Review: Night of the Iguana

Richard Burton is a defrocked minister (after displaying ‘conduct unbecoming a minister’) who is now forced to earn his wage by becoming a tour guide in Mexico for a shonky company looking for any excuse to let the now constantly sloshed guy go. His latest troupe are spinster-types from a Baptist women’s college, led by the histrionically humourless Grayson Hall, whose “Lolita”-esque niece (played by “Lolita” herself, Sue Lyon) immediately starts throwing herself at the rather disillusioned former minister, and soon his resolve is broken, earning him the wrath of Hall. Burton decides to make a little detour to attempt to regain his sanity, by stopping at a crummy jungle hotel run by widowed Ava Gardner, a cynical, but earthy woman whose deceased husband was a buddy of Burton’s and whose counsel he was hoping to have sought. Anyway, Gardner lets the group stay for a while, despite not officially being open for business yet. She’s too busy shaking her bon-bon with a couple of local cabana boys to worry much anyway. Just as things fail to improve for the increasingly unstable, near-delirious Burton, along comes another pair of hopeful patrons; prim and proper Deborah Kerr, and her very elderly poet grandfather, hoping to seek refuge whilst the old dodderer attempts to squeeze out one last gem. Meanwhile, whilst Kerr and Burton are two very different species, the former attempts to heal the latter’s tortured soul. Burton, for his part, just wants to be left the hell alone by all these she-devils and be content in his mostly self-inflicted misery.

Bizarre 1964 film from writer-director John Huston (“The Misfits”, “The Maltese Falcon”, “Beat the Devil”) and based on the Tennessee Williams (“Suddenly, Last Summer”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “A Streetcar Named Desire”) play, is one of the barmiest, darkly hilarious (despite a lot of critics seemingly oblivious to the film’s humour. It’s definitely there), and terrifically cast films I’ve come across in a while. Burton (who earned an Oscar nomination in 1964, but for “Becket”, not this) is both hilarious and moving in a part seemingly tailor-made for his brooding, somewhat tortured intensity, sassy Gardner has never been more enjoyable, and both Lyon (whose scenes with Burton are very, very funny) and Kerr (whose scenes with Burton are more on the dramatic side) are pitch-perfect for their roles. Admittedly, Hall (who was shockingly nominated for an Oscar and thankfully lost to Lila Kedrova for “Zorba the Greek”) cranks her performance of an already histrionic character up to eleven (and she- sorry about this- looks and sounds a little like Tony Curtis in drag from “Some Like it Hot”), but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise funny, bawdy, emotionally exhausting, and strangely moving film that even has similarities to Huston’s best film, and my all-time favourite film “The Misfits”. Burton’s character would not seem too out of place if inserted into that film, he’s as much of a lost soul looking for human contact, as any of the characters in that brilliant Huston/Arthur Miller film.

Not to everyone’s taste, though (Like “The Misfits”, it appealed to the disillusioned, jaded, slightly embittered side of me, and if you’ve never experienced great unhappiness in your life, or issues of self, neither film is likely to sing to you). Outstanding B&W cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa (“Kelly’s Heroes”, “Under the Volcano”) is a major asset and was nominated for an Oscar (The film won an Oscar for costume design, however, for reasons unbeknownst to me). The screenplay is by the director and Anthony Veiller (“The List of Adrian Messenger”, “State of the Union”).

Rating: B