Movie Review: The Night Of The Iguana (1964)

A drama about life's dead-ends, The Night Of The Iguana aims for profound but lands on the wrong side of laborious.

Reverend Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) suffers an emotional meltdown and is locked out of his own church. He re-emerges as a cut-rate tour guide in Mexico, escorting a group of women unfortunate enough to find themselves on his cheap bus. He clashes with the prim Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall), the stressed chaperon for the underaged but oversexed Charlotte (Sue Lyon), who in turn is intent on seducing Shannon and re-triggering the cause of his downfall.

With Judith starting to make long distance phone calls to probe into Shannon's background, he leads the group to the Puerto Vallarta hilltop villa hotel operated by his earthy friend Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner). They are soon joined by penniless sketch artist Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), who is traveling with her delipidating grandfather Nonno (Cyril Delevanti), a presumed poet. Shannon, Maxine and Hannah engage in discussions about life and love, while Charlotte and Judith continue to pursue their own agendas.

An adaptation of the 1961 Tennessee Williams play, The Night Of The Iguana explores the downfall and potential salvation paths of one man as he tangles with the consequences of succumbing to temptation, argues against himself, and surrenders to the charms of a young women and the more potent influence of the bottle. The film placed Puerto Vallarta on the map, and the congregation of Hollywood superstars and their entourages at the remote Mexico location, with Elizabeth Taylor joining her lover Richard Burton on-set (they were both married to others), has entered Hollywood folklore. The movie itself, however, is a largely insufferable excuse to wallow in self-imposed misery, despite dripping with displays and discussions of sexuality.

Shannon's inability to control his impulses represents a short-cut to ignominy, and four unmarried women offer the disgraced Reverend opportunities for either further debasement or redemption. Judith looks down upon him as filth as she desperately tries to protect Charlotte's reputation in a case of apportioning all blame in completely the wrong direction. Maxine is pragmatically engaged in a hedonistic lifestyle and enjoying the on-demand company of two perpetually maracas-shaking virile and much younger locals. She understands Shannon's weakness in front of the flesh all too well.

Hannah is touring the world riding the generosity of others, although she offers her amateur artistry and her grandfather's tottering talent in return. She connects with Shannon as another soul peddling culture to cover up abject failure. And finally Charlotte has embarked on an unconstrained expedition of sexual discovery, the presence of her chaperon a minor and inconsequential inconvenience.

Despite the potential for intrigue residing within the characters, director John Huston gets bogged down in static, long, and mind-numbingly talkative scenes. His script is unable to expand the material into a meaningful cinematic format and particularly in the second half settles for dialogue that would sound hopelessly artificial even on stage. The cast members don't help much, Burton (resigned), Gardner (jaunty) and Kerr (perceptive) appearing to be in different movies but all of them marginally overacting just the same.

An iguana spends a long time on a leash as Reverend Shannon is also roped to protect himself from his own worst tendencies. For both man and lizard, The Night Of The Iguana is tightly tied to the deep malaise of failure.

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Movie Review: Lolita (1962)

A story of hebephilia as recounted by the predator, Lolita walks a fine line in creating a credibly monstrous man and surrounding him with competing carnal impulses.

In a prologue, college teacher Humbert Humbert (James Mason) invades the home of filmmaker Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers). The two men engage in an argument, Humbert accusing Quilty of ruining his life before shooting him dead.

In flashback to four years prior, divorced writer Humbert arrives from Europe to the New Hampshire boarding house of widow Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), where he plans to spend the summer before starting a teaching job in Ohio. Charlotte immediately sets her eyes on Humbert, but he prefers younger lovers and is smitten by her teenaged daughter Dolores, nicknamed Lolita (Sue Lyon). He endures Charlotte's obvious advances while writing scandalous fantasies in his diary about her daughter.

Lolita herself is rebelling against her mother and interested in seducing Humbert as well as enjoying the company of other boys. Charlotte senses her daughter is a threat and sends her off to summer camp. Humbert marries Charlotte as a convenient ruse to stay close to Lolita, but soon realizes he cannot tolerate his new wife. She discovers his diary, setting off events that allow Humbert and Lolita to indulge their lust while he attempts to control every aspect of her life.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick from an initial script treatment by Russian author Vladimir Nabokov adapting his own 1955 novel, Lolita's remarkable achievement is that the film got made at all, given the cinematic constraints of 1962. Kubrick threads the needle by casting newcomer Sue Lyon (15 years old by the time filming wrapped; the novel's Lolita is 12), never mentioning the girl's age, and using whispers and innuendo to set up the central seductions and fading to black at just the right moments.

The story tackles issues of lust, obsession, jealousy, possession and layers of lying. Humbert is the narrator, and the enigma created by Nabokov resides in the natural willingness to sympathize with a storyteller who in this case is preying on a young adolescent. Kubrick elicits a perfect performance out of James Mason, the actor finding the creepiness in Humbert's sick pursuit of Lolita, his obsession emanating from a rotten core and eating away at his soul. The thin strands of sympathy are woven out of Lolita's willingness to engage as a seductress herself, and gradual revelations of other twisted agendas.

The character of Clare Quilty is expanded from the book, and riding on an unforgettable Peter Sellers performance the slimy artist/filmmaker emerges as the dark Humbert's even darker double. A combination of guilty conscience, dogged rival and sinister shadow, Quilty appears at key moments to engage with Humbert, offering opportunities to pause and retreat or dive deeper into the moral abyss.

Despite the rich content, the running length of 152 minutes is excessive. After the initial pursuit and seduction, the second half sags into the slow motion wreckage of a mutually destructive relationship, Humbert's incessant determination to control Lolita blinding him to his emotional downfall. Kubrick prolongs a few scenes longer than needed, and some of the shouting matches descend into tiresome theatricality.

Confronted by Mason and Sellers in fine form, Shelley Winters and Sue Lyon hold their own. Winters as Charlotte oozes desperation to find her man, throwing herself physically and emotionally at a stranger she knows nothing about. Lyon is a revelation, her Lolita standing up to all the adults in the room, strategically advancing and retreating as she schemes her way to some form of salvation.

An exploration of insidious functional derangement, Lolita is thought provoking, disturbing and fascinating.

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