moonspinner55 Review of Under Milk Wood

Under Milk Wood (1971)

"You can hear the dew falling, and the hush town breathing..."

[5/10 · 19 February 2024]

There is nothing so hushed about this chatty BBC-commissioned film-adaptation of poet Dylan Thomas's 1954 radio drama (which later made its way onto the stage) about the colorful residents of a Welsh fishing village. The long list of actors' credits at the beginning tips one early this is going to be a character-filled spread, and it is indeed! There are humorous and lightly erotic overtures in writer-director Andrew Sinclair's visualization, and a genuine feel for these eccentric working-class people and their daily routines, but I much preferred Sinclair's montages set to Thomas's poetry rather than the conversational episodes themselves. Richard Burton, snarling his way through the early narration, is a stranger wandering the town with a child-like grown-male companion (making sure we don't misunderstand these two to be homosexual, the men share a trollop). Burton looks ghostly pale, as if he were haunted at his core, though his familiar and imposing profile gives the picture some movie star allure. Meanwhile, Peter O'Toole, in milky contact lenses, is a former sea captain going blind, revisiting faces from his past including Elizabeth Taylor as a local Red Hot Rosie. The sprawling and bawling is high-spirited and theatrical, featuring men who long to sneak kisses from their missus, merry women who cackle like hens while happily complaining about putting up with their mates' snoring (as if women don't snore). A little of this stuff goes a long way. ** from ****