Word: connors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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JOHN HUSTON'S Wise Blood, adapted from Flannery O'Connor's first novel, proves that a spirited story, a lighthearted screenplay and subtle direction can bring a major piece of fiction--Southern fiction--to the screen. Rarely have great pieces of literature been successfully translated into cinematic terms, but Huston and screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald '71 have captured the difficult, often oblique essence of O'Connor's work on film...
...Connor's comi-tragic novella concerns one Hazel Motes, the son of a preacher, a young, little-educated Southerner confused about religion. Haze is a preacher, too, but not of any church of Christ. In a South obsessed with Jesus--JESUS SAVES smothers him in neon and print--he tries to rebel by founding his own Church Without Christ and immersing himself in sin. His is a church where "the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way." He is humorless in a crazy world, aiming with violent integrity to keep...
Kennedy staffers shored up another weakness for New York as well, Orren explained. "For the first time, we made effective use of surrogates," he said, citing endorsements from Carroll O'Connor to Carol Bellamy that paid off on election...
...world that Huston and O'Connor create is so peculiar and self-contained that many may find Wise Blood impenetrable. The film features characters who are all crazy, themes that are religious and humor that ranges from dark to gruesome. Though the movie is by no means difficult to comprehend on its own terms, Huston does not attempt to win over disbelievers. It is not surprising that independent producers, rather than a Hollywood studio, took the considerable risk of financing the project...
Huston re-creates the grotesque imagery and internal logic of O'Connor's phantasmagoric parable by translating the writer's prose into cinematic and dramatic terms. The film's settings are glutted with eclectic religious artifacts and the documentary details of the backwater South. The cast, including even bit players who appear as cops, used-car salesmen and townsfolk, features enough oddballs to staff a Tennessee Williams repertory company. Huston's only lapses are a few purple flashback sequences that accomplish little beyond allowing the di rector to appear onscreen as Hazel's grandfather...