The Day of the Locust (film)
Encyclopedia
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film
directed by John Schlesinger
. The screenplay
by Waldo Salt
is based on the 1939 novel of the same title
by Nathanael West
. Set in Hollywood, California just prior to World War II
, it depicts the alienation and desperation of a disparate group of individuals whose dreams of success have failed to come true.
The film stars Donald Sutherland
, William Atherton
and Karen Black
.
look at Hollywood during the late 1930s, Day of the Locust tells the tales of residents of the dilapidated San Bernardino Arms: Faye Greener, a trashy aspiring actress with limited talent, and her father Harry, a former vaudevillian
working as a door-to-door salesman
; sexually repressed accountant Homer Simpson, who desperately loves Faye, and East Coast
WASP
Tod Hackett, an aspiring artist employed by the production department of a major studio, who also fancies Faye.
There are unusual and bizarrely disturbing images: a middle-aged man sits in an untended garden staring at a large lizard that stares back; a young woman is transported into the film she's watching and finds herself portraying a harem
girl in old Baghdad
; a dwarf strokes a rooster
, bleeding and dazed from a cock-fight, then tosses it back into the ring to its death; an androgynous
child beckons to a man through a window and performs a grotesque imitation of Mae West
.
These brief vignettes do little to advance the basic plot, but they serve to comment on the sleaziness of Hollywood and its varied inhabitants. Spectacle fills the screen -- a set of the Waterloo
battlefield collapses on the extras
during the making of the film within the film
-- and in the film's climax, a world premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater evolves into a horrific riot culminating in gruesome tragedy.
called it "less a conventional film than it is a gargantuan panorama, a spectacle that illustrates West's dispassionate prose with a fidelity to detail more often found in a gimcracky Biblical
epic
than in something that so relentlessly ridicules American civilization . . . The movie is far from subtle, but it doesn't matter. It seems that much more material was shot than could be easily fitted into the movie, even at 144 minutes . . . It is reality projected as fantasy. Its grossness — its bigger-than-life quality — is so much a part of its style (and what West was writing about) that one respects the extravagances, the almost lunatic scale on which Mr. Schlesinger has filmed its key sequences."
Jay Cocks
of Time
said, "The Day of the Locust looks puffy and overdrawn, sounds shrill because it is made with a combination of self-loathing and tenuous moral superiority. This is a movie turned out by the sort of mentality that West was mocking.
Salt's adaptation . . . misses what is most crucial: West's tone of level rage and tilted compassion, his ability to make human even the most grotesque mockery."
Roger Ebert
of the Chicago Sun-Times
called it a "daring, epic film . . . a brilliant one at times, and with a wealth of sharp-edged performances," citing that of Donald Sutherland as "one of the movie's wonders," although he expressed some reservations, noting, "Somewhere on the way to its final vast metaphors, The Day of the Locust misplaces its concern with its characters. We begin to sense that they're marching around in response to the requirements of the story, instead of leading lives of their own. And so we stop worrying about them, because they're doomed anyway and not always because of their own shortcoming."
In the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum described the film as "a painfully misconceived reduction and simplification . . . of the great Nathanael West novel about Hollywood . . . It misses crucial aspects of the book's surrealism and satire, though it has a fair number of compensations if you don't care about what's being ground underfoot - among them, Conrad Hall's cinematography and . . . one of Donald Sutherland's better performances."
Channel 4
calls it "fascinating, if flawed" and "by turns gaudy, bitter and occasionally just plain weird," adding "great performances and magnificent design make this a spectacular and highly entertaining film."
The film was shown at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival
, but wasn't entered into the main competition.
Best Costume Design - Ann Roth
Nominated:
Best Art Direction - Richard Macdonald
Best Supporting Actor - Burgess Meredith
Best Motion Picture Actress - Drama - Karen Black
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture - Burgess Meredith
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Burgess Meredith
Best Cinematography - Conrad L. Hall
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by John Schlesinger
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...
. The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
by Waldo Salt
Waldo Salt
Waldo Miller Salt was an American screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses during the era of McCarthyism.-Early life and career:...
is based on the 1939 novel of the same title
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
by Nathanael West
Nathanael West
Nathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
. Set in Hollywood, California just prior to World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, it depicts the alienation and desperation of a disparate group of individuals whose dreams of success have failed to come true.
The film stars Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
, William Atherton
William Atherton
William Atherton , born William Atherton Knight II, is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life:Atherton was born in Orange, Connecticut, the son of Roby and Robert Atherton Knight...
and Karen Black
Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
.
Plot
A cynical and gothicGothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
look at Hollywood during the late 1930s, Day of the Locust tells the tales of residents of the dilapidated San Bernardino Arms: Faye Greener, a trashy aspiring actress with limited talent, and her father Harry, a former vaudevillian
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
working as a door-to-door salesman
Door-to-door
Door-to-door is a sales technique in which a salesperson walks from the door of one house to the door of another trying to sell a product or service to the general public. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson...
; sexually repressed accountant Homer Simpson, who desperately loves Faye, and East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
WASP
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...
Tod Hackett, an aspiring artist employed by the production department of a major studio, who also fancies Faye.
There are unusual and bizarrely disturbing images: a middle-aged man sits in an untended garden staring at a large lizard that stares back; a young woman is transported into the film she's watching and finds herself portraying a harem
Harem
Harem refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men...
girl in old Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
; a dwarf strokes a rooster
Rooster
A rooster, also known as a cockerel, cock or chanticleer, is a male chicken with the female being called a hen. Immature male chickens of less than a year's age are called cockerels...
, bleeding and dazed from a cock-fight, then tosses it back into the ring to its death; an androgynous
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
child beckons to a man through a window and performs a grotesque imitation of Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
.
These brief vignettes do little to advance the basic plot, but they serve to comment on the sleaziness of Hollywood and its varied inhabitants. Spectacle fills the screen -- a set of the Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
battlefield collapses on the extras
Extra (actor)
A background actor or extra is a performer in a film, television show, stage, musical, opera or ballet production, who appears in a nonspeaking, nonsinging or nondancing capacity, usually in the background...
during the making of the film within the film
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
-- and in the film's climax, a world premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater evolves into a horrific riot culminating in gruesome tragedy.
Cast
- Donald SutherlandDonald SutherlandDonald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
as Homer Simpson - Karen BlackKaren BlackKaren Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
as Faye Greener - Burgess MeredithBurgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
as Harry Greener - William AthertonWilliam AthertonWilliam Atherton , born William Atherton Knight II, is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life:Atherton was born in Orange, Connecticut, the son of Roby and Robert Atherton Knight...
as Tod Hackett - Geraldine PageGeraldine PageGeraldine Sue Page was an American actress. Although she starred in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater...
as Big Sister - Richard A. Dysart as Claude Estee
- Bo HopkinsBo HopkinsBo Hopkins is an American actor.-Career:Hopkins has appeared in more than one hundred film and television roles in a career of more than forty years, including The Bridge at Remagen, The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, American Graffiti, White Lightning, Radioland Murders, The Killer Elite, Midnight...
as Earle Shoop - Pepe SernaPepe SernaPepe Serna is an American film actor and artist.Serna's first break in movies came in 1970 on the Roger Corman directed film Student Nurses. Over the years Serna has appeared in over 100 films, most notably Car Wash and Scarface directed by Brian De Palma, where he played Montana's friend Angel...
as Miguel - Lelia GoldoniLelia GoldoniLelia Goldoni is an American actress who appeared in a number of motion pictures and television shows starting in the late-1940s, beginning with uncredited cameo roles in Joseph L...
as Mary Dove - Billy BartyBilly BartyBilly Barty was an American film actor.-Biography:Barty, an Italian American, was born William John Bertanzetti in Millsboro, Pennsylvania...
as Abe Kusich - Jackie Earle HaleyJackie Earle HaleyJackie Earle Haley is an American film actor. Establishing himself from child actor to adult Academy Award-nominee, he is perhaps best known for his roles as Moocher in Breaking Away, Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears, pedophile Ronnie McGorvey in Little Children, the vigilante Rorschach in...
as Adore Loomis - Gloria LeRoyGloria LeRoyGloria LeRoy is an American character actress best remembered for having played voluptuous Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner in classic 1970s sitcom All in the Family, as well as Bobbi Jo Loomis, wife of army-airforce buddy "Duke" Loomis in the earlier All in the Family episode "The Threat"...
as Mrs. Loomis - Jane Hoffman as Mrs. Odlesh
- Norman Leavitt as Mr. Odlesh
- Madge KennedyMadge KennedyMadge Kennedy was a movie and stage actress of the silent film era....
as Mrs. Johnson
Critical reception
In his review in the New York Times, Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
called it "less a conventional film than it is a gargantuan panorama, a spectacle that illustrates West's dispassionate prose with a fidelity to detail more often found in a gimcracky Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
epic
Epic film
An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film...
than in something that so relentlessly ridicules American civilization . . . The movie is far from subtle, but it doesn't matter. It seems that much more material was shot than could be easily fitted into the movie, even at 144 minutes . . . It is reality projected as fantasy. Its grossness — its bigger-than-life quality — is so much a part of its style (and what West was writing about) that one respects the extravagances, the almost lunatic scale on which Mr. Schlesinger has filmed its key sequences."
Jay Cocks
Jay Cocks
Jay Cocks is a film critic and motion picture screenwriter.He is a graduate of Kenyon College. He was a critic for Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, among other magazines, before moving into film writing....
of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
said, "The Day of the Locust looks puffy and overdrawn, sounds shrill because it is made with a combination of self-loathing and tenuous moral superiority. This is a movie turned out by the sort of mentality that West was mocking.
Salt's adaptation . . . misses what is most crucial: West's tone of level rage and tilted compassion, his ability to make human even the most grotesque mockery."
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
called it a "daring, epic film . . . a brilliant one at times, and with a wealth of sharp-edged performances," citing that of Donald Sutherland as "one of the movie's wonders," although he expressed some reservations, noting, "Somewhere on the way to its final vast metaphors, The Day of the Locust misplaces its concern with its characters. We begin to sense that they're marching around in response to the requirements of the story, instead of leading lives of their own. And so we stop worrying about them, because they're doomed anyway and not always because of their own shortcoming."
In the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum described the film as "a painfully misconceived reduction and simplification . . . of the great Nathanael West novel about Hollywood . . . It misses crucial aspects of the book's surrealism and satire, though it has a fair number of compensations if you don't care about what's being ground underfoot - among them, Conrad Hall's cinematography and . . . one of Donald Sutherland's better performances."
Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
calls it "fascinating, if flawed" and "by turns gaudy, bitter and occasionally just plain weird," adding "great performances and magnificent design make this a spectacular and highly entertaining film."
The film was shown at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival
1975 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Jeanne Moreau, President, actress*André Delvaux, director*Anthony Burgess, writer*Fernando Rey, actor*George Roy Hill, director*Gérard Ducaux-Rupp, producer*Léa Massari, actress*Pierre Mazars, journalist*Pierre Salinger, writer...
, but wasn't entered into the main competition.
BAFTA Awards
Win:Best Costume Design - Ann Roth
Ann Roth
Ann Roth is an American costume designer for films and Broadway theatre.Born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Roth was a Carnegie Mellon graduate who began her career as a scenery painter for the Pittsburgh Opera. She intended to remain in the field of production design until she met Irene Sharaff at the...
Nominated:
Best Art Direction - Richard Macdonald
Best Supporting Actor - Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
Golden Globe Awards
Nominated:Best Motion Picture Actress - Drama - Karen Black
Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture - Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
Academy Awards
Nominated:Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
Best Cinematography - Conrad L. Hall