The Night of the Iguana

If you only remember the publicity around the shooting of The Night of the Iguana with its giant cast in tiny Puerto Vallarta and tinier Mismaloya, Mexico, you are in for the following treats: A superb performance by Richard Burton as Tennessee Williams's Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, minister to his own passions, living a "comparatively comfortable, even voluptuous crucifixion" as a Mexican tour guide to repressed Baptist ladies from Texas. Ava Gardner's cackling longing, Ava outLizing Liz. And Deborah Kerr's prim godliness in which the Reverend recognizes his opposite self, the one lost to maleness. Rev. Shannon knows when he's been frocked. Gabriel Figueroa uses deep focus to find icons in Mexicans and caricatures in Americans; the one is a glimpse into "a lost world of innocence," the other, the fantastic within the real, the thing that has Shannon spooked.

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