I was able to finish up Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust (1939) yesterday
and found it - if not as intense as Miss Lonelyhearts – a painfully cynical
look at a jaded and corrosive Hollywood. Not the stars but those who migrated
west for the dreams of California and Hollywood in the 1930’s only to find
an empty plate of nothing where every day registers another slight, another
failure, another nail in the eye. Like Miss Lonelyhearts, don’t look for
any happy endings here. Or good people. Everyone has been corrupted like
a slow working acid. Hollywood is just waiting for its Sodom and Gomorrah
moment.
West was credited with some 10 screenplays in his 6 years in Hollywood; none
that you would likely have heard of. He wanted to quit but Hollywood paid
really well during a time when many people could not even find a job. He
was hoping The Day of the Locust would bring him enough fame to quit the
script writing business, but it didn’t and he soon died in a car crash. His
anger and bile towards Hollywood is pretty evident in his book.
The film version of The Day of the Locust (1975) is very odd, quite good
and remarkably faithful to the book (the difference between trying to bring
West to the screen in 1958 vs 1975). It has a terrific cast with Donald Sutherland
(playing Homer Simpson of all names), Karen Black never looking better, William
Atherton, Burgess Meredith, Billy Barty, Jackie Earle Haley as the annoying
child, John Hillerman, legendary director William Castle as the director,
Bo Hopkins, Richard Dysart and a cast of hundreds (one being Dick Powell
Jr. playing his father). When you read the book, you envision it in black
and white, grainy and subdued, ugly and distended – so initially the glorious
colors, beautiful cinematography and glistening sets doesn’t feel quite right
but the apocalyptic ending in which a film premier turns into a vicious riot
and Simpson turns into a Christ figure is so brazen and powerful that you
realize it could only have been done in color. It is a long film at 2:20
that tests your patience at times but it is such good filmmaking that you
excuse it.
The director John Schlesinger was in the midst of an incredible run of good
films - Billy Liar, Darling, Far From the Madding Crowd (all 3 starring Julie
Christie), Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Day of the Locust and
Marathon Man.
