Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (November 6, 2022)
Based on a Tennessee Williams play, 1964’s The Night of the Iguana comes with a tremendous pedigree. Co-written and directed by John Huston, it boasts a cast that includes Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr.
After an affair with a parishioner, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon (Burton) gets the boot from his Virginia church. He now finds himself in a remote Mexican territory where he acts as a tour guide for a low-budget company.
As his next assignment, Shannon entertains a group of middle-aged Texas women lead by Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall), and she brings along her teenaged ward Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon). When young Charlotte develops a sexual interest in Shannon, complications emerge.
Tennessee Williams always felt like the most theatrical of playwrights. This means that what works on the more abstract setting of a theater stage doesn’t always translate well to the more literal domain of the movie screen.
Going into Night, I’d seen four films based on the works of Williams, and this resulted in a tie. While I liked Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Streetcar Named Desire, I didn’t care for Sweet Bird of Youth and Fugitive Kind.
That left Night to break the tie, which it did. Alas, it did so in the negative domain, as this flick gives us a rambling, borderline silly character examination.
To its credit, Night does expand its stage-bound horizons. Although it does tend to focus on a handful of settings, it doesn’t come across as a project obviously adapted from a play, so it manages to feel moderately cinematic.
At least in terms of locations, which open up the proceedings. However, the script leans toward an awful lot of dialogue without much real “action”, a factor that accentuates the movie’s roots.
As implied, Williams leaned toward overwrought “theatrical” material, and that comes to the fore with Night. The movie often feels like a collection of monologues and overdone conversations more than a real narrative.
Does this flesh out the roles? Yeah, to a decent degree, but Night never makes any of the personalities especially compelling.
The characters lean into archetypes, and despite all the talent involved, none of them manage to add much real range to their parts. I don’t blame Lyon too much, mainly because she couldn’t act beyond her sex appeal.
However, along with Burton, the main cast includes Gardner and Kerr. That triumvirate should wring the requisite appeal from the characters.
They can’t. Burton handles his role’s seedier side well, but I don’t buy him as a man of the cloth – even a degraded one – and Kerr and Gardner find themselves stuck with one-note parts.
The biggest issue here remains the never-ending monologues, as they seem too overcooked and without real depth to keep the viewer involved. Night becomes tedious melodrama.
