WISE BLOOD

US, 1979, 101 minutes, Colour.
Brad Dourif, Harry Dean Stanton, Ned Beatty, Dan Shor, Amy Wright, John Huston.
Directed by John Huston.

Wise Blood is an arresting adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel. O'Connor, a writer from the South and acclaimed in the literary world, was preoccupied with themes of religion and mania. These are to the fore in this portrait of a returned soldier, reacting against his Christian upbringing and wanting to establish a Christianity without Christ. However, like most people over-preoccupied with religion and Christ, he himself becomes obsessed with religion - to the point of his own passion and death.

Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dune) is excellent in the central role of the obsessed soldier. He receives fine support from a cast which includes Dan Shor as the slow-witted Enoch, Ned Beatty as a southern con-man evangelist and Amy Wright as the daughter of allegedly blind Harry Dean Stanton. John Huston himself appears briefly in a flashback as Hazel's grandfather.

The film has been updated to the Vietnam war - and the relevance of Flannery O'Connor's themes is still obvious.

The work is characteristic of John Huston (whose wide range of credits includes The Maltese Falcon, the Oscar-winning Treasure of the Sierra Madre and adaptations of such novels as Moby Dick, Under the Volcano). Another offbeat film dealing with religion and madness was his mediaeval study, A Walk With Love and Death.

1. The work of Flannery O'Connor in American literature? A focus on the South? Its culture, society, religion? Its particular brand of fundamentalist Christianity? obsession with religion, rebellion? Themes of religion and madness? Good and evil?

2. The adaptation of her novel for the screen? An offbeat novel adapted successfully for an offbeat film? The success of the adaptation of situations and characters. of themes? Acclaim? The updating to the '70s and its relevance? For a specialist audience?

3. The atmosphere of Tennessee (filmed in Georgia)? The '70s, the contemporary mood, the man who moved away from the South, the experience of war - with little explicit comment on this? The opening sequences with the range of religious posters - fundamentalist, pious, kitsch, commercial? The decay and decline of the towns of the South? The hero returning from the war - and his collapse? The visual style of the film? Atmosphere? The blend of the ordinary and the eccentric? The musical score and the atmosphere of the South? Hymns? Editing contributing to mood: tracking, angle shots etc.?


4. The title and Enoch's explanation? His own intuitions and wise blood? Hazel and his wise blood, intuition and drive? The importance of natural wisdom, religious wisdom - and delusion? The blood of Hazel and its being linked visually with the blood of Jesus? The religious theme of blood, wounds, torture, self- inflicted torture? Death?

5. The credits - the atmosphere of the South, the focus on Jesus and redemption, the range of images, themes of salvation and justification? The posters, the lights, the roadside? Kitsch and the phoning of Jesus etc.? The woman in the train looking at Hazel and thinking he was a preacher? A context for a southern preacher? The significance and visual impact of the flashbacks with John Huston as Hazel's grandfather, religious background? The Protestant tradition of the dichotomy between good and evil, predestination, salvation by faith? The role of good works?

6. Hazel and his religion and its hold on him, rejection? Beliefs, commitment? His decision to rebel and to do everything that he wanted to do? The visit to the whore? His assertiveness against God? Yet the role of the preacher. the mesmerising power? The range of charlatans? The effect on people? Hazel and his being caught up. his buying the car and its being a sign of predestination? The loss of the car and his loss of faith in himself? Retirement, suffering, self-inflicted penance, repercussions? The film as a critique of this kind of religion?

7. The focus on the grandfather: preaching, awe, salvation. dreams of sexuality, sex and religious rebellion?

8. Hazel and the lift, his seriousness, his going to the house. looking for things - and his note about 'stealing killing'? His new clothes, the train? His going to the city? The taxi driver commenting on his looking like a preacher? The prostitute and his return? Preaching of a gospel of Christianity without Christ?

9. Asa Hawkes and his daughter Sabbath Lily Hawkes - in the crowd, the salesman with the peeler. Hazel's response, the encounter with Enoch? The focus on the theme of blindness and sight? Hazel following the blind man, suspicious of him? Enoch following Hazel and devoted to him? Being found and saved? Hoover Shoates and his listening to Hazel's preaching, offering to set him up, the alternate preacher and Hazel's confrontation? Hazel going home, boarding where the Hawkes boarded, the encounters? A landlady? Eventually retiring to this house - his exposure of Asa Hawkes as not blind? Asa as a character, charlatan, evil?

10. Sabbath Lily as her father's eyesight? Her knowing that he was a fraud? The plot? The outing, her seducing Hazel? Hazel's obsession about her father's blindness? The breakdown, the bed? The mummified figure and it becoming a baby symbol for her, Hazel destroying it? Her relationship with her father, with Hazel - each mirroring the other?

11. Hazel's mission, preaching holiness, Christianity without Christ, the opportunity for conversions, the people's reaction, preaching, rejection, his own prophecies? The response of the disciples?

12. Hazel and his anti-religious stances, memories, dreams, doing things, themes of infection, the Church of Christ without Christ, Hoover Shoates and his despising of him, the symbol of the car and his cherishing it, the scene of buying it, its breakdown on the highway, the encounter with the police?

13. The landlady and her ordinariness, helping Hazel, serving, looking after him in his illness, shocked at his penance, wanting to marry him, her cherishing him when it was too late?

14. What happened to Hazel: salvation and hatred, abuse, the reason for his blinding himself (and the parallels with Asa and his false blindness)? Themes of atonement, a personal Calvary, stones in his shoes, wire, the pathos of his death?

15. The portrait of Enoch - a simple young man, his following Hazel, his loneliness. his talk. the wise blood? His talking to the monkeys and the scene of his lining up to greet Gonga - the gorilla suit, the museum. the mummified figure, the mummified figure seeming a Jesus figure? The role of Enoch as a genuine disciple - and turning Hazel into a saviour redeemer figure?

16. Hazel as a Christ-figure - an anti-Christ figure? Suffering, effecting grace for people, the theme of blood, his disciples, the story of torture, Sabbath Lily and the baby and her Madonna like appearance, the futile Jesus figure? Salvation for whom - the landlady and the Pieta figure?

17. Themes of madness, sanity, normality? The portrait of people of the South, the cross-section - backgrounds of prejudice, race, religious superiority? A piece of Americana?