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Hollywood has always taken a play-safe attitude to religion, in the desire to please
as wide an audience as possible. Only the rise of independent productions in the
1950s made possible mainstream pictures with disturbing or controversial religious
themes, as with Davis Grubb's Night of the Hunter. Acclaimed author Flannery
O'Connor wrote Wise Blood in 1952. Her tale of the street preacher Hazel
Motes was considered as un-filmable as her short stories about other southern
"grotesques", until the keepers of her estate brought a script to John Huston. The
movie was made quickly and for very little money.
Wise Blood (1979) does justice to O'Connor's mysterious, quirky examination
of Bible Belt mania. Sustained by Huston's usual impish delight at the irrationality
of human nature, the Impeccably cast and brilliantly acted film seems to be
happening in an alternate universe of frauds and heretics.
Ex-serviceman Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) returns from war to find his family home an
empty ruin. A haunted man with a zealot's concentration, Motes exchanges his uniform
for a preacher's suit and hat, although he vehemently denies any such connection.
Haunted by memories of his grandfather, a fire & brimstone revivalist (John Huston),
Hazel seems consumed by the desire to both escape and embrace God. Always
belligerent, he clashes with street-corner preachers and conmen. Hazel is offended
by the shameless pamphleteering of the blind prophet Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton),
yet is both attracted to and repelled by Hawks' flirtatious daughter, Sabbath Lily
(Amy Wright). Hazel starts his own sidewalk sect, "The church of truth without Jesus
Christ Crucified". His incoherent speeches claim that Jesus is a fraud, that mankind
hasn't sinned and doesn't need to be redeemed; yet his hysterical tone indicates a
believer trying desperately to deny his own beliefs. Slick conman Hoover Shoates
(Ned Beatty) attracts an audience for Hazel's rants and wants to go into business
with him. Hazel is of course outraged.
Nothing in Wise Blood is predictable. Hazel can't rid himself of Enoch Emory
(Dan Shor), a homeless yokel desperate for companionship and obsessed by a
diminutive, shriveled mummy in a local museum. Motes buys a pathetic junker of a car
and proceeds to praise it as the measure of his worth: "Nobody with a good car
needs to be justified." Sabbath Lily sets her cap for Hazel, asking her daddy
not to interfere. Enoch Emory steals the museum mummy to serve as Motes' "New
Jesus"; the boy then fixates on a gorilla suit worn by a man promoting a matinee
movie attraction called "Gonga, Monarch of the Jungle". Hoover Shoates creates his
own "false prophet", a feeble assistant dressed identically to Hazel, and uses him
to lure away the curbside congregation of The Church of Truth without Christ.
Wise Blood is a bizarre mix of rage, guilt and warped faith, but it is not at
all blasphemous. O'Connor, a devout Catholic, targets the lunatic excesses of Bible
Belt Evangelicals, where self-styled prophets compete for sidewalk space. We're
confronted with unexpected inversions of religious imagery, as when Sabbath Lily
appears at Hazel's door holding the museum mummy, pretending to be the Virgin Mary.
The scene's purpose is not subversion: Hazel immediately attacks Lily's joke as an
abomination. Later on, Hazel will commit a serious crime and lose his precious car.
To pay for his sins, he then performs acts of self-mutilation associated with the
most extreme religious fanatics.
Some of the perplexing dialogue comes across as comedy writing, or lies on the
surface begging further interpretation. But the story's strange inventory of
material "things" -- Hazel's blue suit and preacher's hat, his all-important car,
the withered mummy, the gorilla suit -- are highly cinematic. Critics sometimes
fault John Huston for his literal approach to great novels, complaining that he
illustrates their basic outlines without communicating their essence: Moby
Dick is cited as a prime example. In reality, Huston often takes on projects
other director's wouldn't touch. Difficult pictures like Freud and Under the Volcano deal
with interior themes difficult to visualize -- but have a strong central character.
When Huston's actors are up to the task, the movies thrive.
Brad Dourif (Dune, Ragtime) keeps Hazel Motes focused on his personal
crusade. Motes is so keyed up, he can barely communicate with people. We can't tell
if the perpetual strained, pained expression on his face is inner- or outer-
directed. The film's other "grotesques" are equally unforgettable. Harry Dean
Stanton's Asa Hawks is a streetwise sharpie with his own history of failure. As
Sabbath Lily, Amy Wright (The Accidental Tourist, Inside Moves) is a
decidedly strange temptation in Hazel's path: she wears a crown of may flowers to
seduce him, and still can't get his attention. Dan Shor's Enoch Emory is another
young man adrift and yearning, dismissed as feeble minded by all he meets; it's too
bad that Hazel isn't looking for disciples.
Wise Blood is yet another idiosyncratic late-career John Huston movie to
stand alongside Under the Volcano and Fat City. The
director would devote his time to a labor of love like this one, and then take on a
bloated whale like Annie presumably as a path to a hefty payday. Released by
New Line, Wise Blood came and went like a flash, leaving little more than a
wake of positive reviews. It's a genuine original, shot through with Huston's knack
for quirky characterizations. Flannery O'Connor's cryptic contradictions align well
with Huston's dark humor: when a prospective landlady asks whether Hazel Motes'
flaky "Church without Jesus Christ" is Protestant, or ..... foreign, Hazel is
quick to assure her that it's definitely Protestant.
Criterion's DVD of Wise Blood presents this unusual film in a flawless
enhanced transfer with very clear audio. Alex North's soundtrack makes prominent use
of the standard "The Tennessee Waltz".
Disc producer Karen Stetler has lined up key source interviews to accompany the
feature. Brad Dourif explains that he auditioned well for what would become his
defining role but got it only when Tommy Lee Jones proved unavailable. Writer
Benedict Fitzgerald and writer-producer Michael Fitzgerald explain their association
with the famous author (who died in 1964) and their efforts to faithfully interpret
the novel for the screen. John Huston is represented by a cursory career overview on
a 1982 TV installment of Creativity with Bill Moyers. Flannery O'Connor
reads her short story A Good Man is Hard to Find in a rare audio recording
from 1959.
The original trailer tries to sell Wise Blood as a wacky comedy. Author
Francine Prose contributes a knowledgeable essay to the disc's insert
booklet.
For more information about Wise Blood, visit The Criterion Collection. To order Wise
Blood, go to
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by Glenn Erickson
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