The Innocents vs. The Night of the Iguana

nclysander

on 5/16/2016

Until I became an adult, I really only knew Deborah Kerr as Anna Leonowens in the King and I, and now I see how much of her art I was missing out on. While the characters in these two films may at first glance seem similar, in that they are rather straitlaced and repressed in a typically English (or New Englander) way, but when you come down to it they are quite different. Hannah Jelkes in The Night of the Iguana is the stabilizing force in the story, without whom the happy(ish) ending would be impossible, a woman who has faced her demons and come out on the other side radiating an almost angelic calm; Miss Giddens, on the other hand, is The Innocents's DEstabilizing force, someone whose demons are slowly eating away at her insides until they manifest in often shocking ways. Kerr is excellent in both roles, and if I were ranking performances, I might be tempted to go with The Night of the Iguana, simply because she gets to speak some of Tennessee Williams's most beautiful lines and is the standout in a truly excellent ensemble cast, but the movie has its share of problems, some of them inherited from the stage play, and others all its own. The Innocents, on the other hand, is one of those great movies that not enough people have seen--subtly creepy, masterfully filmed and acted. It wins.