Under the Volcano
Starring: Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Andrews
Director: John Huston
The film: 'I think it's the finest performance I've ever witnessed, let alone directed,' said John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) of Albert Finney's role in Under the Volcano, a film based on the only major work by the famously unprolific, alcoholic writer Malcolm Lowry.
Anyone who has read the quasi-autobiographical novel about a British consul drowning his sorrows in a 1930s Mexican town will find little to recognise in Huston's adaptation, but Finney manages to convey the essence of Lowry's character. In doing so he almost saves the day for Lowry aficionados, and certainly saves the film, which would be tough going without him.
Huston's Night of the Iguana, made 20 years earlier, also revolved around a drunken and disgraced Englishman (Richard Burton) in Mexico, and almost single-handedly turned the town of Puerto Vallarta into one of its most popular tourist resorts. But seldom can the country have looked as unappealing as it does in Under the Volcano.
