The Sound and the Fury

They said it couldn't be done. They said you could never make a movie out of The Sound and the Fury. Too complex. Too confusing. Whole thing takes place in some blithering idiot's mind. They said it could never be made into a movie.

They were right.

What the boys at 20th Century Fox have done is the old familiar gag of buying the screen rights to a famous novel paying the author enough so he'll keep his hands off and then making a movie, ignoring the book as far as possible.

Faulkner has contributed to moviemaking in general the bonanza idea of a degenerate family in the degenerate South, but at this point, he and the movies part company Hollywood is currently enjoying an Aristotelian vogue, observing the unities of time and place. The action of this version of The Sound and the Fury takes place in two days, with no flashbacks. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, none of it takes place at Harvard. The most Faulknerian aspect of the movie is its striking similarity to The Long Hot Summer, another film supposedly based on Faulkner.

As in the earlier movie, this one has to do with the sexual frustrations of Joanne Woodward, here playing young Quentin. This role is considerably less subtle and sophisticated, alternating between petulance and passion with monotonous regularity. The latter emotion vents itself on Stuart Whitman, the roustabout in a travelling carnival, whom she meets climbing down off the shoot-the-shoot, finding herself five minutes later in the first of several sweaty love scenes.

As Jason, Yul Brynner still looks like the inscrutable East, despite a head of jet black hair. He is neither malevolent nor disturbed, merely silent, and with him more than anyone else, one feels the huge disparity between the character in the novel and in the movie. Margaret Leighton's Caddy leans a little too markedly toward Blanche du Bois, but she is nevertheless extremely poignant, presenting a more complete, if simpler personality.

The movie reaches toward distinction in the performances of Ethel Waters as Dilsey and Jack Burden as the idiot. The stoic, yet feeling portrayal of the colored matriarch is entirely right in terms of the novel. Burden's Benjy is different from the novel's, of necessity. But he brings dignity to the role, and a face which, in one unchanging expression, somehow conveys confusion and understanding, love and anger, and an enormous sensitivity.

As a movie in its own right, this is a competent, interesting Hollywood effort, marked by some superior acting. It is worth seeing on that account, but one had best give up all thoughts of Faulkner before going.