Movie Review – The Night of the Iguana (1964)
A timeless classic directed and co-written by John Houston based on another great Tennessee Williams play. Anthony Veiller was Houston’s co-writer. A 10 out of 10 without rating even though it didn’t win any Oscars except for “Best Costume Design, Black and White” for Dorothy Jeakins. Good for Jackins. But the absence of Oscars for this film in the categories of “Best Performance”, “Best Screenplay” and “Best Director” is nothing more than a joke for the rest of the moviegoers.
I am aware that it is not polite to watch movies for “messages”. (“Use Western Union instead!” as the old joke goes.)
But I still think this one has a very clear “core concept” that is expressed by Deborah Kerr (playing Hannah Jelkes, a sensitive painter who travels the world with her poet grandfather and earns everything she can doing quick live sketches) towards the end. from Act Two:
“The acceptance of life is surely the first requirement to live it.”
The volatile trio of Richard Burton (Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon), Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner (Maxine Faulk) weave fiber by fiber this very human and moving story of the fall and redemption of an Episcopalian pastor, of his desperate struggle . to save his soul and find some solace other than alcohol.
Peeling layer after layer from a man’s soul, Tennessee Williams and John Houston regalate us with the agony of the Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, a man caught between the strict demands of his calling as a man of God and the temptations of his flesh and mind as an average creation of the same power. His unexpected release is provided by Hannah Jelkes and Maxine Faulk, whom he tries to control like everyone else but fails, for his own good.
The film opens with the theme of “captivity” at every level. The parishioners are imprisoned by his blindness and rigidity. Rev. Shannon imprisoned by her own volcanic desires and disillusionment with his parish. And a wild iguana is forced to live in captivity, tied to a wooden deck by rope tight around her neck.
When that “night of the iguana” ends, everyone is free from their ties and their fears and limitations, including the iguana. That’s the kind of life-changing night Tennessee Williams has brought us to life. It’s still powerful and liberating 42 years after the film’s release.
The story, at a “realistic” level (one of the two levels of existence posed in the film), is not complicated at all. It is at the other and “fantastic” level that his time-release magic slowly unfurls like a heady rose.
Rev. Shannon loses his job after accusing his parishioners of insincerity and superficiality and kicking them out of his church.
A few years later we see him as a tour guide in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, taking a group of old women on a sightseeing tour to show them the “wonders of God” explained by a “man of God.” However, he certainly doesn’t like the open advances of one of the tour participants, 17-year-old Charlotte Goodall. After all, that’s how he got into trouble in his home when another loving young parishioner visited him in his church office. Although the reverend first suggested they pray together while kneeling, it soon led to other things that ended his career in the church.
Reverend Shannon does his best to keep Charlotte at arm’s length, but she’s the spoiled daughter of a wealthy and successful man and she won’t take no for an answer. As he pushes the alcoholic Shannon around, his secret admirer and tour leader Judith Fellowes (played as a hot knife through butter by Grayson Hall) throws a jealous rage and makes life a misery for the vulnerable Shannon. .
Shannon is still trying to get her life back on track, even though she’s firmly on the bottle. Her internal circuitry is too damaged to withstand the high voltage of Fellowes’ cruel attacks: she threatens to arrest him for “seducing a minor” as soon as possible. they return to the US. Unable to face the reality of her own attraction to the “pretty dove” Charlotte, Fellowes vows to destroy Shannon’s second career and livelihood and appears to be able to carry out her threat. .
To ensure that no such career-altering development occurs, Shannon kidnaps the entire group at a mountaintop resort run by her old flame Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner), who is a diamond in the rough, a woman lively with a rugged exterior but a lonely interior landscape. By stealing the distributor cap from the bus, she ensures that they can’t go back, but rather stay there with him for a while until perhaps Fellowes’ anger subsides to a more manageable level.
Soon after, the group is joined by traveling cartoonist Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) and her wheelchair-bound poet grandfather. They provide the smooth but solid ballast to balance Rev. Shannon’s mercurial outbursts and the equally explosive Faulk.
The decisive scene comes in Act Two when Rev. Shannon is tied to a hammock to help him through his alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Playing his redeeming angel, Hannah helps Shannon exorcise his demons by giving her an unforgettable lesson in love.
The scene opens with Rev. Shannon, very confident in the superiority of his own life’s exploits and experiences and still struggling to break free from his jail-hammock, asking Hannah if she’s ever been in any kind of relationship in her life. loving.
“Two,” she admits, much to Shannon’s surprise, and proceeds to tell the story of her two experiences, not even remotely resembling what earthy Shannon would normally define as a “love story.”
In her first “love experience”, Hannah was only sixteen years old. When a young man pressed his knee against hers in a Nantucket movie theater, she screamed loudly and had the young man arrested. Later, she repented and took the complaint back from her and said that since it was a Greta Garbo movie, she was just “thrilled” and so she overreacted and created that scene.
Their second “love story”, which took place only 4 years earlier, is an even more curious episode. An Australian underwear salesman whose sketch he drew in a Hong Kong hotel asked her to join him for a ride on a sampan. She accepted the offer because he was a very nice man and she tipped him very well for the sketch. On the boat, the Australian salesman became “more agitated” and asked if she would do him a favour. He said he’d turn his back on her if she gave him her clothes, which Hannah did.
At this point, Shannon asks what the seller did with her clothes. Hannah says that she has no idea about her because she also turned her back on him. And that was that. The end of the story.
Rev. Shannon is stunned once more, and here follows her unforgettable exchange:
Rev. Shannon: “And that experience, you call it…”
Hannah: “Love experience. Yes, I do, Mr. Shannon.”
Rev. Shannon: “That sad, dirty little episode, you call it…”
Hannah: “Sad, it certainly was for the poor little man, but why do you call him dirty?”
Rev. Shannon: “You mean you didn’t like her?”
Hannah: “Nothing human dislikes me, Mr. Shannon, unless it’s cruel or violent. And I told him how nice he was. He was apologetic. Shy. Really, very, well… touchy about it.”
She then lets go of him, telling him that by hearing his story he is now “exorcised” of all the turmoil in his heart. Because? Because she is now in a state of mind in which she not only reacts to life but also accepts it. And she utters another unforgettable phrase: “The acceptance of life is surely the first requirement to live it.”
Another event: Hannah’s grandfather dies after composing his best poem about the “night of the iguana”.
The next day, the group of traveling ladies drop Shannon off with Faulk, who offers her management of the resort and restaurant as she is sick and tired of running the whole show on her own. For the first time, she enjoys the freedom of letting go of control of her own affairs and livelihood and sharing it all with someone she loves. Besides, the presence of a man will help her business by making it attractive to tourists, she thinks.
Hannah gets the same offer, but she prefers to move like the independent spirit that she is. She has freed Shannon from her own devastating bonds and her work is done. She strides like the summer wind, her sketchbook tucked under her arm. We’re pretty sure “the elements” will take care of her.
The last scene shows Shannon and Faulk determined to start a new life together at the resort, hopefully a new life fueled by self-understanding, graced by tolerance and enlightened by truth, a life of liberation where even iguanas live free.
A must see for all movie lovers. It should be an indispensable element in the “school curriculum” of every cinephile.
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