Director John Huston produced a 1946 film about returning WW2 veterans with psychological trauma. The Defense Department suppressed it and did not allow it to be shown for 30 years. Why?
''Let There Be Light'' is a good, slickly made documentary about the treatment of psychoneurotic combat veterans at Mason General Hospital on Long Island. The treatment involved the thenrevolutionary use of truth drugs and hypnosis and, though the movie tells us more than once that the cures we see will have to be supported by long, intensive psychiatric care, the impression given and even encouraged by the film is of a series of miraculous cures.
In the late 40's, the Army seemed to feel that the film would scare off potential recruits. In his recently published autobiography, ''An Open Book,'' Mr. Huston reports the Army justified its censorship on the grounds that a public showing of the film would invade the privacy of the soldiers. He also reports, in passing, that he photographed some patients being given shock treatment . . .
