The Night of the Iguana (1964)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.The film won the 1964 Academy Award for Best Costume Design, and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. Actress Grayson Hall received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and Cyril Delevanti received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.While this is a decent enough film, it is not one that is a must-see unless you happen to be a fan of the cast. Ironically, despite the Academy love, the critics seem to have come down hard on the picture. I wouldn't say it was bad, just not all that great. But, of course, films tend to age rather well.

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA is the last play of Tennesse Williams. Three years after its Broadway success John Huston reworked it into one of Hollywood's most honored albeit in black and white films. The leads are played with style and depth by Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr. The role of the proprietress of the Mexican bed and breakfast, a supporting role in the play is expanded through considerable non talking filming of a brilliant Ava Gardner into the third lead. the private struggles we all go through when life deals us lemons are focused here into a single night in which Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr must through long monologues arrive at how to live through them and even find peace. The filming changes somewhat the storyline through long, brilliant shots where Williams does not have dialogue but it is certainly one of Hollywood's most memorable character study dramas.

Another terrific Tennessee Williams cinematic presentation after the contently controversial SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959, 7/10), THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA is directed by the almighty John Huston, starring a trio of A-list names Burton, Gardner and Kerr, with a show- stealing supporting performance from the unknown Grayson Hall (who is the sole cast member reaps an Oscar nomination), and it also includes Sue Lyon's follow-up role after Kubrick's LOLITA (1962, 7/10), which foreshadows her career being typecast as a precocious siren with an ingénue disguise.Shot in standard Black & White, the opening scene is inside an episcopal church, we see Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Burton) normally preaches to his parishioners in a ceremony, but slowly he turns emotional and apoplectic-ally lashes out at them, we have no idea what has happened, then the opening credits jump in, and next thing we know, he is in Mexico and becomes the tour guide of a group of Baptist women, headed by a high-strung Miss Judith Fellowes (Hall). All the way, Lawrence is tantalized by an underage girl Charlotte Goodall (Lyon), who is under the supervision of Miss Fellows. Until one night, he succumbs to the temptation and is caught in the act by Miss Fellows. In order to keep his job and prohibit Miss Fellows from calling to his boss, Lawrence arbitrarily bring the group to a hotel, which is overlooking a sea view from the top of a hill and now run by a middle-age woman Maxine Faulk (Gardner), who is newly widowed. Meanwhile, a pair of uninvited guests arrive in the off-season, a spinster Hannah Jelkes (Kerr) who is peripatetic around the world with her ailing grandfather (Delevanti), who is a poet seeking the inspiration to finish his new poem. While Charlotte's caprice of carnal desires can be feasibly veered to another prey, and his job cannot avoid being sabotaged by Miss Fellowes' obduracy, Lawrence comes to term with the situation with the help from Maxine and Hannah, the growing attractions take the main stage, and it is a love triangle needs one to take the moral high ground, which is quite similar to John Ford's MOGAMBO (1953, 6/10), also stars Gardner with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly, in an exotic location (African safari). A decade later, Gardner remains and inherits her flair of being fierily passionate and emotionally unconstrained, more unadorned in her raw beauty, her Maxine is never afraid of betray her feelings, she will flip her lid immediately when witnessing the chemistry between Lawrence and Hannah. She is boldly spontaneous, she will not hesitate to enjoy a threesome with two young Mexican boys on the beach at night after being snubbed by the one she loves, but when she thinks it through, she will generously make the sacrifice to take the egress and fulfill others' happiness. Gardner is great, but Kerr is even more admirable in her refined mien and dignity, Hannah is altruistic, sensible and well-bred, she possesses a rare quality of being both sophisticated and naive, she embraces life in the direst situation (penniless, and scrapes a living by selling her scratch to hotel clientèle), her independence is super-modern at its time, and we will presumably fear she will fall into the victim of a dog-eat-dog world, but she is not the one who needs salvation, Kerr instills a steady crescendo of fortitude onto her character's eccentric life pattern, unlike Maxine, she doesn't need a man to compensate her sense of insecurity, she is fearless and awe-inspiring. Maxine and Hannah represent two sides of one mirror, a perfect woman for Burton's Lawrence, who is miserably lagging behind (being defrocked and jobless) to be the owner of his fate owing to his defects, there is no repulsive male-chauvinistic undertone which fatally tarnishes MOGAMBO. Burton's macho appearance may jar with Lawrence's innate vulnerability, but never judging a book by its cover, Burton sympathetically discloses his wounds with adequate pathos, eventually he will grow on you too like Gardner and Kerr, and their upshot considerably suffices our expectation and doesn't fall into stale cliché.Grayson Hall and Cyril Delevanti, both deliver indelible performances as well, the former completely overshadows Burton and Lyon in the first act, although one can argue, her character is basically one-noted, but she succeeds in setting off a fusillade of aggressiveness with her raspy squawk and acerbic accusations. As for the latter, great line- delivery of his last poem alone can neutralize the cringe-worthy disappointment of his prefigured destiny to consummate his life in the journey. It is a great showpiece with a brainy script, powerful acting and compassionate score, with one conspicuous slip-up, paraphrasing Lawrence earlier in the film, "(Mexico) It is a lost world of innocence", unfortunately, we fail to acknowledge that throughout the film and the native inhabitants are conveniently and consistently portrayed without any gusto apart from being pigeonholed as wacky exotica (catching iguana for food) or laughing stock (two Mexican guys persistently playing with maracas), so, why Mexico? It could be "The Night of Anywhere".

Richard Burton plays Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, an Episcopal Priest who had a bit of a problem controlling his carnal desires to the point of his being tossed out of the church. Shannon winds up leading tours for vacationers in Mexico where we find him driving a bus load of older tourists from a Christian College. These tourists drive Shannon to such a breaking point that he takes his tour bus off the scheduled route to an out-of-the-way resort run by Maxine, an old friend (Ava Gardner). Among the older tourists is, puzzlingly, the nubile Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon). From what we know of Shannon's past as a priest it is inevitable that he would not be unaware of Charlotte's allure, especially since she eggs him on. Just coming off of "Lolita," Lyon risked type casting herself as a temptress of older men. Ultimately Debra Kerr is thrown into this as a sort of mediator.Burton, Gardner, Kerr under the direction of John Huston in a movie based on a Tennessee Williams play, what could go wrong? A lot as far as I am concerned. Richard Burton is perhaps my favorite actor and I never thought I would find so little to like about one of his performances as I did here. He never seemed to be engaged; I got the feeling that he was saying to himself, "Let's get this over with, I am not going to invest my awesome talents into this thing." Ava Gardner tries to infuse some life into the saucy Maxine, but tries too hard I think. I was always conscious that I was watching Gardner and not Maxine. In the end I was not emotionally engaged by either of the characters portrayed by Burton and Gardner.There are some good lines, like "You have to accept life before you can live it." But such philosophical gems seemed to be dropped in at random. The movie has its moments. The symbolic release of the leashed iguana was a nice touch, but, given that that was a pivotal theme, why did we not see the pet iguana until the freeing scene? Turning the original stage play into a piece of cinema seemed to be too much of a challenge even for John Huston, leaving more talk than cinema.The black and white filming is nicely done.