Of Maltese falcon (1941) to Dublin people (1987) – two masterpieces – John Huston’s career is like a roller coaster circuit, as if he had to hit rock bottom every time to regain greatness. The proof, between Malignant (1979) and Below the volcano (1984), Huston, then in his seventies and nearly disabled, found time to realize Phobia (1980), forgettable and forgotten detective film, To us the victory (Victory, 1981), an international co-production that brought together Sylvester Stallone and Pelé, and the musical Annie (1982), which earned him some of the worst reviews in a career that was not lacking.
Yet, smoothing the line from Smart at Volcano, we (re) discover two films of dark beauty, whose imagery emerges from two radically different universes – the Southern Protestant mysticism on one side, the convulsions that have shaped Mexico since the Spanish conquest on the other -, united by the irresistible fascination that failure exerts on the filmmaker. The young preacher of the Smart and the aging Englishman ofBelow the volcano, who has strayed at the foot of Popocatepetl, both are as resolved to defy the laws, human as well as divine. Descendants of Captain Ahab (Huston adapted Moby dick, in 1956), Hazel Motes, the atheist pastor, and Geoffrey Firmin, the deceased consul, each in their own way, cast off the moorings of reason and everyday life to meet their mortality.
Even today, “Le Malin”, carried by the performance of Brad Dourif, naive and dangerous, continues to disturb and fascinate.
At the origin of Smart, we find a new producer, Michael Fitzgerald, who convinces Huston to bring to the screen the first novel of the southern writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). Demobilized, Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) returns to the family farm he finds deserted. His lineage has been erased, all that remains to him is the mental image of his preacher ancestor (a role that John Huston has reserved for himself). In these remote parts of Georgia, all it takes is a black hat and a car to spread the word from town to town.
Animated by an obscure force that the script and the staging are careful not to define, Hazel Motes decides to exercise her vocation without the support of the Most High and founds the Church of Jesus Christ without Jesus Christ. The enterprise is as grotesque as the figures that emerge from the slums as it passes: a psychotic teenager (Dan Shor); another, allegedly blind pastor (Harry Dean Stanton) and his daughter initially preoccupied with escaping her father (Amy Wright); a weekly crook so small that it shouldn’t last more than half a day (Ned Beatty). And yet these monstrous creatures do not swear in the landscape of a South rotten by segregation and poverty that Huston appropriates with authority.
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