Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Antonius Block "Night of the Iguana" is based on the play by Tennessee Williams, so you know it's going to include darkness and push boundaries, and it does. Richard Burton plays a clergyman with a predilection for young women, and thus finds himself kicked out of his church and employed as a tour guide in Mexico. On a tour to Puerto Vallarta, it seems he has sex with an underage girl (Sue Lyon), and afterwards can't get rid of her. She continues to pursue him, much to the chagrin of her aunt and leader of the group (Grayson Hall). Burton finds himself in hot water again, and out of desperation takes control of the bus and the group to a different hotel, one now owned by the playful and bawdy widow of an old friend (Ava Gardner). There they meet an altruistic and spiritual painter (Deborah Kerr) and her elderly grandfather, a poet.Richard Burton's performance was a little hit-and-miss for me, at times being a bit hammy, but at other times really delivering. In any event he is certainly upstaged by Ava Gardner, who turns in a fantastic performance. She is smooth, natural, and authentic in this role. Sue Lyon is a little too wide-eyed and Deborah Kerr is a little too-pious for my taste, though those are the characters. And I have to say, the scene where Lyon cuts loose and dances around a beach bar is mesmerizing, and Kerr (the "spinster who is pushing forty") is compelling when she recounts her limited experiences with the opposite sex, and how she endures her urges and demons, things that have helped make her deeply empathetic to others.The film can be a bit heavy-handed in places, e.g. the comparison of Burton while trussed up in a hammock to Christ being crucified, but it's profound in others, e.g. the poem the old man comes up with (search for "How Calmly Does the Olive Branch"). It is edgy in places and refreshingly at the vanguard of the sexual liberation of the 60's, e.g. Ava Gardner's character making it clear that she enjoys sex with two young men (the scene on the beach, while nothing ultimately happens, still surprised me). It's retrograde in others, most notably stereotyping lesbians in Grayson Hall's character, whose sexuality the others make insulting comments about. All in all, while it had unevenness in the performances and script, there was a range of interesting emotions, some great moments, and it was entertaining.

popcorninhell In the annals of twentieth history American art and entertainment, it's a wonder the works of Tennessee Williams didn't worm their way into the thoughts of director John Huston sooner. Seemingly always focusing on damaged people on the end of their ropes, Williams's output has the steamy, melodramatic tinge that a natural adventurer and provocateur like Huston would have enjoyed. While I am a big fan of Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), there's a dark, destructive part of me that yens to see what kind of on-location tumult Huston could have mustered.Yet in comparison to "Streetcar," or for that matter "The Glass Menagerie" and "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof", "Night of the Iguana's" script doesn't quite gel as confidently. Somewhere underneath the familiar lusts and libations there's just something a bit off that sabotages the film from within.The Night of the Iguana concerns a wayward priest whose inappropriate relationship with a young Sunday school teacher got him ostracized by his congregation. Two years, and a nervous breakdown later, Reverend Shannon (Burton) now guides Christian tours for a tacky Mexican bus outfit. He spends a few days on tour with a flock of Baptist women, and sees history repeat itself when a 17-year-old Texas flirt (Lyon) gets him hot and bothered. High noon occurs at the Costa Verde Hotel where the vitreous Miss Fellowes (Hall) vows to have Shannon fired, defrocked and possibly arrested for messing around with a minor.Along for the ride are two additional women who help stir the sticky pot Shannon finds himself in. The first is Maxine (Gardner) the bawdy hotel owner whose late husband was a dear friend of Shannon's. The second is a chaste and impoverished painter named Hannah (Kerr) whose serendipitous arrival at the hotel befalls Shannon like a guardian angel. As an un-eclipsed star of the silver screen, Deborah Kerr is, as always a demure, stately vision. Despite being written inexplicably as a charlatan with a heart of gold and a gift for talking people off the ledge, she still carries through with the same verisimilitude she gave Sister Angela in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957).Unfortunately she and perhaps Miss Hall are the only people who seem to bring surprise and depth; a tall order considering their characters are pigeonholed as lesser versions of Mother Teresa and the Wicked Witch of the West. Ava Gardner, by all accounts a fine actress can't seem to find Maxine's center. One minute she's cloyingly passive aggressive in the way all Tennessee Williams vamps are. The next minute she's in histrionics, trading libidinous kisses with the cabana boys.Though if there be any performance that outright sinks this boat, it's Richard Burton, the flop-sweaty captain of this unlucky tug. His silver-tongued screeching and bellowing flies thick like mole over beans and rice, yet the thespian can't seem to grasp he's not on stage this time. He never takes the subtler, quiet moments that celluloid can afford him but rather blows up like a cannon every time a modicum of drama can be had. One particular scene involving him, the young Sue Lyon and a floor of broken glass feels almost cartoonish if it wasn't so airless and uncomfortable.Night of the Iguana is an overcooked mess made memorable less for its story and more for the drama behind the scenes. Unwanted set visitors included Tennessee Williams and Burton's second wife Elizabeth Taylor whose relationship still lives in Hollywood infamy. Additionally Burton was famous for being a petulant drunk during filming. This in turn attracted the paparazzi to the secluded coastal set and guaranteed headaches for the majority of the shoot. Rumor has it that Huston bought the cast custom pistols with engraved bullets, each having the name of the other cast members. The idea was whenever someone wanted to kill the other, they could do so in style. With so much gone wrong with this thing, I'd be going out guns blazing.

FilmCriticLalitRao There is something really enigmatic and magical about American film "The night of the Iguana" as it captures the raw beauty of Mexico as a preferred destination for pleasure seeking American tourists.It is one of those acclaimed films directed by renowned American director John Huston which succeeds at almost all levels.It is quite a pleasure to watch such a mature,serious film full of intellect and wit based on a humanist play by acclaimed American playwright Tennessee Williams.This film has its own balanced share of comedy and drama as everything in it is a remarkable ode to human judgment."The night of the Iguana" is able to strike a chord in viewers' minds as it has been transformed into a great character study thanks to amazing acting performances by famous actors Richard Burton,Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr.How can a moody man retain his sanity in an environment full of doubts and passion seems to be this film's core issue.It is an extremely complex issue for both men and women who have to deal with it using their limited resources.Both men and animals need to be freed from shackles to act and think freely appears to be this film's humane message.

mark.waltz The captured iguana is the symbolic figure of these pathetic character's lives in this engrossing Tennessee Williams drama based upon his hit Broadway play. The obvious "end of the rope" has come for supposedly defrocked Episcopal minister Richard Burton who went off on his congregation in a senseless tangent and ended up in the sorry position of hosting a series of tours for churches on a desolated Mexican coastline. He finds an instant enemy in the authoritative school teacher Grayson Hall whose obsession with young charge Sue Lyon has hints of lesbian attraction. Hall is furious with Burton whom she finds in various compromising situations with the underaged sex-pot, a non-virginal version of the same character that Sandra Dee played in "A Summer Place". When Burton realizes that his job is in jeopardy, he has the group of elderly women he is touring with kidnapped and taken to the practically abandoned hotel run by the blowzy Ava Gardner, an obvious woman of ill repute, and one of playwright Williams' signature "older" women who obviously have not accepted their advancing age. Toss in the seemingly innocent sketch artist (Deborah Kerr, sans much makeup) and her elderly grandfather (Cyril Delavanti) for some philosophical discussions of the human soul and how in life everybody does indeed become, like the iguana, tied to a rope that becomes more like a noose.All of these characters are facing the end of their rope. Burton faces the loss of his job to go along with the possible loss of his soul; Gardner must take a good look at herself, being a recent widow hanging onto her youth through two sexy Mexican amours; Delavanti's rope is the impending end of his life; young Lyon is obviously hanging herself with finding her womanhood way too soon; Kerr, the voice of truth, reveals herself not to be as noble as she comes off as. In fact, a conversation between Kerr and Gardner reveals that Kerr is quite the con-artist, and a brilliant one. The biggest rope, though, I found was for Grayson Hall's Judith Fellowes, a woman Burton describes as very moral that would be destroyed if she learned the truth about herself. Every now and then, there is a softness in Judith that is revealed, her love for Lyon not quite carnal, but certainly more than teacher/student. Unlike the butch lesbian Beryl Reid would play in "The Killing of Sister George", Fellowes' obvious lesbian is so repressed, both sexually and emotionally, virtually a walking corpse. When Kerr questions Burton's declaration of Gardner as a loose woman past her prime and his protection of the woman who had gone out of her way to destroy him, the answer is obvious: Gardner could survive such a truth; Hall could not.Certainly as melodramatic as most of Williams' work (only "The Glass Menagerie" slightly manages to avoid severe melodrama), "The Night of the Iguana" reminds us that we are all subject to becoming near to the end of our rope, and each emotion and feeling we deny, obsess over, or bring down on others, can bring undeniable trauma. Each of these characters has suffered some sort of trauma, yet not all will survive. They may continue to live and breathe, but survive is another thing. The other amazing thing about this play/movie is that none of the major characters are really totally likable (bus driver James Ward excepted) but each of them leaves an impression. The minor character of the frail Miss Peebles is played memorably by a stage actress named Mary Boylan who was only 50 when she played this part, yet made up to look so much older.The Oscar Nominated Hall plays one of the most delightfully dark characters in screen history, and would follow this up with her campy role on the daytime soap "Dark Shadows". Not quite villain, but far from someone you'd want to end up with on a bus tour like this, she is mesmerizing from the moment she dominates everybody on the bus with the choice of the songs they sing. Slightly resembling Eileen Heckart (another brilliant stage actress with minimal but totally memorable screen work and an equally awesome voice), Hall will stick in your memory, whether declaring her feelings to an absent Lyon, screaming out "Shannon!" over and over again before bursting into tears on a Mexican beach, or screeching at him "You Beast!".