Editor’s note: minor spoilers in the comments below.
Night of the Iguana. Burbank, CA: Turner Entertainment, distributed by Warner Home Video, c2006. Originally released as a motion picture in 1964. John Huston, director; Gabriel Figueroa, director of photography; Ray Stark, producer; John Huston, Anthony Veiller, script. Based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Performers: Richard Burton; Ava Gardner; Deborah Kerr; Sue Lyon; Grayson Hall; James Ward; Cyril Delevanti. Featurettes: “The Night of the Iguana: Huston’s Gamble;” “On the Trail of the Iguana.”
Summary: a defrocked, alcoholic, American minister becomes a tour guide, and while travelling in Mexico with a bus-load of school teachers and their 18-year old charge, becomes entangled with the girl, with a woman of eloquence and wisdom, and with an earthy and beautiful former love.
Sometimes the events and personalities surrounding the making of a movie are as legendary as the final product itself. Conspicuous examples might include Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane, two more or less contemporaneous exemplars from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Jump forward a generation or so and we have Night of the Iguana, which certainly fits the sensationalist mold but with an unmistakable early ‘Sixties vibe. The circumstances involved in the making of the film have been much discussed and thus we’ll not duplicate here, but rather concentrate on the merits of the film itself.
I’ve not seen or read the Tennessee Williams original and can’t say whether the cinematic treatment represents an improvement on, or falls short of, the play. What I have inferred from commentary, both online and otherwise, is that the movie, for better or worse, is a condensation and simplification of the play, along with some inevitable softening of more risqué content. However, considering the talent in front of and behind the camera, I can’t help feeling that the film version doesn’t quite deliver the goods, though it stands pretty tall on its own merits. Exactly what I find wanting in Iguana is not so easy to identify, except perhaps my reservations about the black and white look, discussed below. Moreover, repeated viewings reveal an ever growing appreciation of just how good the movie is: like fine wine its metaphysical message mellows and improves with age, perhaps mirroring one’s own mellowing and – we hope – growing in wisdom with the years.
The cast, even the much maligned Sue Lyon, is well nigh perfect. All inhabit their roles so honestly and so well it’s difficult to imagine any other actor assuming the respective parts. Ava Gardner in particular delivers a knockout performance as the rough-around-the-edges Maxine. I have one minor criticism: though her Southern bonafides are impeccable, hailing as she did from North Carolina, her accent doesn’t sound quite right, a little overcooked perhaps as if she’s trying too hard. Otherwise her mildly over-the-top take is spot on [1]. Indeed, this portrayal may be the closest cinematic approximation of the real life woman that we’ll ever get. Of course Burton is wonderful too playing an edge-of-the-ledge character and delivering one of his best edge-of-the-ledge performances [2]. And naturally Deborah Kerr shines as the itinerant sketch artist/grifter with more than a touch of wisdom. Ditto for Cyril Delevanti as her ninety-seven year old grandfather whom she proclaims to be the oldest living and practising poet.
The Warner DVD includes two featurettes, presented in glorious color, and they underscore the film’s major casualty: being shot in black and white and not in color. Director John Huston felt that all the incredible washes of color would have distracted from the somber mood of the story. But then again he later quipped that he was probably wrong. I tend to go along with Huston’s later assessment. While I’m not unsympathetic to the aesthetic, technical and probably even financial considerations that ultimately went into favoring black & white, to miss out on the incredible ocean vistas and lush tropical foliage, all emblazoned in south-of-border sunlight, seems a squandered opportunity that can never be revisited or redone. To my way of thinking, the color wouldn’t have diminished the story or mood a whit, maybe even improved it. Not the popular opinion perhaps, but there it is. At least we have the two, mostly color, bonus features as a kind of consolation, though, while on the topic of bonuses, a commentary track would have been very much welcome.
That being said, in the context of a black and white movie cinematographic legend Gabriel Figueroa does a stellar job of painting with a chiaroscuro canvas: just the right splash of light (or lightning), just the right camera angle, comingling into the darkness to flesh out (and sometimes obscure) the characters in all their follies and glories. Indeed if anything his low keyed, dare I say it, noirish approach tends to downplay the beautiful natural setting, concentrating as it does on interiors, or quasi-interiors (I’m thinking mostly of the patio and restaurant at Maxine’s place). Thus Benjamin Frankel‘s un-Hollywoodish score – spartan, low keyed, sparingly used – perfectly complements the monochromatic gestalt.
If there’s one misstep in the otherwise pitch perfect tone, it’s Maxine’s two Mexican houseboys and sometimes paramours who assume their beach boy roles with obvious, perhaps too much, relish. In its day this was apparently acceptable comic relief, even a little daring, but today the scenes with the beach boys seem a clumsy attempt at risqué humor and as a result fall flat.
Talky, self indulgent, even a tad pretentious at times, Iguana is still a thing to behold, mostly for the joy of watching great artists perform at the height of their powers. For all the drama that happens on the dark night of the iguana, by the end of the film we know that something has changed. Quite a lot has changed actually, a cosmic shift, tectonic plates moving, or something. All the individuals have had a sort of epiphany, even if its nature is unclear, and it’s to director Huston’s credit that he doesn’t emphasize said change in too heavy-handed a manner. Indeed, we don’t know how things will work out for the principals, especially Maxine and Shannon. We can only wish them well. Miss Jelkes and the tour ladies too.
Williams famously did not care for the ending, but I think it’s just right.
[1] Interesting that Ava Gardner, both the real-life woman and the roles she played, never completely shed her down-home origins, the most obvious tell being the residue of a Southern accent that always came through. Of all the characters she impersonated onscreen, echoing the comments above, the closest to the real woman was probably Maxine, and the fictional character closest to Maxine is arguably the, slightly more polished, playgirl Kelly in Mogambo. Indeed, Kelly might be seen as a warm-up for the earthy, worse-for-wear Maxine of a decade later.
Kitty Collins of The Killers ranks a close second to Kelly: she possesses much of Maxine’s proletarian street smarts, but otherwise has abandoned any humble beginnings in favor of an uptown, high maintenance, strictly urban lifestyle with its attendant comforts and rewards. By contrast, Kelly, like Maxine, must make do in a rustic, primitive environment.
[2] Special mention must also be made of Grayson Hall for her finely nuanced turn as Shannon's nemesis, the repressed, ostensibly Sapphic Miss Fellowes. For all her shrill, intolerant surface, this is ultimately a sensitive, sympathetic character, and Miss Hall does a brilliant job of capturing the woman’s brittleness – and humanity. (I think she was robbed of an Academy Award). Of course the characters in Iguana are so interesting and complex we want to have more backstory on all of them, especially Miss Fellowes. Of all the principals hers is the most sketchy portrayal. What is her history? What makes her so high strung? Why do she and Shannon rub each other the wrong way to such an extreme?
Further reading: R. Barton Palmer, "John Huston and Postwar Hollywood: The Night of the Iguana (1964) in Context," South Atlantic Review v80 n3-4 (2015), pp. 25-35; Lee Server, Ava Gardner: 'Love is Nothing,' St. Martin's, 2006, pp. 413-29; The Night of the Iguana and Puerto Vallarta.
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