The Day of the Locust (1975) – Film Review

Director: John Schlesinger
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith
Certificate: 15

By Sarah Morgan

Mention the name Homer Simpson and what immediately springs to mind? Probably a famous yellow family from Springfield. However, that might change once you’ve seen The Day of the Locust.

Based on a novel by Nathanael West, which was published in 1939, a year before his untimely death in a car accident at the age of just 37, it offers a downbeat, acidic take on life in pre-war Hollywood by charting the lives of those longing to make it big, those who have missed the boat, and others who are on the outside looking in.

“Uncomfortable”

Among them is a certain Homer Simpson, here played in an untypically low-key manner by Donald Sutherland, who was at the peak of his fame at the time. His brilliant performance does, thankfully, make you forget about his character’s namesake entirely.

This Homer is clearly a troubled soul, a quiet lump of a man uncomfortable in his own skin whose emotions appear to be all bottled up; one suspects he would be described as ‘on the spectrum’ these days. His undoing, however, is the fact he is besotted with wannabe starlet Faye Greener (Karen Black, also at the peak of her powers), who uses this devotion against him, drawing him in and then cruelly flaunting her associations with other men in front of him.

Among her other admirers is Tod Hackett (William Atherton), a Yale graduate hoping to become a successful production designer, although his first big project, a film version of Waterloo, ends in disaster when the set collapses, injuring various members of the cast and crew. Not that his bosses seem to care.

“Shocking”

Disappointments, disgust, broken dreams and distasteful incidents permeate throughout. Whether this is a realistic portrait of Tinseltown in the 1930s remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a far darker and more believable depiction than many sun-kissed movies have offered over the decades. Having said that, Conrad Hall’s bleached cinematography gives the images an otherworldly, dreamlike quality.

Director John Schlesinger reteamed with veteran Midnight Cowboy writer Waldo Salt on the production, and they once again deliver a compelling if downbeat look at American life. This time, however, there is no friendship at its core, while the ending (involving a child performer played by a young, almost unrecognisable Jackie Earle Haley) remains horrendously shocking, even after multiple viewings.

This new 2K remaster includes a number of accompanying features, such as visual essays, commentaries and interviews with cast and crew, although it’s the story itself that remains the star of the show – just don’t expect any laughs.

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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