The Night of the Iguana (1964) and BUtterfield 8 (1960) (nat)

Yawn. Even with the normally explosive Richard Burton and the sassy Ava Gardner, it's more or less boring. It's one of those play-movies with lots and lots of dialogue but not so much going on and not so much atmosphere. It's about the not-quite defrocked priest Shannon (Burton) who is locked out of his church after just a year or so for a supposed indiscretion with a girl. He then becomes a tour guide for Mexico and ends up guiding a bunch of Baptist women including the precocious, flirtatious, obnoxious Charlotte Goodall, the only young girl on the trip. Her daddy can get her anything according to her and she wants nothing more than a man, any man really. Shannon gets in trouble because Charlotte letches on to him. Shannon ends up taking the group to the inn of a friend (Ave Gardner's Maxine Faulk) in a desperate last move not to lose his tour guide job. There they also meet a middle-aged quick-sketch artist and her grandfather who is the oldest living poet. Shannon has his break when the leader of the Baptist women calls him defrocked. It's ok. But just ok when Streetcar and Sweet Bird of Youth and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and even Baby Doll (all also by Tennessee Williams) are so much better. This one watches almost like I was reading the dialogue as opposed to watching something. And this one is more about religion which tends to bore me anyway. I stopped about a half hour until the end and took a nap . . . we'll see if I finish it. I'm not really inclined to.

But, I'd forgotten that I also watched BUtterfield 8 the other week. That one I like quite a bit. It's an interesting partner to Breakfast at Tiffany's in terms of subject matter. Here we have Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous a call-girl of sorts although she never takes payment per se. She still lives with her mother who turns a naive blind eye to her daughter's actions, including the fact that the "service" BUtterfield 8 calls the house and tells the mother the list of places Gloria is to appear to "model" dresses. Gloria falls in love, of course, with the one man who dares to calls her bluff, Weston Liggett. A man married, of course, to a "proper" woman with social status who makes Liggett a bit claustrophobic. Gloria and Liggett spar and fall in love while his wife is away. His wife returns and all hell breaks loose. It's interesting as the bad girl gone good story, like Holly Golightly, but the ending in BUtterfield is not all kissing in the rain after Cat is found. I won't spoil the ending but it's a stark contrast to Breakfast. Taylor is fantastic as usual and I like the job the other actors did, too. Another interesting part of it is the author of the novel, John O'Hara, was a wacko. Worth a look on wikipedia.

There was no movie yesterday . . . I fell down on my movie-a-day plan. But I've seen two movies in one day on enough days to make up for a few slips, which there will probably be more of in the next week or so as I have to deal with people coming in for graduation. Yick (the people, not the graduation). Maybe I'll watch another one later tonight . . .