John Schlesinger's film of Nathanial West's iconic novel Day of the Locust has been hanging in there with film buffs for so long I think it is about time it was acknowledged as the minor masterpiece that it is. Maybe not so minor in fact. When I watch it, which I've been doing since the day it was released, I find myself wishing Hitchcock or Welles had directed an adaptation of it, something that would have insured its arrival into the pantheon of masterpieces. This isn't to degrade Schlesinger's work at all but I think the Hitchock or Wellesian touch might have made it into a film as much talked about as Sunset Boulevard.
Day of the Locust is not simply another Hollywood exposé along the lines of Sunset Boulevard, A Star is Born and The Bad and the Beautiful, but it is every bit as fascinating and gut wrenching, perhaps more so, than those classics.
Nathanial West's tale is a full blown horror story. Hollywood itself is the inanimate monster that evokes the beast in the bedazzled humans that inhabit the landscape. ALL are victims of the mind numbing, soul evaporating environment.
The ironic and disheartening thing about this story is that West has used Love as the vehicle that speeds its passengers towards their melancholy doom.
The most sympathetic character is Homer Simpson, yes, Homer Simpson, played with a quiet and tortured passion by Donald Sutherland. Homer is a meek, virginal certified public account who fate has thrown in the path of Faye Greener (Karen Black) and her down-at-heel father Harry (Burgess Meredith in a terrifying performance of pathos and madness), an ex- vaudevillian who has ended up in Hollywood after arriving their years before for a small part in a B movie.
Tod (William Atherton) is a bright young man newly arrived from Yale. He is a gifted artist and spends his time recording in drawings the people and events he witnesses. He is rapidly sucked into the vortex of despair and barely escapes with his life in the end. Homer, on the other hand, is not so lucky.
The final scenes are harrowing. The most shocking effect it had on me is that I found myself rooting for the crazed Homer who does something I can't bring myself to reveal because the shock of it is worth discovering for oneself. It involves the comeuppance of a horrid child actor named Adore (its sex is ambiguous) played with infuriating moxie by the young Jackie Haley.
The cast is splendid. Geraldine Page makes an atomic blast of an appearance as the charlatan evangelist Aimee Sempel McPherson in a single scene of insane religious hysteria.
Day of the Locust is about our atavistic need for gods and the subsequent need to destroy them for not living up to our delusions of ourselves. It is a truly disturbing and fascinating film and should be seen by all lovers of great film adaptations of great books
The 1970s and early 1980s were a Golden Age in Hollywood that is just now being acknowledged as such. The Day of the Locust is one film from that era that rests comfortably near the top of the pyramid. Don't miss it.
Very highly recommended.
Day of the Locust is not simply another Hollywood exposé along the lines of Sunset Boulevard, A Star is Born and The Bad and the Beautiful, but it is every bit as fascinating and gut wrenching, perhaps more so, than those classics.
Nathanial West's tale is a full blown horror story. Hollywood itself is the inanimate monster that evokes the beast in the bedazzled humans that inhabit the landscape. ALL are victims of the mind numbing, soul evaporating environment.
The ironic and disheartening thing about this story is that West has used Love as the vehicle that speeds its passengers towards their melancholy doom.
The most sympathetic character is Homer Simpson, yes, Homer Simpson, played with a quiet and tortured passion by Donald Sutherland. Homer is a meek, virginal certified public account who fate has thrown in the path of Faye Greener (Karen Black) and her down-at-heel father Harry (Burgess Meredith in a terrifying performance of pathos and madness), an ex- vaudevillian who has ended up in Hollywood after arriving their years before for a small part in a B movie.
Tod (William Atherton) is a bright young man newly arrived from Yale. He is a gifted artist and spends his time recording in drawings the people and events he witnesses. He is rapidly sucked into the vortex of despair and barely escapes with his life in the end. Homer, on the other hand, is not so lucky.
The final scenes are harrowing. The most shocking effect it had on me is that I found myself rooting for the crazed Homer who does something I can't bring myself to reveal because the shock of it is worth discovering for oneself. It involves the comeuppance of a horrid child actor named Adore (its sex is ambiguous) played with infuriating moxie by the young Jackie Haley.
The cast is splendid. Geraldine Page makes an atomic blast of an appearance as the charlatan evangelist Aimee Sempel McPherson in a single scene of insane religious hysteria.
Day of the Locust is about our atavistic need for gods and the subsequent need to destroy them for not living up to our delusions of ourselves. It is a truly disturbing and fascinating film and should be seen by all lovers of great film adaptations of great books
The 1970s and early 1980s were a Golden Age in Hollywood that is just now being acknowledged as such. The Day of the Locust is one film from that era that rests comfortably near the top of the pyramid. Don't miss it.
Very highly recommended.