THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)

We see Episcopal minister Richard Burton begin to deliver a sermon on self-control to his congregation but he proceeds to lose control himself and rants about people turning their backs on compassion and instead encouraging scandal. Burton, who had been found in a compromising position with a young Sunday school teacher, is eventually locked out of his church, but not, as he is at pains to note to anyone in earshot, defrocked. He winds up as a tour leader and we see him next with a busful of middle-aged Baptist women in the Mexican village of Puerto Vallarta. The leader of the group (Grayson Hall) is a strident moralistic spinster who is also serving as the chaperone to an attractive teenage girl (Sue Lyon). Hall and Burton are constantly at odds, largely over his attentions to Lyon, who more than encourages his behavior, and when she finds Lyon in Burton's hotel room one night, she tells him she's going to call the tour guide company and get him fired. The next day, in an attempt to stop the company from contacting him, Burton has the bus driver (Skip Ward) more or less hijack the group to a resort a few miles out of town run by an old friend (Ava Gardner). Though she's closed for the season, she agrees to take them in, as well as welcoming two other wanderers: a struggling artist (Deborah Kerr) and her 97-year-old grandfather (Cyril Delevanti), a poet who is clearly on his last legs as he tries to finish one final poem. Tensions seethe, with Gardner accusing Hall of being a predatory lesbian with her own designs on Lyon, and Kerr trying to enlist sympathy so she and her grandfather can stay on despite having no money. The next day, Ward rebels and takes the women back to town, leaving Burton, Gardner and Kerr to their own devices that night, with Burton and Gardner working thorough an attraction even as Burton thinks about suicide (taking, as he calls it, "the long swim to China") The grandfather finishes his poem and dies, though the others have more upbeat endings.

This Tennessee Williams play has been opened up nicely, only betraying its stage roots in the final section. The amped-up melodramas of Williams work best on symbolic levels and this is no exception. Everyone overacts, but as the narrative rarely feels naturalistic, this is not out of place. Ava Gardner comes off the best, larger than life but having a real personality. She also gets to smile quite a bit, which no one else does, and she's the only character to see everyone for what they are. Burton (pictured with Gardner) is good even as he chews the scenery as a man tortured by his inadequacies. It feels like he took his acting here and cut it down by half to get to his excellent performance as George a couple years later in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Hall overacts the most, amplified by getting a lot of closeups, though her performance is fairly effective and she is missed in the last section of the movie. I'm not always a big fan of Kerr; she's satisfactory here but underacts, throwing off the balance of the performances. Delevanti, who was in his mid-70s, looks and acts every bit of 97, and young Skip Ward is fine as the bus driver. That leaves 18-year-old Sue Lyon, who became a star in Lolita. She's not bad but she’s a bit of a weak link. She's very one-note, and it's hard to tell if she's supposed to be a nymphomaniacal bad girl or a misunderstood innocent. A more experienced actor might have brought more nuance to the part. The title refers to an iguana that two of Gardner's houseboys have captured and tied up to be killed for food later, and that Burton ends up releasing. Exactly what the iguana is supposed to stand for wasn't clear to me. There's a nice line well delivered by Burton when Hall almost becomes hysterical when she comes upon Burton and Lyon in the water in their underwear: "What did you think we were doing out there? Spawning?" I also liked the scenes with the two swarthy and sensual houseboys, especially one in which they dance uninhibitedly with Lyon. There is also what I assume is one of the first references in a mainstream Hollywood movie to marijuana. Directed in a fairly plain fashion by John Huston. At two hours, it's too long, but it's worth sticking with. [TCM]