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| Images courtesy of Arrow Films |
Most cinephiles regard the first instances of auto-critique
within the moviemaking machine known as Hollywood to be 1950s films like All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard, shining a spotlight on a darker underbelly of
Tinseltown’s inner workings. But in
actuality the vision of the Golden Age of Hollywood as a kind of apocalyptic
Hellscape of sin and avarice, forgotten fame and broken dreams began much
sooner with Nathanael West’s 1939 nightmarish novel The Day of the Locust. Newly
restored in 2K by Arrow Films and presented in a new deluxe limited edition
release featuring retrospective interviews and commentaries with numerous film
historians as well as crew members on the production, perhaps the most
blistering scathing takedown of Old Hollywood ever conceived has a chance at a
second life in the wake of such smoldering Tinseltown biographies as Blonde
or Empire of Light which sports a poster for The Day of the Locust on
its theater walls.
Closer to David Cronenberg’s recently released Maps to the Stars than anything else,
the story concerns an ensemble cast of characters struggling to make it in the
film industry only to find more disappointment and despair. Eventually the satirical, episodic journey
through executive producers’ drunken orgies, unsimulated cock fighting and
egregious nastiness from all sides boils over into absolute pandemonium at a
Hollywood film premiere that erupts into a violent and chaotic riot echoing the
grotesque and terrifying imagery of Hieronymous Bosch or Gerald Scarfe. The whole film is a gradual buildup to, as
Dr. Venkmen termed it in Ghostbusters,
‘a disaster of Biblical proportions’ and in 1975, one daring artist attempted
to bring the dark and disturbing tale debunking the American dream as Hollywood
to the silver screen as a literal minded big budget epic with one of the most
terrifying riots ever staged for a film.
Produced by former schlock maestro William Castle (who also
cameos as a reckless director) and starring William Atherton as Tod (yes,
Walter Peck from Ghostbusters), the
story concerns a painter looking for conceptual artist work in Hollywood where
he meets the aspiring but woefully hopeless actress Faye Greener, played to
pitch perfection by Karen Black. Coming
off of her Academy Award nominated performance in Five Easy Pieces, no one could play the ditzy, vacant bombshell
quite like Karen Black. Her performance
as an oversexed, flaky extra is at once convincing, intentionally annoying and
at times compassionate when she comes to care for her pathetic, boozing father
Harry (Burgess Meredith). Meredith’s
always been a charismatic character actor, best known as Rocky’s personal trainer, but here he goes out on a limb to look
like a withering grotesque with more alcohol than medicine in his blood.
Probably the most complex and difficult performance of the
movie goes to Donald Sutherland as Homer Simpson (likely an influence on Matt
Groening’s The Simpsons), an elderly,
ineffectual nebbish who’s largely silent and passive aggressive, masking a rage
that will eventually boil over into violence.
Across the board, everyone here gives extraordinary performances as
thoroughly unlikeable demons desperately trying to break into a field that
could care less whether they live or die.
In one of the film’s numerous shocking episodes including but not
limited to attempted rape, attempted child murder, cuckolding, racism, and a
general disregard for human life, an action scene of a period drama goes awry
when the set collapses and severely injures much of the cast and crew. Tod, who was nearby when the incident
occurred, couldn’t help but notice no one bothered to run a safety check on the
set and when he confronts an executive with the situation, the reply to his
inquiry about what would have happened if someone died is a cold and unfeeling
‘does it matter?’.
As with Maps to the
Stars, this is an extreme film that’s a bona fide chore to sit through. Filmed and directed without compromise by the
Midnight Cowboy director, it pulls no
punches and throughout the film the characters make decisions so despicable you
can’t help but remain at arm’s length away from them. The film also has a surreal tonal shift,
particularly near the end, as it moves further away from snarky and satirical
dramedy to a full blooded horror film replete with ghoulish imagery not
dissimilar from the German expressionist movement. The scale of the film is staggering and
though it appears mostly natural locations were used, we learn to our amazement
they were in fact set pieces designed specifically for the movie. Unfortunately the controversial and
provocative epic proved to be an underperformer at the box office and critics
are still divided over the film’s Hell on Earth finale with loose connections
to the Book of Revelations.
As it stands today, only a confident auteur as sure of
himself as John Schlesinger could have made one of the greatest anti-spectacles
of all time, a film of opulence designed to disgust, frighten and repel. Schlesinger’s literary approach to the novel
might be unrealistic but captures the essence of the source’s vision of
Tinseltown as a modern day Pagan Rome on the verge of anarchic collapse. Hands down The Day of the Locust is the most terrifying film that’s not of the
horror genre and the overblown Grand Guignol scream of a finale will stay with
you well after the picture has ended.
It’s a forgotten masterpiece of ambitious 1970s filmmaking by a daring
and confident auteur which more and more filmgoers should make a point to see,
learn from and respect.
--Andrew Kotwicki
