 | |
List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 12250
Released: May 2, 2006 |
| Our Price: $11.25 |
| Used Price: $10.88 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
In the sleepy village of Puerto Vallarta, the defrocked Reverend T. Laurence Shannon works as a tour guide. While leading a group of school teachers, he attracts the attention of their junior member Charlotte Goodall. To save money, he takes the group to a rundown hotel owned by his friend, Maxine Faulk. Once there, his interest shifts to Hannah Jelkes, a poor artist. But in the end it may be Maxine whom he stays on with.
Description of The Night of the Iguana:
The Night of the Iguana may be Richard Burton's finest hour on the screen: beautifully cast as an anguished, defrocked reverend, doomed to his own purgatory in Mexico as tour guide to a group of nattering biddies. (The expression on his face as the ladies warble "Happy Days Are Here Again" on the tour bus is worth a Shakespearian monologue.) John Huston's clean, black-comic adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play is a forceful snapshot of a man down to his last chance, and the superb black-and-white location photography by Gabriel Figueroa captures the end-of-the-world vibe. The women who tempt and taunt the reverend are Ava Gardner (with her maraca-shaking beach boys), Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon. The movie--and its backstage publicity, with Burton and Liz Taylor carrying on their Cleopatra affair--put Puerto Vallarta on the map, but it deserves notice for Burton's gutsy acting and Huston's characteristic sympathy for life's losers. --Robert Horton
The Night of the Iguana Reviews:
Much better than I had been led to believe 
2009-09-24 - Although "The Night of the Iguana" is not considered one of Tennessee Williams's best plays it is nonetheless an interesting piece of work. John Huston's interpretation, starring Richard Burton as the Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, Williams's defrocked, alcoholic clergyman, is also not considered one of Huston's best films, but is nonetheless an interesting venture.
Burton gives a steady performance while Ava Gardner is excellent in a limited role as Maxine Faulk, a woman of a certain age: too old for boy toys and too young to toss in the towel. What she would like now that her old hubby is dead is for Shannon to fall in love with her. Shannon has come to her Mexican hotel and restaurant with a busload of unhappy Baptist College faculty tourists. He has failed as a clergyman and is now failing as a tour guide. Sue Lyon, not far removed from the title role in Kubrick's Lolita (1962) plays Charlotte Goodall, a teenaged tease trying to further debauch the compromised Rev. Shannon. Deborah Kerr has an interesting part as the chaste daughter of a free-spirit traveling grandfather/granddaughter team of street artists who happens to arrive at the hotel as her elderly grandfather is near collapse. Grayson Hall plays Judith Fellowes, a hardnosed Baptist lady about whom Shannon says: "Miss Fellowes is a highly moral person. If she ever recognized the truth about herself it would destroy her"--that truth being...well, let's just say she likes Charlotte more than she knows.
The film was shot on locale in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico before the tourist build-up during an era in which Mexico was Hollywood's safe and idyllic playground. A sense of the laidback attitude prevailing then can be recalled in the popular song from the forties "Manana, Manana is good enough for me." It was a playground in which anything could be had for pennies on the peso including things immoral, illegal and even downright unhealthy--come to think of it, pretty much as now, except the price has gone up quite a bit and it's not so safe anymore.
The Night of the Iguana comes in the middle of John Huston's long career as one of filmland's greatest directors, 23 years after The Maltese Falcon (1941) and 23 years before The Dead (1987). It is a film characterized by an authentic locale, atmospheric shots and the sharp, witty dialogue of one of America's pre-eminent playwrights in Tennessee Williams. It is a film at once satirical with clearly etched characters, deeply understood as only Williams, Chekov, Shakespeare and a few other playwrights are capable of creating. Huston stays faithful to Williams's underlying critique of human sexuality and the hypocrisy surrounding it while getting the best out of a very good cast.
The only disappointment is Miss Lyon who played her part without finesse. She complained at some point in her career that she had been typecast out of good parts because she had played Lolita. However one can see here that Lyon, as pretty as she was, was not talented or charismatic enough to become a star.
Ava Gardner on the other hand had already been a star and was in fine form, relishing playing Maxine Faulk, the in-charge, earthy woman of the world. She gets to take a shot at the prissy but slightly butch Judith Fellowes when Fellowes allows that she teaches "voice" at the college. Maxine counters with, "Well, geography is my specialty. Did you know that if it wasn't for the dikes, the plains of Texas would be engulfed by the gulf?"
Burton seemed entirely at home playing a character who was not far removed from his own persona, as was the case with Deborah Kerr whose character here was not too far removed from that of Anna Leonowens whom she played so beautifully in The King and I (1956).
See this for John Huston, one of cinema's greatest directors.
Don't know what the raves are about 
2009-02-18 - It is an interesting experiment in story telling in its time as the cast sweats it out along the mexican backroads. However, the dialogue is too broken and confusing many times, there's too much left unsaid in many parts. I didn't feel sympathy or a connection to any of the characters, and the chemistry between them is lacking or stereotyped. I found Ava Gardner hugely annoying with her maraca boys. The characters are largely too flighty and emotional, and worst of all the whole iguana motiff is finally trite and simple. Thumbs down.
Night of the Iguana 
2009-02-16 - A wonderful movie with old time charm. Done in Black and White it was very facinating to see how this movie could have been such a big success when colored films were already the big hit. I would recommend this movie to all movie buffs.
Huston's Gem from Mexico
2009-02-07 - What a blessing Huston provides with this film beautifully shot in Mexico. It is so superbly cast and the script so content-rich that it is a gem for the collection, as it keeps giving and giving, easy to watch over the years as it was the first time to see. Richard Burton plays a defrocked priest in a humorous downward spiral who redirects a tour bus full of uptight Christian women to a run-down, off-season hotel owned by the magnificent, wildcat Ava Gardner in easily her best role. Also in play is Deborah Kerr as a traveling artist, who ties Burton to a hammock near an iquana Gardner has tethered for dinner. Along the way, Huston employs this delicious, intelligent script to captivate you, as well. My favorite Burton film, just because it is so warm, funny, and ultimately, sweet.
Don't bother 
2009-01-13 - We watched Night of the Iguana, because we were going to visit Puerto Vallarta.... where it was filmed. Very slow movie. No Plot. Not good scenery, or anything. This movie has few redeeming qualities.
