The Night of the Iguana (1964)

“I'm panicking!”

“I know that.”

 “A man can die of panic!”

“Not when he enjoys it as much as you do, Dr. Shannon.”

            I like how hot weather creates tension in films. Usually the characters are all on edge ready to rip each other’s throats from being miserably hot frustrated. Heat always makes me nervous and anxious when I watch a film set in a hot climate because I absolutely hate the heat. In the winter you can layer clothes and take those layers off when you get warm but in the summer time you cannot walk around in public buck naked! The topical, blazing hot weather in The Night of the Iguana creates a fascinating amount of tension and makes the characters perfectly crazy and on edge.

            Re. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) was once a priest. One day during a sermon he snapped and yelled at the parishioners to leave. Now he is working as a tour guide for a company down in Mexico. Shannon’s latest group is a bunch of old ladies and one young adventurous girl named Charlotte. Charlotte has a mad, obsessive crush on Shannon. He tries to push her away but she keeps coming back to him. Her chaperone Ms. Fellowes is a control freak and goes out of her mind when Charlotte is not near her. Ms. Fellowes threatens to call Charlotte’s father who is a big judge in Texas if Shannon goes near the girl again. One night Charlotte goes into Shannon’s room. When Ms. Fellowes finds Charlotte is not her bed she has a huge blow up and goes to Shannon’s room where the girl is.

            Ms. Fellowes sends a telegram to Charlotte’s father and has his reply sent to the new hotel they are going to. Shannon takes over driving the bus. Instead of going to the nice air conditioned hotel where the telegram will be sent he takes the ladies to the hotel of an old friend. The man who used to run the hotel has died and his wife Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner) has taken over. Maxine obliges Shannon and lets him and his group stay even though the hotel is usually closed in August.

            After everyone has settled in, a woman named Hannah (Deborah Kerr) and her grandfather come walking up the steep driveway. Hannah’s grandfather is ninety-seven years old and they have walked and hitched their way all over Mexico. She explains that he recites poetry and she paints and that is how they earn their money. Maxine is not happy that woman and the old man cannot pay for their stay. Hannah tells Maxine that she is at her mercy for whatever needs to be done.

            Charlotte once again sneaks into Shannon’s room. He has a meltdown, his nerves are completely shot. She talks insanely and obsessively about how she wants to run away with him and get married. After their blow up Charlotte runs down to the beach and gets drunk. The bus driver is a young man. He finds Charlotte and tries to fight some locals to get them to leave her alone. Charlotte drunkenly falls in love with the bus driver and no longer has feelings for Shannon.

            Shannon gets fired from the tour company. The bus driver and Charlotte manage to get the piece of the engine from the bus from Shannon that he had removed. When the ladies leave Shannon tells Hannah that he is going on a long swim to China, meaning he plans on killing himself by swimming until he is exhausted. Maxine’s men manage to get to Shannon and bring him to land before anything serious happens. They tie him to a hammock. He is terribly mean to Maxine about how she had wanted to sleep with other men besides her husband when they were married and knows about her trips down to the beach at night. She runs away down to the beach. Shannon and Hannah are left alone to talk. She tells him that once she had to fight off her own demon and did it through sheer determination and will power.

            Maxine comes back from the beach. Hannah has cut Shannon loose from the hammock. The grandfather comes out and proclaims he has finished his poem he had been working on for twenty-years. He has Hannah write it down. When he is done the old man dies in wheelchair.

            Since her grandfather is now dead Hannah has no need to be in Mexico anymore and has no more need to travel. Shannon wants to go with her but she tells him that it would be a bad idea for them to travel together. Maxine wants to leave the hotel. She tells Shannon and Hannah she is willing to give them a part in the hotel if they run it for her. Hannah still wants to leave and does. Shannon tells Maxine that he is staying with her.

            I loved Ava Gardner, Richard Burton, and Deborah Kerr in this film. Ava Gardner was wonderful from the moment she came on the screen. She put on this great southern accent and had the best bad ass attitude. She spoke what is now one of my all time favorite lines from a film: Ms. Fellowes is pissed off that Shannon had Maxine cancel the call she had put into Texas. She calls Maxine his paramour and Maxine replies “Miss Fellowes, honey, if paramour means what I think it does you're gambling with your front teeth.” Just the way Gardner said that was perfection. She had an attitude but it was not a full on attitude. You can see the annoyance Maxine had for this woman boiling under the surface. Gardner, forty-six and a lot hard partying and living showing on her face and body, was still stunningly gorgeous. I have seen a lot of her films and her performance here is one of her best. Tennessee Williams, who wrote the play, said that Gardner’s portrayal of Maxine was exactly how he had envisioned the character.

            Deborah Kerr was good. Usually she plays a polite English lady in dramas and here her character was a bit flighty and scattered. I enjoyed seeing a lighter side to her. Fun fact: Kerr and Gardner starred together in The Hucksters in 1947. Gardner had just made The Killers which was a huge success for her so MGM stuck her in a film with Clark Gable. The Hucksters, I believe, was Kerr’s first leading role in America. Kerr’s and Gardner’s scenes together were awesome. Their scenes were the tough, jealous woman and the sweet, innocent woman who just wanted to help out a bit. They were also a bit comical.

            Richard Burton for once did not drive me up a wall in a film. Of course he overacted and hammed up some of his scenes but for the most part he kept the character pretty under control. I liked all his scenes with Ava Gardner they looked good together.

            John Huston is such a great director. He worked with Ava Gardner before and the two of them got along very well. He always got fantastic performances from her. His close ups of the characters got you into their tensions and anxieties.

            The Night of the Iguana is a very good film. The direction and acting were brilliant. The story was alright and I think if there had been lesser actors playing the characters and a lesser director the story and the characters could have been too overwhelming. The Night of the Iguana is definitely worth watching especially for Ava Gardner’s performance

I See a Dark Stranger (1946)

“For a subject of a neutral country, aren't you being a little belligerent?”

“There's nothing belligerent about it. It's entirely a question of which side” 

            I See a Dark Stranger is about an Irish girl named Bridie Quilty (Deborah Kerr). When Bridie was young she heard a man in a pub talk about fighting the British and how much the British oppressed the Irish. Since that time she has fiercely hated the British. When she turns twenty-one, Bridie leaves her small hometown for Dublin. On the train Bridie is put into a compartment with her worst nightmare a British man.

            In Dublin Bridie goes to see a Mr. Callahan who was a friend of her father’s and fight with him in the revolution in 1916. She tells Mr. Callahan she wants to join the IRA to fight the British. He tells her the times have changed. In 1921 the Irish signed a treaty with England. Ireland got some things they wanted but not all. Mr. Callahan mentions to Bridie that where she comes from the people are romantics with their storytelling.

            On the train Bridie met a man named John Miller. He goes into a bookshop in Dublin. He is an agent there to secretly meet with another. Bridie happens to go into the bookshop at the same time and looks for German books. Bridie is once again back home in her small town working her job at an inn. Miller has followed her there. Bridie is now secretly working with Miller since he also does not like the British. He makes her go out with an Irish soldier. The soldier talks about military things for three hours. When Bridie goes back to the inn she tells Miller everything. Her next assignment is to go out with the British soldier David Baynes the man she met on the train to Dublin. He needs her to take David away for the day.

            Miller wants a prisoner named Price. He helps the man escape but it does not go very well for the two enemies of the law. Price is killed and Miller is shot. Bridie returns and tells Miller that David is not an intelligence officer he is just an officer on sick leave. Miller shows her that he has been shot and needs her to pass along information Price had given him. After Miller gives Bridie the information and how to dispose of his body he dies. Bridie dumps the body and is tortured about it. The next day she leaves for her mission. David follows her and messes everything up. Bridie thought an old lady was her contact. The lad is escorted off the train by two police detectives. A man gets on the train. He follows Bridie and David when they get off the train.

            Miller’s body is eventually found. The police have a description of Bridie. Since Bridie is now in England the British police want her arrested. They know she is going to the Isle of Mann. They do not take her description seriously because it is so vague. She goes to a courthouse right across the street from the police station. She sits in a particular spot where she is to find a notebook with instructions. She realizes they are notes on the invasion and that she holds the fate of British and Irish lives in her hands. She burns the book in the fireplace in her hotel room. The police come to ask her some questions and check her identity card. Her identity card is a fake, she is under David’s last name as his wife. Out of nowhere David walks into the room and backs her up. Bridie tells David everything. Now David is conflicted because if he turns her in he is practically signing her death warrant. If he does not turn Bridie in she will be killed anyway.    Bridie tries to confess her crimes to an officer as they dance at a dinner in the hotel lobby. The officer pays no attention to her. The partner of the officer she is dancing with tells him Bridie’s identity card is a fake. The man who has been following Bridie comes and dances with her next. He asks her what has happened to Miller. The man tries to get her to tell her what was written in the notebook. Bridie and David manage to get away from the man. David still had plans on turning Bridie in until he realizes they are in British territory. He tells her to go into Northern Ireland. Bridie was just about to cross the border when they hear that D-Day has occurred. Now Bridie is off the hook for everything she has done.

            Deborah Kerr from beginning to end was perfect. She had the perfect look of determination to do what she thought was right. There were a few parts where Bridie was sitting alone in her room and her anxiety over what she knew and what she had were getting to her and we hear a voice over of what she is thinking. Kerr’s facial expressions were great and mixed with the voice overs created a fantastic amount of suspense and tension.         

            I See a Dark Stranger has a fantastic mix of drama and suspense and tension. This is a story of a young woman who put her country above everything else in her life. It echoes a lot of what America and probably every country at the time were telling their people to do; to put their country and its safety above all else. I See a Dark Stranger has an interesting story with several attention grabbing twist and turns. 

The Innocents (1961)

“What shall I say when his feet enter softly? Leaving the marks of his grave on my floor. Enter my lord. Come from your prison. Come from your grave, for the moon is a risen. Welcome, my lord.”

            Sometimes I like to think if I was a film teacher what films would I show. First I think I would like to work in a college rather than a high school because in college you can get away with showing some risqué films like Pre-Code ones or crazy awesome action films like Tarantino ones. My list of films I would like to show a class is long so then I think I could teach a class like Films to 1940 and Films after 1940 (my one brother has taken classes like these and he loves them). I would absolutely show some suspense/thriller films such as anything by Hitchcock, Les Diabolique, The Dark Mirror, and several others. I recently viewed the suspense film The Innocents and quickly added it to my pretend list. The Innocents is an almost perfect film from beginning to end with an amazing story and incredible cinematography.

            The story takes place in the Victorian Era. A young woman named Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) is hired as a governess to two young children named Flora and Miles. She is hired by the children’s uncle (Michael Redgrave). The uncle does not care too much for children. He has them living out on his family’s country estate while he lives and works in London. He tells Miss Giddens that anything concerning the children is her problem not his.

            Miss Giddens travels out to the country. She is immediately taken with the home before her carriage pulls through the gate. She gets out of the carriage to walk the grounds before she enters the house. While out near the pond Miss Giddens hears someone calling for Flora but no one is around her. Flora, who has been out playing, sees Miss Giddens and goes over to her. Both governess and child like each other right away. Miss Giddens loves being in the big gorgeous house with Flora.

            Miles is away at school and will not be coming home for some time but Flora keeps saying that her brother will be home soon. The next day a letter comes from Miles’s school saying he is being expelled and will arrive home shortly. Miss Giddens finds Miles charming and sweet and cannot understand why he has been sent home.

            Soon after Miles arrives home odd things begin to happen. Windows fly open from a wild breeze late at night. The children act strangely and say odd things. While playing hide and go seek late one night Miss Giddens sees an apparition of a man outside after just having seen his photograph in a cracked frame in the attic. After this incident the children are not themselves and neither is Miss Giddens. She thinks she sees the man who had been Miles’s tutor and the former governess Miss Jessel, both whom had passed away the previous year.

            Miss Giddens believes that if she can get the children to tell the truth of what had happened in the house to the tutor and the Miss Jessel that she and the children can be free of these evil spirits.

            Obviously this has the type of story where not knowing too much detail before you see it is a good thing. With suspense films giving away detail is a sin and unfair to those who have yet to view them.

            I am not going to go on about the acting as I usually do. Deborah Kerr is an actress I do not mind seeing in a film. In this one she was not that great. I thought she was over the top at some points and she got on my nerves. Michael Redgrave played the uncle. He was only in the film for ten minutes tops. If the acting had been better this film I would have given it a ten out of ten.

            Now the direction and the cinematography are absolutely worth talking about. The direction by Jack Clayton and the cinematography by Freddie Francis are amazing. They enhance each other if that makes any sense. Clayton got some great shots that were greatly enhanced by light and shadow. All the scenes in the house are suspenseful because of the light and shadows. These are the reasons I would show this film to a class it is one of the best examples of near perfection directing and lighting.

            The Innocents is one of the reasons why I love classic films. If someone today could just make a good suspense film without cursing, without having half naked people running, and a story that could hold my attention I would like “suspense” movies from today a lot more. To me there is no such thing as suspense movies today there is usually too much violence and cursing when there does not need to be and the acting is usually terrible (good lord I sound like an eighty year old!). I would love to see a movie in the style of The Innocents made today with a great story, directing, and cinematography. But unfortunately this is our modern age where the studios just want to turn out a hit and do not give a crap about quality I thank God that high quality films like The Innocents exist. And that is why I would show The Innocents to a film class if my dreams were to come true I can could ever teach one. 

This scene, by the way, scared the ever living crap out of me!

Please Believe Me (1950)

There is a reason Please Believe Me is not a very well known classic film. It is not terrible it is just dull. There is nothing too funny or entertaining about it, the story falls apart almost from the moment the men start flocking around Deborah Kerr.

            For a number of years Alison Kirbe (Kerr) has been corresponding with an older American man named Hank she met during World War II when he was stationed there. He has passed away and she learns that Hank has left all his land to her down in Texas. Alison’s name is splashed all over the papers as an heiress to a Texas ranch.

            As soon as Alison steps onto the pier where she is to take a ship to America she is approached by a man named Terrence Keath (Robert Walker). His “helper” Victor takes Alison’s luggage away as if by accident. On board the ship Alison is brought from her second class cabin to a first class cabin in a room of her own. Terrence has given her his room. He claims that Hank was an old family friend and wants to help her out. At first Alison does not want the room but eventually changes her mind and says she will pay him back once she gets her money.

            Turns out, Terence is pulling a scam on Alison. His “helper” Victor was hired by Reilly the guy who Terence owes money to keep an eye on him. Terence’s idea was to marry a rich woman and he set his sights on Alison. He has been doing things to win Alison over such as giving her the room and his place at the captain’s table.

            Terence’s plan starts to fall apart when Alison meets Jeremy Taylor (Peter Lawford) and his lawyer Matt Kinston at dinner. Jeremy is a millionaire looking for someone to marry and Matt is his advisor keeping an eye on his client in case anyone tries to pull anything on him.

            For the next few days all three men try to get Alison to fall for them. Matt finds out that Terence is connected to Reilly and he think Alison is working with him and Victor to get Jeremy’s money. Matt tells Jeremy this but Jeremy does not care at all… for a while.

            Alison’s situation and the plot begin to fall apart once she lands in New York.

            Debroah Kerr was the only redeeming quality of this film. She was adorable and perfect. Kerr did a great job with what she was given to work with. I laughed so hard with her in two scenes. One scene is jokingly telling Terence how she cannot ride in a train in America because she watches the telephone poles go by on the right- then she moves her head as if watching the poles go by on a train- when in England she is used to the poles being on the left and she makes the same head motion with her head to the left. Kerr was so adorable in this scene I could not take it! Her second funny scene was when she goes to see Reilly to help out Terence and she just blazes into the room without a care or concern all tough and brave and tells the gangster how things are going to be and even scares his guard dog on the way out. You would have to see the scenes but trust me they were really funny.

            Robert Walker was his usual paranoid nervous self. Peter Lawford was alright I am not too crazy about him.

            Please Believe Me is worth seeing at least once and that is all especially if you are a fan of Deborah Kerr. Please Believe Me is not available on DVD or Youtube if TCM airs the film again give it a chance if you want.