Of The Seamy Side Of Human Nature- Tennessee Williams’ The Night Of The Iguana

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

 

The Night of the Iguana, starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, directed by John Huston, based on the play by Tennessee Williams

 

Elsewhere in an earlier run through of Tennessee Williams’ plays I noted that he was always interested in taking a peek at the seamy side of human existence, liked to look sometimes I think morbidly, or too closely anyway, at human beings ability to deceive themselves  and to make horrible errors of judgement that will come back to haunt them. The classic case I referred to was Williams’ look at his own foibles disguised as a play in The Glass Menagerie. In the film adaptation of his The Night Of The Iguana John Huston has presented us with another look at the contrast between what we believe we are doing on this good green earth and what we are fake ourselves into believing in order to take that dreaded next step forward each day.  

The protagonist here The Reverend Lawrence Shannon, he of the several generations of gentile clergy now in decline in his branch of the family, played to a tee by Richard Burton in his younger days before the drink got to him and took the edge off of his looks and of his acting ability, is a fallen man of God. A man who has been chased out of his living by a scandal with, well, a younger woman, a very much younger woman, still a very strongly held taboo even today. He finds himself in reduced circumstances acting as a tour guide for a low-rent no frills travel agency down in hot, humid sultry sunny Mexico. His charges this time are a female coterie of varying ages and shapes from a Baptist bible school in Texas. (Heaven help him if those old biddies turn on him as they will, no question). Among those in need of guidance a young budding female, played by Sun Lyon, a niece of the coterie leader whose own hormones are raging strong enough to get Shannon’s raging as well. No good can come of that, no question, nor of his love of the bottle.           

But if we speak of the foibles of humankind we must also speak of redemption, or at least a settling of accounts and so while our good Reverend is tempted by the devil with that young bud he also is ready for salvation-whether he wants it or not. The salvation in the end not coming from a wandering female prophet disguised as an itinerant artist, played by Deborah Kerr but by the devil-may-care widowed owner of a run-down hotel, played by a frothy Ava Gardner, a hotel that Brother Shannon has used previously as a sanctuary/hideaway. While that artist knows what Shannon needs that good widow knows what he wants as they settle into the sunning hotel sun-light (and that artist once again glances as love and spurns it.). By the way if you want to know why Richard Burton in his prime was a sought after actor who knew what to do with his lines, knew how to get everything a writer like Williams and a director like Huston had to offer and why Ava filled many a screen with thoughts of sexual desire, especially in a scene with two young beach boys in the surf below the hotel one midnight, then this is one to watch.