Watch The Night of the Iguana For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

the air,the heat, the flavors, the traces of words, the clash between spirits. and one of the splendid roles of Richard Burton. result - more than a film. maybe, a form of spell. because all is so real, precise and seductive, bitter and full of salt circles , because to say than the performances are admirable is only a poor definition for a form of art who not only gives the essence of Tennesssee Williams universe but change the viewer in a manner subtle and powerful. poem of solitude, it reminds the small truths defining each life. one of motifs for define "The Night of the Iguana" as magic.

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA is the last play of Tennesse Williams. Three years after its Broadway success John Huston reworked it into one of Hollywood's most honored albeit in black and white films. The leads are played with style and depth by Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr. The role of the proprietress of the Mexican bed and breakfast, a supporting role in the play is expanded through considerable non talking filming of a brilliant Ava Gardner into the third lead. the private struggles we all go through when life deals us lemons are focused here into a single night in which Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr must through long monologues arrive at how to live through them and even find peace. The filming changes somewhat the storyline through long, brilliant shots where Williams does not have dialogue but it is certainly one of Hollywood's most memorable character study dramas.

T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) is a defrocked reverend working as a low rate travel guide in Mexico. He's guiding a group of middle-aged ladies from Texas. Their leader Judith Fellowes warns him against getting too close to flirtatious teen Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon). Charlotte tries to seduce a drunken Shannon and Fellowes finds them together in his room. Fellowes aims to get him fired. Shannon strands them at his friend Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner)'s remote closed resort to stay away from the telegraph to fire him. Then Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) arrives with her elderly grandfather.These are memorable characters especially Richard Burton's Shannon. I like watching him at the beginning when he's a weaselly hopeless drunk. He's almost comical in his lying desperation. I am a little split on everything else. Some of them go well over the top whether it's Sue Lyon's Lolita wild thing or Ava Gardner melodramatic turn as the brassy resort owner. I just feel the movie eventually overwhelms any rooting interest or compassion.

The captured iguana is the symbolic figure of these pathetic character's lives in this engrossing Tennessee Williams drama based upon his hit Broadway play. The obvious "end of the rope" has come for supposedly defrocked Episcopal minister Richard Burton who went off on his congregation in a senseless tangent and ended up in the sorry position of hosting a series of tours for churches on a desolated Mexican coastline. He finds an instant enemy in the authoritative school teacher Grayson Hall whose obsession with young charge Sue Lyon has hints of lesbian attraction. Hall is furious with Burton whom she finds in various compromising situations with the underaged sex-pot, a non-virginal version of the same character that Sandra Dee played in "A Summer Place". When Burton realizes that his job is in jeopardy, he has the group of elderly women he is touring with kidnapped and taken to the practically abandoned hotel run by the blowzy Ava Gardner, an obvious woman of ill repute, and one of playwright Williams' signature "older" women who obviously have not accepted their advancing age. Toss in the seemingly innocent sketch artist (Deborah Kerr, sans much makeup) and her elderly grandfather (Cyril Delavanti) for some philosophical discussions of the human soul and how in life everybody does indeed become, like the iguana, tied to a rope that becomes more like a noose.All of these characters are facing the end of their rope. Burton faces the loss of his job to go along with the possible loss of his soul; Gardner must take a good look at herself, being a recent widow hanging onto her youth through two sexy Mexican amours; Delavanti's rope is the impending end of his life; young Lyon is obviously hanging herself with finding her womanhood way too soon; Kerr, the voice of truth, reveals herself not to be as noble as she comes off as. In fact, a conversation between Kerr and Gardner reveals that Kerr is quite the con-artist, and a brilliant one. The biggest rope, though, I found was for Grayson Hall's Judith Fellowes, a woman Burton describes as very moral that would be destroyed if she learned the truth about herself. Every now and then, there is a softness in Judith that is revealed, her love for Lyon not quite carnal, but certainly more than teacher/student. Unlike the butch lesbian Beryl Reid would play in "The Killing of Sister George", Fellowes' obvious lesbian is so repressed, both sexually and emotionally, virtually a walking corpse. When Kerr questions Burton's declaration of Gardner as a loose woman past her prime and his protection of the woman who had gone out of her way to destroy him, the answer is obvious: Gardner could survive such a truth; Hall could not.Certainly as melodramatic as most of Williams' work (only "The Glass Menagerie" slightly manages to avoid severe melodrama), "The Night of the Iguana" reminds us that we are all subject to becoming near to the end of our rope, and each emotion and feeling we deny, obsess over, or bring down on others, can bring undeniable trauma. Each of these characters has suffered some sort of trauma, yet not all will survive. They may continue to live and breathe, but survive is another thing. The other amazing thing about this play/movie is that none of the major characters are really totally likable (bus driver James Ward excepted) but each of them leaves an impression. The minor character of the frail Miss Peebles is played memorably by a stage actress named Mary Boylan who was only 50 when she played this part, yet made up to look so much older.The Oscar Nominated Hall plays one of the most delightfully dark characters in screen history, and would follow this up with her campy role on the daytime soap "Dark Shadows". Not quite villain, but far from someone you'd want to end up with on a bus tour like this, she is mesmerizing from the moment she dominates everybody on the bus with the choice of the songs they sing. Slightly resembling Eileen Heckart (another brilliant stage actress with minimal but totally memorable screen work and an equally awesome voice), Hall will stick in your memory, whether declaring her feelings to an absent Lyon, screaming out "Shannon!" over and over again before bursting into tears on a Mexican beach, or screeching at him "You Beast!".