Main Cast: Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Andrews, Katy Jurado
Release Year: 1984
Country: US
Run Time: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A strange, hallucinatory adaptation of the Malcolm Lowry novel of the same name, John Huston's bleak drama is set during the Mexican "Day of the Dead" ceremony in 1939. Albert Finney stars as Geoffrey Firmin, the booze-besotted former British consul to Cuernevarca, who has cut himself off from his loved ones, the better to drink himself to death while surrounded by all manner of skull-and-skeleton decorations. At the urging of his wife Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset), his half-brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews) goes on a "heart of darkness" search for his missing sibling. Novelist Lowry was himself a suicidal alcoholic, who poured every drop of his embittered philosophy into the Firmin character. If any director could bring Lowry's difficult novel to life, it was Huston, whose own record for drunken self-destruction is the source of legend. (Huston was actually the seventh director to tackle the novel, which had originally been optioned in 1957 by actor Zachary Scott.) Artists contributing to the fascinating Under the Volcano include the brilliant Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, screenwriter Guy Gallo, composer Alex North, and director Emilio Fernandez, cast in a significant cameo as a bartender. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Malcolm Lowry's subtle, challenging novel about Mexico on the eve of World War II was a difficult book to turn into a film. Veteran director John Huston, at age 78, brought his own gift for examining madness to the project. The story is about a drunken British ex-consul to Mexico whose life becomes increasingly disoriented during the celebration of the Day of the Dead in 1939. His ex-wife pays a visit, but her affair with his half-brother plunges him deeper into despair. Albert Finney was Oscar-nominated for his haunting, vivid performance as a man whose wretchedness knows no bounds. Many lovers of the book believed that the story had been turned into little more than a long, drunken monologue. Other critics reveled in Huston's ability to make even ordinary scenes seem hallucinogenic. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
James Villiers - Brit; Dawson Bray - Quincey; Sergio Calderon - Chief of Municipality; Rodolfo de Alexandra - Bus Driver; Jim McCarthy - Gringo; Günter Meisner; Carlos Riquelme - Bustamante; Rene Ruiz - Dwarf; Salvador Sanchez - Chief of Stockyards; Roberto Sosa - Few Fleas; Hugo Stiglitz - Sinarquista; Ignacio Tarso - Dr. Vigil; Emilio Fernández - Diosdado; Mario Arevalo - Horseman; Martin Palomares - Dead Indian
Credit
Jose Rodriguez Granada - Art Director, John Huston - Director, Roberto Silvi - Editor, Alex North - Composer (Music Score), John Beal - Composer (Music Score), Gunther Gerzso - Production Designer, Gabriel Figueroa - Cinematographer, Moritz Borman - Producer, Michael Fitzgerald - Producer, Wieland Schulz-Keil - Producer, Guy Gallo - Screenwriter, Malcolm Lowry - Book Author
Remaining faithful to Lowry's original novel, Huston's film tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac (recognizably Cuernavaca), on the Day of the Dead in 1938.
Reviewing in The New York Times, Janet Maslin had much praise for Finney's performance:
Drunkenness, so often represented on the screen by overacting of the most sodden sort, becomes the occasion for a performance of extraordinary delicacy from Albert Finney, who brilliantly captures the Consul's pathos, his fragility and his stature. Alcoholism is the central device in Mr. Lowry's partially autobiographical novel. (The author, like the Consul, was capable of drinking shaving lotion when nothing more potable was at hand.) Yet the Consul's drinking is astonishingly fine-tuned, affording him a protective filter while also allowing for moments of keen, unexpected lucidity. Mr. Finney conveys this beautifully, with the many and varied nuances for which Guy Gallo's screenplay allows. For instance, when the exquisite Yvonne (played elegantly and movingly by Jacqueline Bisset) reappears in Cuernavaca one morning, she finds her ex-husband in a cantina, still wearing his evening clothes. He turns to gaze at her for a moment, pauses briefly, and then continues talking as if nothing had happened. Seconds later, he turns again and looks at Yvonne more closely, still not certain whether or not this is a hallucination. It takes a long while for the fact of Yvonne's return to penetrate the different layers of the Consul's inebriated consciousness, and Mr. Finney delineates the process with grace and precision, stage by stage.[2]
Related documentary films
Huston's drama has sometimes been shown in tandem with an earlier documentary film: Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976) is a National Film Board of Canada feature-length documentary produced by Donald Brittain and Robert A. Duncan and directed by Brittain and John Kramer. It opens with the inquest into Lowry's "death by misadventure," and then moves back in time to trace the writer's life. Selections from Lowry's novel are read by Richard Burton amid images shot in Mexico, the United States, Canada and England.
There are two documentaries about the making of the Huston film: Gary Conklin's 56-minute Notes from Under the Volcano and the 82-minute Observations Under the Volcano, directed by Christian Blackwood.
