'unités or SI), in which all units can be expressed in terms of seven base units: the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela.

Prefixes for multiples and submultiples
In the metric system, multiples and submultiples of units follow a decimal pattern.

A common set of decimal-based prefixes that have the effect of multiplication or division by an integer power of ten can be applied to units that are themselves too large or too small for practical use. The prefix kilo, for example, is used to multiply the unit by 1000, and the prefix milli is to indicate a one-thousandth part of the unit. Thus the kilogram and kilometre are a thousand grams and metres respectively, and a milligram and millimetre are one thousandth of a gram and metre respectively. These relations can be written symbolically as:

1 mg = 0.001 g

1 km = 1000 m

Definitions of the metric system units
The decimalised system is based on the metre, which had been introduced in France in the 1790s. The historical development of these systems culminated in the definition of the International System of Units (SI) in the mid-20th century, under the oversight of an international standards body. Adopting the metric system is known as metrication.

The historical evolution of metric systems has resulted in the recognition of several principles. A set of independent dimensions of nature is selected, in terms of which all natural quantities can be expressed, called base quantities. For each of these dimensions, a representative quantity is defined as a base unit of measure. The definition of base units has increasingly been realised in terms of fundamental natural phenomena, in preference to copies of physical artefacts. A unit derived from the base units is used for expressing quantities of dimensions that can be derived from the base dimensions of the system—e.g., the square metre is the derived unit for area, which is derived from length. These derived units are coherent, which means that they involve only products of powers of the base units, without any further factors. For any given quantity whose unit has a name and symbol, an extended set of smaller and larger units is defined that are related by factors of powers of ten. The unit of time should be the second; the unit of length should be either the metre or a decimal multiple of it; and the unit of mass should be the gram or a decimal multiple of it.

Metric systems have evolved since the 1790s, as science and technology have evolved, in providing a single universal measuring system. Before and in addition to the SI, other metric systems include: the MKS system of units and the MKSA systems, which are the direct forerunners of the SI; the centimetre–gram–second (CGS) system and its subtypes, the CGS electrostatic (cgs-esu) system, the CGS electromagnetic (cgs-emu) system, and their still-popular blend, the Gaussian system; the metre–tonne–second (MTS) system; and the gravitational metric systems, which can be based on either the metre or the centimetre, and either the gram, gram-force, kilogram or kilogram-force.

The SI has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by nearly all nations in the world.

The creation and evolution to the present (SI) metric system
The French Revolution (1789–99) enabled France to reform its many outdated system of various local weights and measures. In 1790, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord proposed a new system based on natural units to the French National Assembly, aiming for global adoption. With the United Kingdom not responding to a request to collaborate in the development of the system, the French Academy of Sciences established a commission to implement this new standard alone, and in 1799, the new system was launched in France.

The units of the metric system, originally taken from observable features of nature, are now defined by seven physical constants being given exact numerical values in terms of the units. In the modern form of the International System of Units (SI), the seven base units are: metre for length, kilogram for mass, second for time, ampere for electric current, kelvin for temperature, candela for luminous intensity and mole for amount of substance. These, together with their derived units, can measure any physical quantity. Derived units may have their own unit name, such as the watt (J/s) and lux (cd/m2), or may just be expressed as combinations of base units, such as velocity (m/s) and acceleration (m/s2).

The metric system was designed to have properties that make it easy to use and widely applicable, including units based on the natural world, decimal ratios, prefixes for multiples and sub-multiples, and a structure of base and derived units. It is a coherent system, derived units were built up from the base units using logical rather than empirical relationships while multiples and submultiples of both base and derived units were decimal-based and identified by a standard set of prefixes.

The metric system is extensible, and new derived units are defined as needed in fields such as radiology and chemistry. For example, the katal, a derived unit for catalytic activity equivalent to one mole per second (1 mol/s), was added in 1999.

Realisation
The base units used in a measurement system must be realisable. Each of the definitions of the base units in the SI is accompanied by a defined mise en pratique [practical realisation] that describes in detail at least one way in which the base unit can be measured. Where possible, definitions of the base units were developed so that any laboratory equipped with proper instruments would be able to realise a standard without reliance on an artefact held by another country. In practice, such realisation is done under the auspices of a mutual acceptance arrangement.

In 1791 the commission originally defined the metre based on the size of the earth, equal to one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In the SI, the standard metre is now defined as exactly $1/299,792,458$ of the distance that light travels in a second. The metre can be realised by measuring the length that a light wave travels in a given time, or equivalently by measuring the wavelength of light of a known frequency.

The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at 4 °C, standardized as the mass of a man-made artefact of platinum–iridium held in a laboratory in France, which was used until a new definition was introduced in May 2019. Replicas made in 1879 at the time of the artefact's fabrication and distributed to signatories of the Metre Convention serve as de facto standards of mass in those countries. Additional replicas have been fabricated since as additional countries have joined the convention. The replicas were subject to periodic validation by comparison to the original, called the IPK. It became apparent that either the IPK or the replicas or both were deteriorating, and are no longer comparable: they had diverged by 50 μg since fabrication, so figuratively, the accuracy of the kilogram was no better than 5 parts in a hundred million or a relative accuracy of $5$. The accepted redefinition of SI base units replaced the IPK with an exact definition of the Planck constant as expressed in SI units, which defines the kilogram in terms of fundamental constants.

Base and derived unit structure
A base quantity is one of a conventionally chosen subset of physical quantities, where no quantity in the subset can be expressed in terms of the others. A base unit is a unit adopted for expressing a base quantity. A derived unit is used for expressing any other quantity, and is a product of powers of base units. For example, in the modern metric system, length has the unit metre and time has the unit second, and speed has the derived unit metre per second. Density, or mass per unit volume, has the unit kilogram per cubic metre.

Decimal ratios
A characteristic feature of metric systems is their reliance upon multiples of 10. For example, the base unit of length is the metre, and distances much longer or much shorter than 1 metre are measured in units that are powers of 10 times a metre. This is unlike older systems of units in which the ratio between the units for longer and shorter distances varied: there are 12 inches in a foot, but the number of 5,280 feet in a mile is not a power of 12. For many everyday applications, the United States has resisted the adoption of a decimal-based system, continuing to use "a conglomeration of basically incoherent measurement systems".

In the early days, multipliers that were positive powers of ten were given Greek-derived prefixes such as kilo- and mega-, and those that were negative powers of ten were given Latin-derived prefixes such as centi- and milli-. However, 1935 extensions to the prefix system did not follow this convention: the prefixes nano- and micro-, for example have Greek roots. During the 19th century the prefix myria-, derived from the Greek word μύριοι (mýrioi), was used as a multiplier for $10,000$.

When applying prefixes to derived units of area and volume that are expressed in terms of units of length squared or cubed, the square and cube operators are applied to the unit of length including the prefix, as illustrated below.

Prefixes are not usually used to indicate multiples of a second greater than 1; the non-SI units of minute, hour and day are used instead. On the other hand, prefixes are used for multiples of the non-SI unit of volume, the litre (l, L) such as millilitres (ml).

Coherence
Each variant of the metric system has a degree of coherence—the derived units are directly related to the base units without the need for intermediate conversion factors. For example, in a coherent system the units of force, energy, and power are chosen so that the equations hold without the introduction of unit conversion factors. Once a set of coherent units has been defined, other relationships in physics that use this set of units will automatically be true. Therefore, Einstein's mass–energy equation, E = mc, does not require extraneous constants when expressed in coherent units.

The CGS system had two units of energy, the erg that was related to mechanics and the calorie that was related to thermal energy; so only one of them (the erg) could bear a coherent relationship to the base units. Coherence was a design aim of SI, which resulted in only one unit of energy being defined – the joule.

Rationalisation
Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism contained a factor of $$1/(4\pi)$$ relating to steradians, representative of the fact that electric charges and magnetic fields may be considered to emanate from a point and propagate equally in all directions, i.e. spherically. This factor made equations more awkward than necessary, and so Oliver Heaviside suggested adjusting the system of units to remove it.

Example notations in everyday life
The basic units of the metric system, as originally defined, represented common quantities or relationships in nature. They still do – the modern precisely defined quantities are refinements of definition and methodology, but still with the same magnitudes. In cases where laboratory precision may not be required or available, or where approximations are good enough, the original definitions may suffice.

Basic units: metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela for derived units, such as Volts and Watts, see International System of Units.

 * Length (m): The length of the equator is close to $0 m2$ (more precisely $1,000,000 m2$). In fact, the dimensions of our planet were used by the French Academy in the original definition of the metre; most dining tabletops are about 0.75 metres high; a very tall human (basketball forward) is about 2 metres tall.
 * Mass (kg): A 1-euro coin weighs 7.5 g; a Sacagawea US 1-dollar coin weighs 8.1 g; a UK 50-pence coin weighs 8.0 g.
 * Time (s): The use of minutes and hours instead of kilo and mega seconds: A second is $0 m3$ of a minute, which is $1,000,000,000 m3$ of an hour, which is $40,000 km$ of a day, so a second is $40,000,000 metres$ of a day.
 * Temperature (K) and Celsius(°C) relationship: Common to use Celsius instead of Kelvins, due to the scale, however a temperature difference of one kelvin is the same as one degree Celsius: $40,075,014.2 metres$ of the temperature differential between the freezing and boiling points of water at sea level; the absolute temperature in kelvins is the temperature in degrees Celsius plus about 273; human body temperature is about 37 °C or 310 K.
 * Length (m), Mass (kg), Litre (l) and Temperature (°C): The kilogram is the mass of a litre of cold water. 1 milliliter of water occupies 1 cubic centimetre, weighs 1 gram, and we would need 1 calorie of energy to heat it 1 degree Celsius (which is 1 percent of the difference between the freezing point and the boiling point).
 * Candela (cd) and Watt (W) relationship: Candela is about the luminous intensity of a moderately bright candle, or 1 candle power; a 60 Watt tungsten-filament incandescent light bulb has a luminous intensity of about 64 candelas.
 * Watts (W), Volts (V) and Ampere (A) relationship: A 60 W incandescent light bulb rated at 120 V (US mains voltage) consumes 0.5 A at this voltage. A 60 W bulb rated at 230 V (European mains voltage) consumes 0.26 A at this voltage.
 * Mole (mol) and Mass(kg) relationship: A mole of a substance has a mass that is its molecular mass expressed in units of grams; the mass of a mole of carbon is 12.0 g, and the mass of a mole of table salt is 58.4 g.
 * Mole (mol): Since all gases have the same volume per mole at a given temperature and pressure far from their points of liquefaction and solidification (see Perfect gas), and air is about $1⁄60$ oxygen (molecular mass 32) and $1⁄60$ nitrogen (molecular mass 28), the density of any near-perfect gas relative to air can be obtained to a good approximation by dividing its molecular mass by 29 (because $1⁄24$ × 28 + $1⁄86,400$ × 32 = 28.8 ≈ 29). For example, carbon monoxide (molecular mass 28) has almost the same density as air.

Development of various metric systems
A number of different metric system have been developed, all using the Mètre des Archives and Kilogramme des Archives (or their descendants) as their base units, but differing in the definitions of the various derived units.

19th century
In 1832, Gauss used the astronomical second as a base unit in defining the gravitation of the Earth, and together with the milligram and millimetre, this became the first system of mechanical units. He showed that the strength of a magnet could also be quantified in terms of these units, by measuring the oscillations of a magnetized needle and finding the quantity of "magnetic fluid" that produces an acceleration of one unit when applied to a unit mass. The centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS) was the first coherent metric system, having been developed in the 1860s and promoted by Maxwell and Thomson. In 1874, this system was formally promoted by the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). The system's characteristics are that density is expressed in g/cm3, force expressed in dynes and mechanical energy in ergs. Thermal energy was defined in calories, one calorie being the energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water from 15.5 °C to 16.5 °C. The meeting also recognised two sets of units for electrical and magnetic properties – the electrostatic set of units and the electromagnetic set of units.

The CGS units of electricity were cumbersome to work with. This was remedied at the 1893 International Electrical Congress held in Chicago by defining the "international" ampere and ohm using definitions based on the metre, kilogram and second, in the International System of Electrical and Magnetic Units. During the same period in which the CGS system was being extended to include electromagnetism, other systems were developed, distinguished by their choice of coherent base unit, including the Practical System of Electric Units, or QES (quad–eleventhgram–second) system, was being used. Here, the base units are the quad, equal to $1⁄100$ (approximately a quadrant of the Earth's circumference), the eleventhgram, equal to $1⁄5$, and the second. These were chosen so that the corresponding electrical units of potential difference, current and resistance had a convenient magnitude.

20th century
In 1901, Giovanni Giorgi showed that by adding an electrical unit as a fourth base unit, the various anomalies in electromagnetic systems could be resolved. The metre–kilogram–second–coulomb (MKSC) and metre–kilogram–second–ampere (MKSA) systems are examples of such systems.

The metre–tonne–second system of units (MTS) was based on the metre, tonne and second – the unit of force was the sthène and the unit of pressure was the pièze. It was invented in France for industrial use and from 1933 to 1955 was used both in France and in the Soviet Union. Gravitational metric systems use the kilogram-force (kilopond) as a base unit of force, with mass measured in a unit known as the hyl, Technische Masseneinheit (TME), mug or metric slug. Although the CGPM passed a resolution in 1901 defining the standard value of acceleration due to gravity to be 980.665 cm/s2, gravitational units are not part of the International System of Units (SI).

International System of Units
The International System of Units is the modern metric system. It is based on the metre–kilogram–second–ampere (MKSA) system of units from early in the 20th century. It also includes numerous coherent derived units for common quantities like power (watt) and irradience (lumen). Electrical units were taken from the International system then in use. Other units like those for energy (joule) were modelled on those from the older CGS system, but scaled to be coherent with MKSA units. Two additional base units – the kelvin, which is equivalent to degree Celsius for change in thermodynamic temperature but set so that 0 K is absolute zero, and the candela, which is roughly equivalent to the international candle unit of illumination – were introduced. Later, another base unit, the mole, a unit of amount of substance equivalent to the Avogadro number number of specified molecules, was added along with several other derived units.

The system was promulgated by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (French: Conférence générale des poids et mesures – CGPM) in 1960. At that time, the metre was redefined in terms of the wavelength of a spectral line of the krypton-86 atom (krypton-86 being a stable isotope of an inert gas that occurs in undetectable or trace amounts naturally), and the standard metre artefact from 1889 was retired.

Today, the International system of units consists of 7 base units and innumerable coherent derived units including 22 with special names. The last new derived unit, the katal for catalytic activity, was added in 1999. All the base units except the second are now defined in terms of exact and invariant constants of physics or mathematics, barring those parts of their definitions which are dependent on the second itself. As a consequence, the speed of light has now become an exactly defined constant, and defines the metre as $4⁄5$ of the distance light travels in a second. The kilogram was defined by a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy until a new definition in terms of natural physical constants was adopted in 2019. As of 2022, the range of decimal prefixes has been extended to those for 1030 (quetta–) and 10−30 (quecto–).

title: Metric system