Comedy had never really been Huston's forte throughout his career, but many of the scenes in The Dead are laced with humour, especially the ones that feature Donnelly, and despite the problems he was going
through during the course of filming, it was clear that Huston was aiming to venture into areas that he had not encountered before.
Tonkin charts Greene's love for
film through the decades — from his years as a famed
film critic (
during which he wrote, Tonkin says, «perhaps the most notorious notice in the history
of film criticism» about Shirley Temple) to his days as a movie insider and collaborator with such luminaries as Alexander Korda, Alberto Cavacanti, and,
of course, Reed, with whom he made his most lasting mark on the medium.