The Night of the Iguana

A sultry and marvelously atmospheric screen adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play.

Richard Burton plays a defrocked priest who holes up in an isolated Mexican hotel with a group of religious biddies for whom he is serving as tour guide. The group's leader, a strident harpy played by Grayson Hall, wants to report Burton to the authorities for his inappropriate behavior with her young charge, played by the flirty Sue Lyon (yes, of "Lolita" fame). In response, he practically takes the women hostage, disabling their vehicle so that they can't leave the hotel. The hotel's owner, played by a sexy Ava Gardner, is an old friend of Burton, and she becomes a sort of accomplice to his actions. Williams uses the tension created by this situation and these characters to explore the dark nights of the soul that each of us is bound to go through at one point or another in the course of our lives, and the salvation humans can find in one another.

I'm not sure how closely the film follows the original stage play, but as presented here, this is one of Williams' more hopeful and optimistic stories. Richard Burton and Ava Gardner share some sweet moments, during which each allows him/herself to be emotionally vulnerable to the other, and receive some solace from the interaction. And there's a wonderful character played by Deborah Kerr, a spinster painter who shows up with her doddering grandfather in tow and whose vague past hints at some dark nights of her own. She is able to help the Burton character learn how to navigate his crisis and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side.

The film is directed by John Huston, and it takes a pretty frank approach to some of the dicey subject matter, a much more frank approach than some of the other Williams adaptations that had been made into films around the same time as this one.

Grade: A

Flamboyantly flawed characters are Tennessee Williams' oeuvre, and I doubt if any of his plays has more of them wallowing in their debilitated states of psychological disrepair than "The Night of the Iguana". This richly acted 1964 adaptation directed by the estimable John Huston has its share of excesses, veering wildly from melodrama to black comedy, but they are all for the sake of illustrating Williams' broader themes of alienation and redemption while screenwriter Anthony Veiller stays true to the playwright's Baroque flourishes.

The protagonist is Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, defrocked from his church in Virginia for an indiscretion with a young girl. He desperately takes a job as a tour guide for a group of spinster teachers from Texas headed by the belligerent Miss Fellowes. Vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, they end up shanghaied by Shannon to a dilapidated beach resort run by his old friend and lover, the hedonistic slattern Maxine Faulk. Enter a caricature artist named Hannah Jelkes and her poet grandfather, penniless travelers who find themselves drawn by fate to the resort. Complicating matters among the tour group is a nubile blonde named Charlotte, as she tempts Shannon to repeat his previous misdeeds. His unrepentant desires all come to a head when Hannah and Maxine tie him to a hammock, and a series of cathartic moments occur among the principals.

Richard Burton is ideally cast as Shannon, as he seizes the screen with his Shakespearean voice and increasingly manic behavior. With her trademark gentility, Deborah Kerr brings a curious mix of hucksterism and guile to Hannah, but it's Ava Gardner who gives her career-best performance as Maxine - brash, funny and undeniably sexy surrounded by her maraca-shaking beach boys. Having just read Lee Server's illuminating biography of the tempestuous star, I get the strong impression that the character mirrors Gardner's real-life persona to a T. The last act, which highlights the thematic dynamics represented by Shannon, Hannah and Maxine, shows the actors in peak form. Sue Lyon plays Charlotte in her most appropriate post-Lolita manner, and Grayson Hall does her best to avoid the gargoyle-like caricature that Miss Fellowes represents. The one casting flaw is the wooden Skip Ward, a Troy Donahue look-alike, as the tour group assistant.

Better than what he did with Arthur Miller's "The Misfits" three years earlier, Huston does an impressive job balancing all the disparate elements without falling into the trap of making it too campy, even if the chorus-like beach boys do seem silly in hindsight. Gabriel Figueroa's crisp black-and-white photography is effective, though it is the one Tennessee Williams-related work that I wish took advantage of the colorful flora and fauna of the area. The 2006 DVD offers a couple of worthwhile extras - a vintage short, "On the Trail of the Iguana", which has interviews with cast and crew and give a sense of the paparazzi blitzkrieg surrounding the stars, especially Burton who was then living with Elizabeth Taylor before her divorce from Eddie Fisher was final; and a recent, more academic featurette, "Huston's Gamble" with comments from film historians on the movie's impact.

This film, all and all, only gets better with each viewing. I first saw it as a child, and thought it odd and amusing. Yet even then I sensed something magical was going on in it, though I lacked then the adult realism to penetrate the world of Tennessee Williams. Subsequent viewings have only reinforced my feeling that this film may be the greatest film of the twentieth century. I say that not because it is an epic, or because William's play is so grand, but just because this play seems to so perfectly capture the age in which we live. We live, just as the Reverend Shannon does, torn between the desire to believe in an absolute, and the perils of such belief, between a reductionist 'realism' and an equally reductionist indulgence. The actors Kerr, Gardener, and especially Richard Burton, have sensed this, and their roles are so nuanced as to make one believe that what one is seeing is REALITY and not a theatrical performance. The emotional climax of the film comes at the moment when the old poet completes his poem and asks over and over again, in a paroxysm of painful joy---"Is it good? is it good?"---- Then he dies. Only the genius of Tennessee Williams come make such melodrama seem utterly convincing. For the artist who wrote this play has been complimented by the artists who directed and acted it. Great art leaves everything opened but nothing settled--- creating the sense that justice has been fully achieved. Here, all too rarely for the art of cinema, both grace and justice have indeed been fully achieved.

It's a shame that Richard Burton never played Shannon in "Night of the Iguana" on stage - ditto Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner - because all three are perfect casting for Tennessee Williams' wonderful play, on which this film is based.

The story concerns a man of the cloth - well, sort of - Shannon, who, after an accusation of fornication and the nervous breakdown that followed, is locked out of his church and forced to take work as a tour guide for a cheap touring company.

He is taking a group of Baptist women through Mexico showing them religious places when, while fighting off the advances of an underaged girl on the trip (Sue Lyon), he is accused by her chaperone (Grayson Hall) of giving into them.

In order to keep her from reporting him to the tour company, he steals the bus distributor and holes up with them at the hotel of his friend, Maxine (Gardner). It is there that he meets the gentle artist, Hannah Jelks, and her aged poet grandfather Nonno.

Under a dark Mexican sky, as an iguana being fattened for dinner is tethered below, the three confront their demons.

Knowing the actual play as well as I do, and having seen it performed, it's a little hard for me to judge this film, except that the acting across the board is marvelous. Gardner is fabulous as Maxine, the no-nonsense, earthy owner of the hotel who hankers after Shannon and isn't above a little jealousy.

This is a role originated on Broadway by Bette Davis. It is rarely cast with someone as sexy and beautiful as Gardner, but those qualities make great additions to the role.

Kerr as the spinster Jelks, facing a life of loneliness once her grandfather dies, is exquisite in the role, bringing to the role an analytical quality that normally isn't as apparent.

Shannon could have been written for Burton - funny, drunk, with an underlying kindness, he is handsome, spirited, and a little nuts.

The additional characters of the underaged girl and the bus driver seem unnecessary additions, though Lyon was very good in a well-written role. Grayson Fall was great, but why was the recurring line she yells at Shannon - "Please take your hand OFF my arm!" removed from the script?

Somehow the stage version is funnier and moves faster, though if you haven't seen it, you will still find this version amusing in sections and thought-provoking in others. The ending is changed as well.

The play is a little heavier, a little more compelling, a little sadder, a little better and, naturally, pure Williams. But you couldn't ask for a better cast.

Director John Huston took an all-star cast to a remote Mexican location to film this adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play. The location atmosphere lends a lot to the production and gives it a realistic atmosphere. Burton plays a shamed priest, shut out of his church and reduced to giving bus tours of Mexico for grotesque ladies of religion. (The breakdown which led to his dismissal is shown in a hilariously overwrought prologue.) One young passenger, Lyon, falls for him in a big way which does not sit well with her uptight (and repressed lesbian) chaperone (Hall.) The tour winds up at Gardner's hilltop hacienda where she has been mourning the recent death of her husband by getting it on regularly with two silent, maraca-shaking cabana boys. They are soon joined by a sketch artist (Kerr) and her ailing grandfather, a famous poet. Having originated as a Williams' play, it is given that there will be lots of turmoil and sniping among the characters and the film presents these moments well. There are also more than a few quiet moments of reflection and connection which also come across very nicely. Burton is in all his glory as a boozy, washed up man barely hanging on to what little dignity he has left. Gardner gives a credible performance with many zingers sprinkled throughout. She goes a little over the edge at times, but remains strong. Kerr has the most sensitive, thoughtful role and plays it brilliantly as always. Lyon was at the height of her stardom and shows the moves and the bod that made her a sensation, albeit briefly. Especially arresting is Hall. Her stick legs poking out uncomfortably from her linear skirt, her banshee-like voice screeching out the name "Charlotte!" as she frantically searches for nymphet Lyon, she is an exceedingly memorable person. Her final showdown with Burton is magnetic and when she exits the film, it loses a little bit of it's vitality. There is much to enjoy in the film, though sometimes the melodramatics get a bit ripe and the symbolism a touch heavy. The cinematography is incredible. Burton's eyes never gleamed so brightly. (Also, astonishingly, he has a scene emerging from the beach in wet white briefs which show a bit of outline of Rich, jr.! Not exactly expected in a 1964 film...)