La nuit de l'iguane

Director John Huston took an all-star cast to a remote Mexican location to film this adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play. The location atmosphere lends a lot to the production and gives it a realistic atmosphere. Burton plays a shamed priest, shut out of his church and reduced to giving bus tours of Mexico for grotesque ladies of religion. (The breakdown which led to his dismissal is shown in a hilariously overwrought prologue.) One young passenger, Lyon, falls for him in a big way which does not sit well with her uptight (and repressed lesbian) chaperone (Hall.) The tour winds up at Gardner's hilltop hacienda where she has been mourning the recent death of her husband by getting it on regularly with two silent, maraca-shaking cabana boys. They are soon joined by a sketch artist (Kerr) and her ailing grandfather, a famous poet. Having originated as a Williams' play, it is given that there will be lots of turmoil and sniping among the characters and the film presents these moments well. There are also more than a few quiet moments of reflection and connection which also come across very nicely. Burton is in all his glory as a boozy, washed up man barely hanging on to what little dignity he has left. Gardner gives a credible performance with many zingers sprinkled throughout. She goes a little over the edge at times, but remains strong. Kerr has the most sensitive, thoughtful role and plays it brilliantly as always. Lyon was at the height of her stardom and shows the moves and the bod that made her a sensation, albeit briefly. Especially arresting is Hall. Her stick legs poking out uncomfortably from her linear skirt, her banshee-like voice screeching out the name "Charlotte!" as she frantically searches for nymphet Lyon, she is an exceedingly memorable person. Her final showdown with Burton is magnetic and when she exits the film, it loses a little bit of it's vitality. There is much to enjoy in the film, though sometimes the melodramatics get a bit ripe and the symbolism a touch heavy. The cinematography is incredible. Burton's eyes never gleamed so brightly. (Also, astonishingly, he has a scene emerging from the beach in wet white briefs which show a bit of outline of Rich, jr.! Not exactly expected in a 1964 film...)

SYNOPSIS: A shammed priest finds anonymity in Mexico where he wrestles with his past while serving as tour guide to a bus full of vacationing church women.

CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER: What happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico. Mexico has become a fantasy land that folks escape to these days. A place where cares, worries and responsibilities cannot follow you. This is a film that fosters that ideal. Cut off from the trappings of button-down 1950s American society, the characters find themselves in a world seduced by cabana boys, wanton desires and tropical sunsets.

PROS AND CONS: The dialog of this film still has the affect of the stage play from which it was based. Like "A Street Car Named Desire" and "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", the characters in this film are struggling with inner turmoil sprinkled with sexual frustration. The fact that the lines are delivered by the likes of Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr make it an enjoyable film to watch. One of the better performances is turned in by Grayson Hall (whom I had never heard of prior to this film). Her performance as the repressed and bitchy Miss Fellows is fascinating to watch and she more than holds her own with Burton and Gardner.

Most of the film is a long setup to the evening scene between Burton, Kerr and Gardner, in which their demons are discussed, exposed and cast away. It is very good acting although it takes a long time to get there. Comic relief in the film is provided by Skip Ward (the essential early 60s screen idol persona) as the bus driver and the two beach boys that continually dance around Gardner's character while shaking maracas. When the likes of Burton, Tennessee Williams and John Huston get together to make a film, it is bound to be worth watching. Especially, now that I am older and my life experience make me appreciate what the film is all about.

A sultry and marvelously atmospheric screen adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play.

Richard Burton plays a defrocked priest who holes up in an isolated Mexican hotel with a group of religious biddies for whom he is serving as tour guide. The group's leader, a strident harpy played by Grayson Hall, wants to report Burton to the authorities for his inappropriate behavior with her young charge, played by the flirty Sue Lyon (yes, of "Lolita" fame). In response, he practically takes the women hostage, disabling their vehicle so that they can't leave the hotel. The hotel's owner, played by a sexy Ava Gardner, is an old friend of Burton, and she becomes a sort of accomplice to his actions. Williams uses the tension created by this situation and these characters to explore the dark nights of the soul that each of us is bound to go through at one point or another in the course of our lives, and the salvation humans can find in one another.

I'm not sure how closely the film follows the original stage play, but as presented here, this is one of Williams' more hopeful and optimistic stories. Richard Burton and Ava Gardner share some sweet moments, during which each allows him/herself to be emotionally vulnerable to the other, and receive some solace from the interaction. And there's a wonderful character played by Deborah Kerr, a spinster painter who shows up with her doddering grandfather in tow and whose vague past hints at some dark nights of her own. She is able to help the Burton character learn how to navigate his crisis and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side.

The film is directed by John Huston, and it takes a pretty frank approach to some of the dicey subject matter, a much more frank approach than some of the other Williams adaptations that had been made into films around the same time as this one.

Grade: A

This film, all and all, only gets better with each viewing. I first saw it as a child, and thought it odd and amusing. Yet even then I sensed something magical was going on in it, though I lacked then the adult realism to penetrate the world of Tennessee Williams. Subsequent viewings have only reinforced my feeling that this film may be the greatest film of the twentieth century. I say that not because it is an epic, or because William's play is so grand, but just because this play seems to so perfectly capture the age in which we live. We live, just as the Reverend Shannon does, torn between the desire to believe in an absolute, and the perils of such belief, between a reductionist 'realism' and an equally reductionist indulgence. The actors Kerr, Gardener, and especially Richard Burton, have sensed this, and their roles are so nuanced as to make one believe that what one is seeing is REALITY and not a theatrical performance. The emotional climax of the film comes at the moment when the old poet completes his poem and asks over and over again, in a paroxysm of painful joy---"Is it good? is it good?"---- Then he dies. Only the genius of Tennessee Williams come make such melodrama seem utterly convincing. For the artist who wrote this play has been complimented by the artists who directed and acted it. Great art leaves everything opened but nothing settled--- creating the sense that justice has been fully achieved. Here, all too rarely for the art of cinema, both grace and justice have indeed been fully achieved.

The Night of the Iguana is a fantastic piece of drama that examines the human condition through a brilliant script adapted from Tennessee Williams' play of the same name.

From the arresting opening to the heart-warming ending (well, near-ending), this classic motion picture directed by John Huston will have your attention in it's grasp and won't let go until it's finished mesmerising you with all its beauty. I say 'beauty' because not only does the film feature the beautiful Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr but also has some of the crispest black and white film photography I've seen in classic film to date. Every shot whether it's in the crummy old bus or on a cliff looking down in the cradle of life, looks magnificent on screen and gives the film a fresh feeling and tone throughout.

As can be expected from a film adapted from a Williams play, the writing and dialogue present is criminally witty and charming, often showing it's intelligence but always in the background, never destroying the real focus of the story being the characters. The cast all bring their characters to life magnificently too, giving fitting performances to their already well developed and insightful characters. Reverend Lawrence Shannon in particular is one of the most interesting and versatile characters I have ever seen in a movie, often moving between emotions and mind states faster than he can drive a bus, but never without cause and always with focus.

The plot to the film is admittedly very much on the thin side but nevertheless more than makes up for it with thought provoking themes and dialogues that fill in the spaces where such action may have otherwise been noticed as missing. There was a couple of other little problems I had with the story including the sometimes slow pace and the contrived ending or epilogue as I like to refer to it. However, these aspects don't do much damage to an otherwise perfect and timeless classic.

With an intelligent insight into the human condition, loneliness and the overwhelming need to love and be loved, this has to be one of the best pieces of classic cinema I have seen to date. In the end, The Night of the Iguana should not be overlooked and I recommend it to everyone who really enjoys good film.