The Day Of The Locust

A painfully misconceived reduction and simplification by writer Waldo Salt and director John Schlesinger of the great Nathanael West novel about Hollywood in the late 30s (1975). 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 underfootamong them, Conrad Hall’s cinematography and, if memory serves, one of Donald Sutherland’s better performances. With William Atherton, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Geraldine Page, Bo Hopkins, and one of the rare appearances of the lead actress from Cassavetes’s Shadows, Lelia Goldoni. (JR)

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