What is the relationship between the view, the controller and the action in the controller exactly?

[yoursurrogategod]

Hi, I think I'm slightly confused about how all of these pieces fit together. 

These are my files and I've included the output. 

application/controllers/ReportsController.php: 
http://bin.cakephp.org/view/1278364199

application/views/scripts/reports/date-custom-report.html: 
http://bin.cakephp.org/view/821235364

And this is the output that I get when I run it from this URL [ http://host.com/project/reports/date-custom-report ]: 
http://bin.cakephp.org/view/2092353700

I've shortened the Zend_Debug::dump($this->view) output in the controller. 

But basically, why is none of the stuff (like "Hello world!") in my view not being displayed?  Am I doing something very silly/stupid? 

Thanks in advance for all help that you guys give, I'd really appreciate it.