Cheap The Night of the Iguana (DVD) (John Huston) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Night of the Iguana

"Who wouldn't like to atone for the sins of themselves, and the world, if it could be done in a hammock with ropes"
John Huston's film version of Tennessee William's play Night of the Iguana is a talky and complex affair. I can't say that it is my favourite of the collection of William's films currently being released on DVD - it lacks the final cataclysmic denouement typical of his other works such as Suddenly Last Summer and the Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. <
> <
>But the film is always psychologically compelling and it's most notable for the terrific performance as Richard Burton as the Rev. Shannon, a desperate, alcoholic and recently defrocked minister who has resorted to working as a tour guide, busing groups of old ladies across Mexico. Shannon is constantly trying to resist temptation, especially from the advances of buxom young blonde Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon). <
> <
>Eventually, he's lured into an uncompromising position and discovered by group leader and Charlotte's overprotective chaperone Grayson Hall, (Judith Fellowes) who acts to get Burton fired for sexual misbehavior. In an effort to head off her inquisition of him, Shannon leads the group to a rundown hotel perched high on cliff in west Mexico owned by the raucous widow Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner). <
> <
>He tries to outwit Grayson, and stay away from Charlotte, enlisting the help of Maxine, his like-minded partner in crime. Almost at once Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), a New England spinster arrives with her 97-year-old grandfather, spreading gentility and oozing a sense of cultivation by virtue of the second-rate poetry the old man writes. She is attracted to Burton despite their opposites, and she is somewhat envious of his freewheeling and boozy ways, while he admires her stoic no-nonsense resilience towards life. <
> <
>The stage is set for an attraction and a clash of opposites, with each character confessing and even unleashing their inner demons. Grayson is probably attracted to the young Charlotte, but because this is 1964, her same sex attraction can only be hinted at. Maxine is loose and tarty -she even has a couple of hunky Mexican boys on call - and she doesn't take kindly to Grayson's puritanical moralizing or Hannah's fussy and superior ways. <
> <
>The sexually repressed Hannah is contrasted with Charlotte's aggressive sexual appetite and the besotted, drunk Shannon, and it all comes across as an absolute plethora of sexual tension. The film is loaded with symbolism - a captured Iguana, a dark, stormy night, and Shannon's tirade as he walks around on broken glass. Most of the action consists of talking on the hotel terrace through the sticky tropical night about love, sex and the meaning of life. <
> <
>The acting is solid, with Burton giving the most compelling performance. He's a figure of wild chaos, a damaged sufferer without a shred of real genuineness. Ms. Kerr is quite spectacular as the spinsterish Hannah and is in many ways quite sad in her restrained beauty. And dear Ava - perhaps the weakest of the trio - is appropriately tough and raucous. She sweeps around the premises, yelling at the clattering guests, raising eyebrows as she flirts with her luscious Mexican beach boys. <
> <
>At film's end all the characters seem to have atoned for the sins of the world, or at least found something within each other that enables them to achieve a type of happiness. In typical fashion, the film is packed with many ideas and they are introduced in such a loud, strident and boozy way, that it's impossible not to continue to admire the literary genius of Tennessee Williams. Mike Leonard May 06. <
>

---

Classic Work All Around
The increasingly philosophical mid-60's work of director John Huston met a perfect match in the self-absorbed sexual lyricism of Tennessee Williams. Along with co-writer Anthony Veiller, Huston turned Williams' morality play into a stunning hothouse ensemble piece, with Richard Burton ideally cast as a defrocked minister reduced to guiding old women through Central America's "places of God" and who is awash in temptation; a teenage tease (Sue Lyon), a lovely spinster (Deborah Kerr), and a sensual, middle-aged widow (Ava Gardner). <
> <
>Huston uses this dramatic base as a springboard for examining a number of moral issues, played in the heat of the Mexican sun between the polar guardrails of the lustful Lyon and the priggish Miss Peebles (Mary Boylan), Lyon's guardian. Peebles is a bible-thumping Wicked Witch, one-dimensional as character but a perfect foil for one of Burton's great performances. Running the gamut from reflective man of God to babbling nutcase and back again, Burton brilliantly portrays a fallen cleric trying to maintain his sanity while picking up the pieces of his life. Almost as riveting as Burton is Gardner, whose Maxine is a freer mid-life extension of the barefoot contessa. She is all earthy sexuality and raw emotion, a stunning counterpoint to Kerr's restrained moral compass. <
> <
>As with most films based on a Williams work, "Night of the Iguana" has its share of poetic pretensions, but they are easily forgiven. The steamy tropical setting, the depth of the script, and the work of a fabulous cast make "Iguana" a minor classic, one that presaged the permissive watershed of the late 60's while revealing life's great moral comedy.

---

Deep in the heart of me
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA opens in far-off Mexico and was filmed in the enchanted province of Puerto Vallarta, which enjoyed a brief vogue as a tourist spot after the publicity of filming the movie there catapulted the sleepy resort into the pages of news and gossip magazines all over the world. <
> <
>In this mysterious, pleasure-loving, bigoted town Ava Gardner, as Maxine, runs a boarding house or hotel replete with lots of chickens and some cute Mexican guys who turn dangerous after dark. Maxine's a drunk, the last of the good old broads. <
> <
>Deborah Kerr isn't especially good playing Hannah Jelkes, but she's sufficiently different than Ava Gardner so that you can tell them apart. She is a painter who trundles from town to town asking non-Mexican people if she can paint their portrait in the bazaars of the primitive towns. She does this as a way to support her elderly grandfather, Nonno, who is waiting to die, but refuses to go until he can finish his poem. There must have been some subterranean connection hotwired into Tennessee Williams' brain between "Mexico" and "poetry." Look at SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER where Sebastian has to Mexico once every year to write his one annual poem. As Nonno, the world's oldest man, Cyril Delevanti is, not to put too fine a point on it, wretchedly bad. Delevanti was everywhere in the 1960s, playing one of the three Wise Men in THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, camping it up in MARY POPPINS, acting grim in BYE BYE BIRDIE, and disapproving of Bette Davis in DEAD RINGER. He just never let go! And here in the Huston film he is so annoying you just wish he would die, with or without reciting the last lines to his interminable, if somewhat charming, poem. <
> <
>If you are a poet, you owe it to yourself to watch this film and see how a poem is really made. I watched it once with a group of friends and we agreed that it was an allegory, or perhaps a film a clef, of the life of Louis Zukofsky. Check it out! Don't forget it took Nonno twenty years to think of these final lines for his poem: <
> <
>"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?" <
> <
>You know, as a poem it's not so great, but it's touching coming from the lips of the world's oldest man. <
> <
>Watching the movie now, it's hard to see where Richard Burton won a reputation as a romantic leading man. He's handsome in a battered, acned way, but he's a little guy, must weigh 125 pounds soaking wet. Next to Ava Gardner he's definitely a piece of nothing much. She could toss him over her shoulder like a dishrag.