The Sound and the Fury

Louisiana teen Quentin (Joanne Woodward) has been out all night, skipping school and angering her guardian uncle-in-law Jason (Yul Brynner in a wig!), maid Dilsey (Ethel Waters) keeping peace, his mom (Francoise Rosay) griping, early in The Sound And The Fury, 1959, sort-of from William Faulkner’s novel.

In a decisive departure from the Faulkner novel, Caddy (Margaret Leighton) returns to Jefferson, MS, hoping to reclaim her abandoned daughter (Joanne Woodward), leading to a confrontation with her by-marriage uncle and guardian Jason (wigged Yul Brynner), in The Sound And The Fury, 1959.

Martin Ritt directs from Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.’s script, aiming to straighten William Faulkner’s novel’s narrative, we meet Joanne Woodward as Quentin, Ethel Waters as Dilsey, whom she’s caused to panic, and John Beal as Howard, in producer Jerry Wald’s The Sound And The Fury, 1959.

Yul Brynner and Joanne Woodward in William Faulkner's story of a declining Southern family, The Sound and The Fury (1959).