The Day of the Locust (1975 John Schlesinger)

A weird, pernicious film, very well made.

Hollywood, 1936. Though Donald Sutherland is top billed, William Atherton really is the main character, a production designer who falls for slutty gold-digging neighbour Karen Black. After a while, her father Burgess Meredith comes into the story, a drunk door-to-door salesman, possibly just as a plot device to get Sutherland, a reclusive introvert, into the story. Meanwhile Atherton is also competing with Bo Hopkins and Pepe Serna, and ends up almost raping her at a drunken party (after a Tom Jonesish food/seduction scene).

It meanders a bit - church scene doesn't really add anything, though is interesting (we've seen this zealous money-grabbing church thing also in Perry Mason Season 1).

Meanwhile his studio boss Richard Dysart reveals himself to be a somewhat seedy frequenter of prostitutes. Oh yes, there's also a little girl who's horrible, and looks older than she is - and in fact it's Jackie Earle Haley! (I knew there was something wrong about that girl.)

Things go from bad to worse - she treats Sutherland (whose character name, from Nathanael West's short novel, is bizarrely Homer Simpson) terribly, there's a cock fight, boozy misbehaviour, a terrible accident on the movie set (which the execs dismiss). The ending, in which Sutherland loses it and kills the girl/boy and the crowd tear him to pieces, is genuinely - and it's a word that's often used in reviews - apocalyptic, particularly the  way the horrible faces Atherton has been drawing appear in the crowd.

So it's a powerful and well acted film from the heyday of Paramount's 1970s (Chinatown was being made concurrently, Jim Clark would meet Sam O'Steen in Nickodell's bar by the old RKO studio there), but dark and upsetting to watch. The production design by Richard Macdonald is a major contribution, outstanding.

Conrad Hall: "The gauzy style of photography was meant to reflect the way these frustrated people saw themselves - in a romanticized light." He reached the effect using old school nets and silks. It is definitely a strange diffused texture, but as usual he lights everything wonderfully. He and Meredith were Oscar nominated but the film was a critical and commercial flop. It was written by Waldo Salt

Clark thought it was one of the best films he'd worked on, though Bill Atherton gave them problems to begin with - they don't show up on screen. He also said interestingly that he used temp music from an old acetate recording of Max Steiner's from A Star Is Born and that worked for him better than John Barry's subsequent score.

Jim: "I recall him [Schlesinger] saying , with glee and malice, that they would hate it in Los Angeles, and that the "sillies" would never get it. The "sillies" was John's way of referring to the general public." (Jim Clark, 'Dream Repairman').