Let There Be Light (1946 film)

[2] Demobilizing near the end of World War II, the U.S. Army had the task of reintegrating returning military veterans into peacetime society.

To convince the public, and especially employers, that veterans being treated for battle-induced mental instability were completely normal after psychiatric treatment, on June 25, 1945, the Army Signal Corps tasked Major John Huston with producing the documentary The Returning Psychoneurotics.

The reasons for the selection were that Mason General was the largest mental-health facility on the East Coast, that the hospital was located near the Army's motion picture production center at Astoria Studios in Queens and that the doctors were very open and receptive to the filming and any psychiatric questions that Huston had.

[2] The new title that Huston gave the film, Let There Be Light, was a reference to Genesis 1:3 of the King James Version of the Bible and alluded to the documentary's goal of revealing truths that were previously concealed as too frightening or shameful for acknowledgment.

A group of 75 U.S. service members—recent combat veterans suffering from various "nervous conditions" including psychoneurosis, battle neurosis, conversion disorder, amnesia, severe stammering and anxiety states—arrive at the facility.

[2] Joseph Henabery directed Shades of Gray, using an all-white cast of actors to recreate scenes and dialogue from Huston's documentary.

"Twenty percent of our army casualties," the narrator says, "suffered psychoneurotic symptoms: a sense of impending disaster, hopelessness, fear, and isolation.

"[13] Because of the potentially demoralizing effects that the film might have on post-war recruitment, it was subsequently banned by the Army after its production, although some unofficial copies had been made.

[13] Huston claimed that the military banned his film to maintain a "warrior" myth that American soldiers returned from war stronger, that everyone was a hero and that, despite casualties, their spirits remained unbroken.

[9] The film's eventual release in the 1980s by Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander, Jr. occurred after his friend Jack Valenti worked to have the ban lifted.

[16] The copy of the film that was released was of poor quality, with a garbled sound track that "made it almost impossible to understand the whispers and mumbles of soldiers in some scenes.