The sound of the furries wouldn't have been as bad

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to be watching the 1959 Fox version of The Sound and the Fury since it's going to be on FXM Retro tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM, and it doesn't seem to be in print on DVD. Let's just say I'll be freeing up some space on my DVR soon.

The movie starts off with jarring jazz music over the opening credits, before switching from the proper Cinemascope aspect ration to being panned-and-scanned to 16:9 in the print FXM ran, but that was the least of the problems. Ethel Waters plays the maid in some run-down Southern mansion, worried that the daughter of the family is going to be coming home. Sure enough, we cut to a shot of Quentin Compson (Joanne Woodward), on a bus pulling into their small hometown in Mississippi.

Everybody in the house is one of her uncles: alcoholic Howard (John Beal), dimwit mute Ben (Jack Warden), and responsible step-uncle Jason (Yul Brynner, sporting a ridiculous wig). Well, there's also the grandma (Françoise Rosay), but neither of Quentin's parents are around. Mom sends Quentin money from somewhere, but the letters go to Jason and Quentin thinks Jason is stealing from her. Jason, for his part, works at the local store that the Compson family used to own in a previous generation before they wound up as this dissolute mess.

Quentin, for example, is a willful young woman who's skipping school (yes, you've got 30-year-old Woodward playing about 16 here). And then when the traveling carnival comes to town, Quention sees carny Charlie (Stewart Whitman) fixing a ride with his shirt off, and she's immediately attracted to Charlie. Charlie insists he's not right for Quentin, and Jason is trying to stop the relationship too, but stupid Quentin doesn't care. She wants what she wants, and dammit if it screws up everybody else's lives even more than they're already screwed up.

And then Quentin's mom Caddy (Margaret Leighton) returns home. What she wants out of the return, who knows? And who cares? By the time Caddy shows up the movie has already descended into the swamp of "let's turn the family nuttiness up to 11 just because". All of these characters are deeply screwed up, and acting at cross purposes.

As you can tell, I didn't care one bit for The Sound and the Fury. It's based on the novel by William Faulkner, although from the reviews of the movie I've read it's a fairly loose adaptation. I'm not a fan of Faulkner, having had to read As I Lay Dying in high school English, and have never had any plans to read Faulkner's book The Sound and the Fury, so I can't judge the movie on its fidelity or lack thereof to the book. All I can say is that as a movie, it doesn't stand on its own. It's a cheap, tawdry mess that could be forgiven if it had been conceived as a parody of either the Southern Gothic of a Faulkner or (even better) Tennessee Williams; or if it were a parody moved south of Douglas Sirk. But the movie seems to be taking itself seriously.

And then there's the casting. Woodward at least was a southerner, although she's much too old for the part; it's even worse than Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding, another movie that made me feel bad for Ethel Waters for having to put up with this crap. Yul Brynner is thoroughly out of place, in no way southern and burdened by that terrible wig. Why does he stay with these whack-jobs he clearly dislikes. Jack Warden as a mute doesn't have a line of dialog, so who knows his motivations? I suppose you can understand why Beal's Howard Compson would drink himself to get out of this family and this movie.

Of course, I always suggest that you're free to judge for yourself when it comes to a movie that I deeply dislike. So watch tomorrow if you have FXM. Because it's not on DVD, and even if it were, I wouldn't be spending my money on it.