Night of the Iguana (1964)

Directed by John Huston. Starring Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Grayson Hall, Sue Lyon, James Ward, Cyril Delevanti.

John Huston directed and co-scripted this film version of the Tennessee Williams play, and as it often was with the playwright’s film adaptations (or the plays themselves), blurred symbols and subtext surface with rude artificiality, and the story turns talky and laborious in the later stages, but it would be a sour stretch to declare it a failure. Burton, so high-strung and vigorous that he spends an extended chunk of the film strapped to a hammock, plays a defrocked priest on the other side of a nervous breakdown stranded in Mexico, battling his demons in the company of temptation and guilt. Burton has his highs and lows, Gardner misses the mark badly as an indecorous hotel owner, and Lyon suffers from typecasting as a Lolita-type, but Kerr’s sympathetic spinster is a steady and humane presence, and Hall landed an Oscar nod as a memorably rigid and crabby “moral authority.” Shattered glass underfoot, at least we know how the baritone star would describe action hero John McClane: diva. Splendidly photographed by Gabriel Figueroa; Oscar-winning costume design.

70/100