The Night of the Iguana (John Huston, 1964)

Ava Gardner and Richard Burton in The Night of the Iguana

Cast: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon, Grayson Hall, Skip Ward, Cyril Delevanti, Mary Boylan. Screenplay: Anthony Veiller, John Huston, based on a play by Tennessee Williams. Cinematography: Gabriel Figueroa. Art direction: Stephen B. Grimes. Film editing: Ralph Kemplen. Music: Benjamin Frankel. 

It's a movie adaptation of a play by Tennessee Williams, so you know you're going to see a lot of Acting and hear a lot of rather florid dialogue. As for the capital-A acting, it's Ava Gardner who almost steals the show, just by being her gorgeous, free-spirited self. It's a great part for an actress in her middle years (Gardner was 42), as the casting of Bette Davis in the original Broadway production suggests. Gardner plays Maxine Faulk, the proprietor of a slightly louche Puerto Vallarta hotel, who finds herself welcoming to the hostelry an old friend, the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton), along with a company of teachers from a Texas Baptist women's college, whose tour bus he has just hijacked. He has come to recuperate from a variety of scandals, including some carrying-on with the nubile Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon), who is chaperoned by the up-tight Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall in an Oscar-nominated performance). Maxine is reluctant to shelter Shannon's flock, but his apparent disordered state of body and mind breaks down her resistance. Soon they are joined by another itinerant pair, Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) and her nonagenarian grandfather, known as Nonno (Cyril Delevanti) and billed by Hannah as "the world's oldest living poet." If I give the acting award to Gardner out of this company it's because her part is the most entertaining and she knows it. Kerr is stuck in yet another of her spinster roles, and she's given the burden of becoming the voice of truth and righteousness in the film. Fortunately, she's more than up to it, making Hannah a more interesting character than you might expect. It's Burton who comes off worst in the film, maybe because the screenplay's opening-up of the role, giving Shannon scenes that weren't originally contrived by Williams, fragments the character and causes Burton to have to act out what should have been a backstory better left to our imagination. We didn't need the prologue in which Shannon scandalizes his church and the scenes of rebellious misbehavior along the tour to understand why he's so close to a breakdown when they arrive at Maxine's hotel -- Burton is more than capable of delivering that kind of exposition, and seeing them only complicates our reaction to the character. So it's a mixed bag as a movie, though not without its pleasures and some genuinely moving scenes. It also suffers less from Hollywood censorship than most of the film adaptations of Williams's plays: By 1964 things had loosened up enough that the screenplay can be a little more explicit about things that had been swept under the carpet in the 1950s. I do happen to find that the implication that Miss Fellowes is a closeted lesbian unnecessary and tasteless, especially since it inspires disgust in the otherwise freewheeling Maxine, but such were the times.   

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

Cast: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Morrison, Vida Hope. Screenplay: Roger MacDougall, John Dighton, Alexander Mackendrick. Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe. Art direction: Jim Morahan. Film editing: Bernard Gribble.
Music: Benjamin Frankel.

When I first saw The Man in the White Suit many years ago, I thought it was a satire on the short-sightedness of those who resist scientific and technological progress. But now, after having worked in an industry threatened with obsolescence by technology, I have much greater sympathy for the film's ostensible villains, capital and labor, who try to suppress the innovation discovered by Alec Guinness's Sidney Stratton. He develops a "miracle fabric" that repels dirt and is seemingly indestructible. At first, the idea is welcomed by textile manufacturers who hope to obliterate the competition with the product. But it doesn't take long for the manufacturers to realize that an indestructible fabric would eventually put them out of business. At the same time, the labor unions realize that it would also put them out of work. It's not hard to see the parallels to our own experiences after the revolution brought about by computer technology, but in 1951 that was nothing more than a glimmer in the eyes of the fathers of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. So be careful about what's funny today. It may be your nightmare tomorrow.

The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith, 1952)

Dorothy Tutin and Joan Greenwood in The Importance of Being Earnest

Ernest Worthing: Michael Redgrave
Algernon Moncrieff: Michael Denison
Lady Bracknell: Edith Evans
Gwendolen Fairfax: Joan Greenwood
Cecily Cardew: Dorothy Tutin
Miss Prism: Margaret Rutherford
Canon Chasuble: Miles Malleson
Merriman: Aubrey Mather

Director: Anthony Asquith
Screenplay: Anthony Asquith
Based on a play by Oscar Wilde
Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson
Art direction: Carmen Dillon
Film editing: John D. Guthridge
Costume design: Beatrice Dawson
Music: Benjamin Frankel

For its marvelous sendup of the drawing room drama, the intricate craftsmanship of its plot, and the unparalleled wit of its dialogue, The Importance of Being Earnest has been called a "perfect" play. But perfection in the theater doesn't readily translate to perfection on the screen, so some of the fluidity and buoyancy of Oscar Wilde's play is lost in Anthony Asquith's otherwise admirable film. Asquith's screenplay chops up and relocates parts of some of the play's acts, and it provides a theatrical frame for the action: people taking their seats in the box of a Victorian theater and the curtain rising as a woman raises her opera glasses to view the performance. Asquith immediately breaks from that frame to show Ernest in his bath, a scene that doesn't exist in the play and seems to be in the film only to demonstrate that the screenwriter has "opened it up" cinematically. But almost immediately we are back in the confines of Wilde's original, as Algernon arrives and the exposition begins. The frame is a nice little trick on Asquith's part, but it feels gratuitous. The play's the thing, and for the most part Asquith sticks to it. The chief glory of his film lies in his cast, most of whom had almost certainly performed their roles on stage, given the centrality of Wilde's play in the British repertoire. And although the men are perfectly fine in their roles, the women are what matter in the film: a quartet of perfectly cast, impeccably skilled performers. Lady Bracknell typically steals every production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and Edith Evans almost makes the role her own forever -- though the part has been played by equally formidable actresses like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith -- with her imperious delivery. No one has ever surpassed her in summoning up the full diapason while delivering the line "A handbag?" Nor is it possible to imagine a more perfect embodiment of Miss Prism than Margaret Rutherford, who makes it quite clear that the character was entirely capable of placing the novel in the pram and the baby in the valise. Gwendolen and Cecily are not so distinctly drawn in the script: Both are cunning ditzes, vehicles for epigrams, satires on girlishness. But Joan Greenwood and Dorothy Tutin give each a discrete characterization, Tutin with her sunny pretense at naïveté, Greenwood with her mastery of a voice that can go from purr to growl in nothing flat. If I give Greenwood the edge, it's only because of the way her slight lisp makes hearing her say the name Cecily such a delight.

A Kid for Two Farthings (Carol Reed, 1955)

Jonathan Ashmore in A Kid for Two Farthings

Joanna: Celia Johnson
Sonia: Diana Dors
Avrom Kandinsky: David Kossoff
Sam Heppner: Joe Robinson
Joe: Jonathan Ashmore
"Lady" Ruby: Brenda de Banzie
Python Macklin: Primo Carnera
Blackie Isaacs: Lou Jacobi
Mrs. Abramowitz: Irene Handl
Madam Rita: Sydney Tafler

Director: Carol Reed
Screenplay: Wolf Mankowitz
Based on a novel by Wolf Mankowitz
Cinematography: Edward Scaife
Art direction: Wilfred Shingleton
Film editing: Bert Bates
Music: Benjamin Frankel

Carol Reed's first color film is a very talky, somewhat claustrophobic one, best remembered today as a portrait of the London Jewish community that inhabited Petticoat Lane (called "Fashion Street" in the film) in the East End. The story centers on young Joe, a lover of animals (often to the animals' misfortune, as he can't seem to keep some of them alive) who lives with his mother, Joanna, over Mr. Kandinsky's tailoring shop. Kandinsky indulges Joe with stories about animals, telling him that if he ever found a unicorn it would bring everyone good luck. So naturally Joe finds one, a feeble little goat with one deformed horn, that a merchant is happy to get rid of. Joe thinks it will bring luck to the pretty Sonia and her body-builder boyfriend Sam Heppner, who want to get married but don't have the money; to Mr. Kandinsky, who would like to have a better trousers press; and to himself and his mother, who are waiting for his father to return from South Africa, where he has gone to seek his fortune. Things eventually work out for Sonia and Sam and Mr. Kandinsky, but at the film's end Joe and his mother are still waiting for the return of his father. There's a fair amount of whimsy at work, but it's subsumed in much local color and the hard-scrabble realism of the neighborhood. Diana Dors shows considerable depth as an actress, rising above the exploitation that tried to turn her into the British Marilyn Monroe. But the great Celia Johnson is wasted in the thankless role of Joe's mother, with little to do but look worried. The wrestler Primo Carnera appears as Python Macklin, whom Sam must conquer in the ring to make the money he and Sonia want, even though he's reluctant to develop the unphotographic muscles needed by a wrestler.