THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA
This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Ava Gardner.
Sordid lives seem to be the specialty of Tennessee Williams. What is more sordid than a man of the cloth enduring the temptations of the flesh? The Night of the Iguana is a look inside the raunchy lives of crazed priests and the women who long, lust and guide him through his dark night of the soul.
Episcopal priest T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) has a breakdown at the pulpit when he admits to the whispers of a liaison with a young Sunday school teacher. After having gone bonkers, Shannon is now a lowly tour guide for Blake's Tours in old Mexico. Blake's Tours is the bottom of the barrel in economy tours, and Shannon is the bottom of the barrel of Blake's Tours tour guides. His newest group is a collection of Baptist teachers. They are headed by the fearsome Miss Fellowes (Grayson Hall). She openly detests Shannon.
Her nubile charge Charlotte (Sue Lyon) openly lusts after Shannon. This nymphet is determined to get Shannon. Charlotte takes swims with him, much to Fellowes' anger. It is not until Fellowes finds Charlote in Shannon's room that she has enough evidence to see Shannon out. Whether or not anything actually happened is open to debate. Fellowes will get him fired as soon as they make Puerto Vallarta.
Shannon, however, literally takes the wheel and drives them to the hotel of his friend Fred. Fred, however, has recently died. It is now run by his widow, the lusty Maxine (Ava Gardner), who is displeased to find this group at her door. The Mismayola beach resort is closed due to being off-season. It also is too intrusive to Maxine cavorting with her beach boys Pepe and Pedro.
As if this group of Baptist women is not enough for both Shannon and Maxine to endure, they get two more gatecrashers. Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) and her aged grandfather Jonathan Coffin or Nonno (Cyril Delevanti) are looking for a place to stay. They have no money, earning keep by being a quick-sketch artist and "the world's oldest living poet" respectively. Shannon uses his influence with Maxine to let them stay.
That influence, however, is not enough for Fellowes or Charlotte. Shannon is not technically defrocked, but he probably will be once news of his romping about with this Baptist Lolita gets back to Blake's Tours. This is too much for the unstable Shannon, who falls to drink and general madness. It takes a lot to literally tie him into a hammock for his safety and the safety of others. Now, in this night after the Baptists have left, will those chains set him free? What is to become of Hannah and Maxine themselves, these spiritual and earth mothers to the whacked-out renegade priest?
While I am not big on symbolic work, I think The Night of the Iguana works in its surface story of lusty priests and the women who want him. I will not say that it works perfectly. Anthony Veiller and director/cowriter John Huston could not, for example, ever explain why Hank (James Ward), the younger bus driver could not get the distributor cap that Shannon takes. He was younger, presumably stronger and to my knowledge Shannon did not carry it around with him all day.
To be fair, Hank was not as strong as he might have been. At a bar fight, Pepe and Pedro are able to knock him out while never losing the rhythm of their maracas. Pepe, Pedro and the bar denizens are able to metaphorically and literally beat the Yankee to Las Chiapanecas. Even legendary Mexican filmmaker Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez gets in on the action in a cameo as the barkeep. This section was oddly funny. I figure that it was intended to be. However, it did look a bit peculiar.
I found Ava Gardner was not acting but being. Her Maxine was oozing Southern bluntness and raw sex appeal. Gardner seemed to find almost everything a lark. Whether it was Fellowes telling Shannon off or vice versa, Maxine loved to be faux scandalized. I did not think that Ava Gardner was great as Maxine. Again, I think she was playing herself, though perhaps not as loony as everyone else in The Night of the Iguana was.
She was not afraid to call things as they were. Maxine at one point flat-out suggested to Fellowes that she was a lesbian. Fellowes, as played by Grayson Hall in an Oscar-nominated performance, was bitchy beyond belief. That suited the character well, this hard, brittle and arrogant figure. Hall made one instantly hate Fellowes even when she was right.
Deborah Kerr's statelier Hannah was excellent. She has a wonderful monologue near the end about her limited physical experiences that holds your attention. I do grant that I kept looking at Kerr's eyes and wondered if there was something wrong with them. It looked like her right eye was not looking in the same direction as her left. Sue Lyon had the worst of it as Charlotte. This role felt like a variation of her Lolita character. Here too she was this nubile temptress to an older man. To be fair Charlotte was more willing and aggressive than Lolita's Dolores was.
The Night of the Iguana has a unique feature in Gabriel Figueroa's Oscar-nominated cinematography. Figueroa was a legendary Mexican cinematographer who rarely ventured into American films. This is a standout in his filmography.
I did think that the film went on a bit longer than needed. Despite this and perhaps a somewhat upbeat ending, I think The Night of the Iguana has more to recommend it than not. You might not find it on Mexican Radio, but The Night of the Iguana works quite well.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Views are always welcome, but I would ask that no vulgarity be used. Any posts that contain foul language or are bigoted in any way will not be posted.
Thank you.