The Day of the Locust (1975)
Mar 22, 2017 18:18:05 GMT
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Post by london777 on Mar 22, 2017 18:18:05 GMT
This a difficult one to assess for me.
I read the book well over fifty years ago as part of my teenage project to read every major novel ever written in English together with most translated into English as well. The folly of youth! Nearly as misguided as my current project to catch up on all the great movies I have missed out on for the past seventy years. Still, this old fool is having fun and I appreciate swapping posts with you guys and gals on this board.
From that reading I only remember that it was a chore and a struggle to get through it. (I might, or might not, feel very differently today, fifty plus years later).
My film viewing looked as though it was going the same way. Having acquired a DVD without captions two months ago, I started watching late at night with the volume at a lowish level. My hearing and my comprehension of American is not 100% and I had to keep "winding back" (or whatever it is called on DVD players) to catch all the dialog. After about an hour I lost patience with this bunch of tedious characters and gave up.
Tried again last night, earlier, when I was not so tired, For me the film only took off for the last 45 minutes or so. The film follows the book fairly faithfully but obviously omits lots of the details and sub-levels of the longish novel. It thus inherits the main difficulty of the novel. West was motivated by lots of spleen, but did not know exactly what he wanted to say. The two main topics are the morally cancerous effects of peddling fantasies of romantic and sexual fulfillment, and the enormous gulf between the haves and have-nots, with the haves a tiny and hated minority. All but two of the characters are losers to illustrate this.
Had John Schlesinger made a movie in Freudian mode about the first topic, or in socialist mode about the second topic, it might have hung together as well as Sunset Boulevard or The Grapes of Wrath do. Part of the problem is that the protagonist, Tod Hackett (William Atherton), is a shrewd observer of the vile underbelly of Hollywood (an analogy for the USA more generally) but he himself is equally part of what he despises. In Sunset Boulevard, Joe Gillis gets sucked in and his better impulses destroyed, but in The Day of the Locust it seems that Hollywood strips off Tod's liberal and intellectual Yale veneer to reveal his essential nature, cold, lecherous, and spiteful, though still sometimes considerate and sympathetic.
Lack of a coherent "message" or likable characters, is not the main problem, though it does make the film more difficult. For me, the main defect is the casting. It's hopeless.
The two principal male characters are supposed to be infatuated by the physical attractions of aspiring but talentless actress Faye Greener (Karen Black). That is basically the whole of the plot, but I did not buy it for one minute, so that is one big torpedo from the get-go. In the book Faye is an attractive seventeen year-old. Black was 35 when she played the part and looks every year of it thanks to the vulgar clothes and cheap make-up she wears. It is unbelievable that she could retain the interest of a young suave good-looking guy like Tod, or a 40-year-old with money like Homer Simpson (yes, that's where the name comes from) in a city awash with impoverished and beautiful young women. Not longer than her second or third psychotic outburst, anyway.
William Atherton is wrong as well. The book states that Tod is overweight and unkempt and Faye rejects him because he is not physically attractive. But in the film he is more than handsome enough for a cross-eyed, near middle-aged frump like her. So she is scripted to say that she is looking for someone exceptionally good-looking in order to rule him out. I was not familar with Atherton, but he seems more suited to play one of those anonymous government agents in conspiracy thrillers, with about two lines of dialog. He is far too bland an actor for a lead role.
Burgess Meredith got an Oscar nod for his role as Faye's father. Really? It is a clichéd, one-level role, and that is how he plays it. As someone who has seen Laurence Olivier play Jimmy Rice on both stage and screen in the The Entertainer, I was not impressed. We are supposed to feel sympathetic when Meredith snuffs it halfway through the film, but I was mightily relieved. Drunks are so tedious, on-screen as in real life.
The climax is terrific and purged my mounting impatience and frustration with the movie. I am glad I stuck it out that far. The film was unlikable, but it has been "hanging about in my head" ever since, whereas a more polished and integrated movie might not.
What are your impressions of this movie?
I read the book well over fifty years ago as part of my teenage project to read every major novel ever written in English together with most translated into English as well. The folly of youth! Nearly as misguided as my current project to catch up on all the great movies I have missed out on for the past seventy years. Still, this old fool is having fun and I appreciate swapping posts with you guys and gals on this board.
From that reading I only remember that it was a chore and a struggle to get through it. (I might, or might not, feel very differently today, fifty plus years later).
My film viewing looked as though it was going the same way. Having acquired a DVD without captions two months ago, I started watching late at night with the volume at a lowish level. My hearing and my comprehension of American is not 100% and I had to keep "winding back" (or whatever it is called on DVD players) to catch all the dialog. After about an hour I lost patience with this bunch of tedious characters and gave up.
Tried again last night, earlier, when I was not so tired, For me the film only took off for the last 45 minutes or so. The film follows the book fairly faithfully but obviously omits lots of the details and sub-levels of the longish novel. It thus inherits the main difficulty of the novel. West was motivated by lots of spleen, but did not know exactly what he wanted to say. The two main topics are the morally cancerous effects of peddling fantasies of romantic and sexual fulfillment, and the enormous gulf between the haves and have-nots, with the haves a tiny and hated minority. All but two of the characters are losers to illustrate this.
Had John Schlesinger made a movie in Freudian mode about the first topic, or in socialist mode about the second topic, it might have hung together as well as Sunset Boulevard or The Grapes of Wrath do. Part of the problem is that the protagonist, Tod Hackett (William Atherton), is a shrewd observer of the vile underbelly of Hollywood (an analogy for the USA more generally) but he himself is equally part of what he despises. In Sunset Boulevard, Joe Gillis gets sucked in and his better impulses destroyed, but in The Day of the Locust it seems that Hollywood strips off Tod's liberal and intellectual Yale veneer to reveal his essential nature, cold, lecherous, and spiteful, though still sometimes considerate and sympathetic.
Lack of a coherent "message" or likable characters, is not the main problem, though it does make the film more difficult. For me, the main defect is the casting. It's hopeless.
The two principal male characters are supposed to be infatuated by the physical attractions of aspiring but talentless actress Faye Greener (Karen Black). That is basically the whole of the plot, but I did not buy it for one minute, so that is one big torpedo from the get-go. In the book Faye is an attractive seventeen year-old. Black was 35 when she played the part and looks every year of it thanks to the vulgar clothes and cheap make-up she wears. It is unbelievable that she could retain the interest of a young suave good-looking guy like Tod, or a 40-year-old with money like Homer Simpson (yes, that's where the name comes from) in a city awash with impoverished and beautiful young women. Not longer than her second or third psychotic outburst, anyway.
William Atherton is wrong as well. The book states that Tod is overweight and unkempt and Faye rejects him because he is not physically attractive. But in the film he is more than handsome enough for a cross-eyed, near middle-aged frump like her. So she is scripted to say that she is looking for someone exceptionally good-looking in order to rule him out. I was not familar with Atherton, but he seems more suited to play one of those anonymous government agents in conspiracy thrillers, with about two lines of dialog. He is far too bland an actor for a lead role.
Burgess Meredith got an Oscar nod for his role as Faye's father. Really? It is a clichéd, one-level role, and that is how he plays it. As someone who has seen Laurence Olivier play Jimmy Rice on both stage and screen in the The Entertainer, I was not impressed. We are supposed to feel sympathetic when Meredith snuffs it halfway through the film, but I was mightily relieved. Drunks are so tedious, on-screen as in real life.
The climax is terrific and purged my mounting impatience and frustration with the movie. I am glad I stuck it out that far. The film was unlikable, but it has been "hanging about in my head" ever since, whereas a more polished and integrated movie might not.
What are your impressions of this movie?
