John Schlesinger, 1975
A film adaptation of Nathanael West's novel, The Day of the Locust deals with a group of Hollywood outsiders and their desperate failed attempts to make it big during the golden era of the 1930s. I discovered this film while reading Masters of Light, and the legendary Conrad Hall said that he considered this film to be the closest he had ever come to technical perfection. I ended up writing an annotated bibliography about the successes and failures of the film as an adaptation of the novel which touched on the paradox of using the Hollywood system, both as subject matter and in terms of production, in an allegory whose main purpose is to attack the artifice and destructive nature of The American Hollywood Dream. I learned a lot about the film as well as West's novel throughout the process, but this space is much too limited to offer a full discussion on all that nonsense. It's all academic drivel anyway.
The standout of the film was Donald Sutherland as the only sympathetic character in the film, Homer Simpson. Not since Dogville has a film made me so angry at how despicable humanity can be, but when all is said and done the catharsis offered by these films validates the bleak and often infuriating subjects they depict.
Image Courtesy of aintitcool.com
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