The Day of the Locust is a
1975The year 1975 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*January 28 - George Lucas creates the second draft of what would eventually become Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope...
AmericanThe cinema of the United States has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
drama filmA 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, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, crime and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves,...
directed by
John SchlesingerJohn Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director.-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
screenplayA 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. A play for television is known as a teleplay.- Format and style :...
by
Waldo SaltWaldo Pressman 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 titleThe Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, depicting the alienation and desperation of a disparate group of individuals who exist at the fringes of the movie industry....
by
Nathanael WestNathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
. Set in Hollywood, California just prior to
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into 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 offers a cynical look at Hollywood during the late 1930s and tells the tales of several of the residents of the dilapidated San Bernardino Arms: Faye Greener, a trashy aspiring actress with limited talent, and her father Harry, a former
vaudevillianVaudeville 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 salesmanDoor-to-door is a sales technique in which a salesperson walks from one door of a house to 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 should visit...
; sexually repressed accountant Homer Simpson, who desperately loves and is fanatically devoted to Faye; and
East CoastThe East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard" or "Atlantic Seaboard", refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada...
WASPWhite Anglo-Saxon Protestant, commonly abbreviated to the acronym WASP, is a sociological and cultural ethnonym that originated in the United States and Canada ....
Tod Hackett, an aspiring artist employed by the production department of a major studio, who also fancies Faye.
The Day of the Locust is a
1975The year 1975 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*January 28 - George Lucas creates the second draft of what would eventually become Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope...
AmericanThe cinema of the United States has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
drama filmA 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, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, crime and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves,...
directed by
John SchlesingerJohn Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director.-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
screenplayA 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. A play for television is known as a teleplay.- Format and style :...
by
Waldo SaltWaldo Pressman 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 titleThe Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, depicting the alienation and desperation of a disparate group of individuals who exist at the fringes of the movie industry....
by
Nathanael WestNathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
. Set in Hollywood, California just prior to
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into 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.
Synopsis
The film offers a cynical look at Hollywood during the late 1930s and tells the tales of several of the residents of the dilapidated San Bernardino Arms: Faye Greener, a trashy aspiring actress with limited talent, and her father Harry, a former
vaudevillianVaudeville 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 salesmanDoor-to-door is a sales technique in which a salesperson walks from one door of a house to 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 should visit...
; sexually repressed accountant Homer Simpson, who desperately loves and is fanatically devoted to Faye; and
East CoastThe East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard" or "Atlantic Seaboard", refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada...
WASPWhite Anglo-Saxon Protestant, commonly abbreviated to the acronym WASP, is a sociological and cultural ethnonym that originated in the United States and Canada ....
Tod Hackett, an aspiring artist employed by the production department of a major studio, who also fancies Faye. It is filled with unusual and often bizarrely disturbing images: a middle-aged man sits in an untended garden staring at a large lizard that stares back at him; a young woman is transported into the film she's watching and finds herself portraying a
haremHarem refers to the sphere of women in a usually polygynous household and their quarters which is enclosed and forbidden to men...
girl in old
BaghdadBaghdad is the capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate, with which it is coterminous. Having a municipal population estimated at 6.5 million, it is the largest city in Iraq and the second largest in the Arab World....
; a dwarf strokes a
roosterA rooster, also called a 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. The oldest term is "cock," from Old English coc. It is sometimes replaced by the term "cockerel" in the United Kingdom, and...
, bleeding and dazed from a cock-fight, then tosses it back into the ring to its death; an
androgynousAndrogyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ and γυνή that can refer to either of two related concepts about gender: the mixing of masculine and feminine characteristics, as in fashion statements; or the balance of "anima and animus" in psychoanalytic theory.-Androgyne:Androgyne derives...
child standing on the sidewalk beckons to a man through a window and performs a grotesque imitation of
Mae WestMae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol.Known for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in Vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedienne, actress and writer in the motion picture industry...
once his attention has been caught. 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
WaterlooIn the Battle of Waterloo forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher...
battlefield collapses on the
extrasAn extra, also called a background actor, 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 filmA story within a story is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. 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.
Principal cast
- Donald Sutherland
Donald McNicol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian character actor with a film career spanning over 50 years. He is currently working in the American television series, Dirty Sexy Money. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, in...
..... Homer Simpson
- Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer and songwriter. She is noted for films such as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Family Plot and Firecracker in a career that has spanned five decades.-Early life:Black was born Karen Blanche...
..... Faye Greener
- Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
..... Harry Greener
- William Atherton
William Atherton is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life:Atherton was born William Atherton Knight II in Orange, Connecticut, the son of Myrtle and Robert Atherton Knight...
..... Tod Hackett
- Geraldine Page
Geraldine Sue Page was an Academy Award-winning American actress. Although she starred in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater.-Early life:...
..... Big Sister
- Richard A. Dysart ..... Claude Estee
- Bo Hopkins
Bo Hopkins is an American actor.-Career:Hopkins has appeared in several films, including The Bridge at Remagen, The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, American Graffiti, White Lightning, Radioland Murders, The Killer Elite, Midnight Express, More American Graffiti and A Small Town in Texas...
..... Earle Shoop
- Pepe Serna
Pepe Serna is an American film actor and artist.Raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, Serna came to Hollywood in 1969 after the Mexican premiere of the Broadway musical Hair was shut down by Mexican officials after one performance...
..... Miguel
- Lelia Goldoni
Lelia 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...
..... Mary Dove
- Billy Barty
Billy Barty , born William John Bertanzetti, was an American film actor, and one of the most famous 20th century people with dwarfism.- Biography :Barty, an Italian American, was born in Millsboro, Pennsylvania...
..... Abe Kusich
- Jackie Earle Haley
Jackie Earle Haley is an Academy Award-nominated Americanfilm actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears , pedophile Ronnie McGorvey in Little Children and most recently as vigilante Rorschach in Zack Snyder's Watchmen...
..... Adore
- Gloria LeRoy
Gloria LeRoy is an American character actor best remembered for having played voluptuous Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner in classic 1970s sitcom All in the Family. LeRoy had a diverse career, with a number of roles in film, TV and stage.She has had recurring roles on the soaps Passions and Days of our...
..... Mrs. Loomis
- Jane Hoffman ..... Mrs. Odlesh
- Norman Leavitt ..... Mr. Odlesh
- Madge Kennedy
Madge Kennedy was a movie and stage actress of the silent film era....
..... Mrs. Johnson
Critical reception
In his review in the
New York Times,
Vincent CanbyVincent Canby was an American film critic.Canby was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Katharine Anne and Lloyd Canby. He became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there...
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
BiblicalThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
epicAn epic is a genre of film which places emphasis on human drama on a grand scale. They are more ambitious in scope than other genres which 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 CocksJay 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 graduating to film writing....
of
TimeTime is an American newsmagazine. 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. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition...
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 EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter.He is known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel...
of the
Chicago Sun-TimesThe Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is owned by the Sun-Times Media Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection on March 31, 2009.-History:...
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 4Channel 4 is a UK public-service television broadcaster which began working on November 2, 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station owned now and operated by the Channel Four Television...
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- 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.
Awards and nominations
Win:
Best Costume Design -
Ann RothAnn Roth is a prolific Academy Award-winning 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...
Nominated:
Best Art Direction - Richard Macdonald
Best Supporting Actor -
Burgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
Nominated:
Best Motion Picture Actress - Drama -
Karen BlackKaren Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer and songwriter. She is noted for films such as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Family Plot and Firecracker in a career that has spanned five decades.-Early life:Black was born Karen Blanche...
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture -
Burgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
Nominated:
Best Actor in a Supporting Role -
Burgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
Best Cinematography - Conrad L. Hall
Related works
The Swedish band The Embassy's video for
You Tend to Forget features several clips from the riot scene in The Day of the Locust.
Donald Sutherland, having played a character named Homer Simpson in
The Day of the Locust, later provided a guest voice on
The SimpsonsThe Simpsons is an American animated television sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its eponymous family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie...
, on which the main character is named Homer Simpson.