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The Night of the Iguana
***This review was copied here from an Epinions review I wrote.***
***Having now come into possession of the DVD version (linked above), I can now highly recommend it for its crystal clear video and sound. I watched it on my 46" Samsung HD television and it is amazingly high quality, with a beautiful picture that makes it feel like a theatrical screening. And the wonderful poem near the end of the movie can be accessed directly from the DVDs menu.***
Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.
I'm not sure I have the mental capacity to do this film justice in a review, it's that good on so many levels.
Entertaining not only with it's humor (mostly due to Richard Burton's excellent portrayal of the "Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon", recently defrocked for falling prey to his lusty appetites as a man) but also for the depth with which all the characters weave this story of lust, redemption, love, desperation, fear and humanity as both a strength and a weakness.
The story follows the Reverend on his trek in a flat run from himself and his inner demons as he takes on a new position as a trip leader for a bus full of women vacationing in Mexico. His hopes of hiding from his lust and it's consequences are shattered when the only young woman of the tour's group, a beautiful, rather frisky and terribly infatuated underage girl played to the hilt by Sue Lyon, begins to stalk him relentlessly, much to the chagrin of the overbearing and rather frustrated chaperone (Miss Fellowes, played by Grayson Hall) charged with her safe-keeping.
As the movie introduces the viewer to it's characters, we find that T. Lawrence Shannon is a man possessed. Not by the devil, but instead by a conscience and a will to be a good man in spite of his insatiable hunger for life and love. The precision with which John Huston captures the inner struggle of Shannon is breathtaking in it's complexity, not unlike the rest of this movie. Burton rages against himself at every turn with admirable energy and determination, barely able to escape his male drive and lustful urges. The writing of Tenessee Williams gives Huston a great starting place for his characters, while the actors themselves make this movie an absolute gem.
As the young Charlotte Goodall (Lyon) pursues Shannon, he finally realizes that he needs to escape again, this time from the suffocating atmosphere on the tour bus between himself and it's other occupants, so he decides to hijack the group to the nearby resort owned by old friends so that he might enlist the companionship of comrades in his quest for inner peace... or maybe just enlist a drinking buddy.
He is foiled, though, when he finds that his old friend is dead and only his wife Maxine (Ava Gardner, another absolutely excellent performance!) remains. As the wild and free-spirited, no-nonsense Maxine hears from Shannon about his troubles and sees the unruly and thoroughly unwilling would-be guests he brings in tow, she wants nothing to do with the group and tries to send him away. But, as true friends often will, she finally acquiesces and takes the group in even though the resort is shut down for the season.
With Maxine's knowledge of Shannon's past and her insight into his soul, and her no-nonsense style, she acts as the perfect counterpoint to the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon in his soul-searching journey... until the arrival of a traveling pair; grandfather Nanno, an aged poet and his street-peddler artist granddaughter, Hanna. Their inclusion in this story is omni-important and pivotal to the story itself on many levels, the most ingenious and artful being the wonderfully descriptive and immensely poignant and apt poem that the old man is in the middle of writing when they arrive.
The symbolism of the old man's poem being his driving force, it's timing in Shannon's life, the poem's beautiful eloquence and structure, and the way Williams put together the struggle of Shannon and the outcome of his search for not just a respite from his demons, but a deeper, more meaningful search for inner courage and the cleansing of his soul itself is absolutely stunning. The poem speaks to Shannon's needs and tells the entire story of the movie all by itself, which is why I'll include it here. If you buy (you want to BUY, not rent, this movie!) the movie, you'll want to have a copy of the lovely words and I don't want you to have to do what I did; stop, play, write, rewind, play, stop, write etc.
As I tend to do, I will not get too far into the story from here, as I think the best reviews tend more toward highlighting the good and bad rather than telling a story. The reader should be enticed or turned off by the review and either get the movie and form their own opinion or go on to something they feel is more suited to their tastes, and not given details that ruin the movie.
With that in mind, the story flows from this point through and endless series of enlightening interactions between Shannon and Maxine, Shannon and his male weaknesses, Shannon and the paranoid and implacable chaperone (who has her own skeletons as well), Hannah and her own demons, Maxine and the beach boys... Well, you get the picture.
While addressing some very risque and taboo subjects for the time (1964), this movie winds through an almost limitless menu of subject matter with a tenderness seemingly unsuitable to the story. Even Burton's genius portrayal of his character, in his frantic search and rescue operation on his soul, is played with a depth of understanding that left me sitting stunned, staring at the television when I first saw the movie, so many years ago. (I first saw this movie when I was about 14 or 15, and was knocked out by it so much that I spent years looking for it on tv to no avail, and only recently was able to find it on video!)
I cannot say enough about this film! It is one of the reasons I collect good movies. It is a work of art, and tells of a time when movies had substance and looked to entertain the mind and make us think. It reminds me of the time I had my then-13-year-old daughter watch To Kill A Mockingbird with me, hoping to show her the value of the great movies, and she turned to me in the middle of it and asked, "Dad, why don't they make movies like this any more?" I was floored. And it was the absolute best thing she could have said. I realized then and there that she got it and in that one moment her comment showed me that she would grow up with the ability to understand more than the average, surface layer of life.
This movie is every bit as good as the aforementioned "...Mockingbird", as well as other such classics as The Grapes of Wrath, The Ox Bow Incident, It's A Wonderful Life, The Defiant Ones... any number of old movies that relied on storytelling to delve into the human mind and give us reason to pause and think about who we are, why we are here and to give us reason to revel in our continued struggles through life regardless of pitfalls and failures.
Watch this movie carefully, without interruptions. Watch it a few times, for you'll see things you missed. Burton's repartee is sometimes so fast that you're on to another part of dialog before you realize you only caught half the meaning of what he just said. If you have kids that you'd like to introduce to the wonders of the golden age of cinema, try To Kill A Mockingbird because this is a little heady and mature for younger children.
Here is the poem, in case you view the movie and want to have it to read again... (I had to painstakingly start, stop, write and repeat the VHS version I originally owned to get this poem written down. Originally I thought the first line, second stanza was "Some time while light obscures the tree": this is a very common misconception with versions I have seen on the internet. While watching the DVD version I realized the line is actually "Some time while night obscures the tree". There is a version with "orange branch" replacing "olive branch" and using the word "mould" instead of "mold" [from someone calling herself a poetry expert!]. Tennessee Williams was not English, which would qualify that spelling for the term meaning decay.)
Poem from Night of the Iguana
How calmly does the olive branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair
Some time while night obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever
And from thence
A second history will commence
A chronicle no longer gold
A bargaining with mist and mold
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth; and then
An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth's obscene, corrupting love
And still, the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair
Oh courage! Could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me
The end of this movie is wonderfully written and very sweet in it's addressing the dichotomy that is man's infinite strength coupled with his inherent weaknesses. The irony of life gives those who pay attention more blessings than curses and the lives of our characters take an ironic twist that makes the movie much better for the ending alone.
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Silver Spirit
A good example of how not to adapt a play to a script
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 17, 2018E M
but this is a terrific example of his work
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Burton is great, but I fell for Debra Kerr.
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