Under the Volcano (film)

Infobox Film | name = Under the Volcano


image_size = 175px
caption = MCA Home Video cover to "Under the Volcano".
director = John Huston
Danny Huston (opening titles)
producer = Michael Fitzgerald
Moritz Borman
Wieland Schulz-Keil
writer = Guy Gallo
starring = Albert Finney
Jacqueline Bisset
music = Alex North
cinematography =Gabriel Figueroa
editing =
distributor = Universal Pictures (USA)
20th Century Fox (non-USA)
released = 1984
runtime = 112 min.
language =
budget =
amg_id = 1:51734
imdb_id = 0088322

"Under the Volcano" is a 1984 film directed in Mexico by John Huston with Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Andrews and Katy Jurado heading the cast. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Albert Finney) and Best Music, Original Score (Alex North).

It is based on the 1947 novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry which was adapted to radio on "Studio One" in 1947.

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. [ [http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9804E5D8133BF930A25755C0A962948260&oref=slogin Maslin, Janet. "Film: Huston's 'Under the Volcano'," "The New York Times", June 13, 1984.] ]

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.

References

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