The Sound and the Fury | |
---|---|
Directed by | Martin Ritt |
Written by | Harriet Frank Jr. Irving Ravetch |
Based on | The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner |
Produced by | Jerry Wald |
Starring | Yul Brynner Joanne Woodward Margaret Leighton Stuart Whitman Ethel Waters Jack Warden Françoise Rosay |
Cinematography | Charles G. Clarke |
Edited by | Stuart Gilmore |
Music by | Alex North |
Distributed by | 20th Century-Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1,710,000 [1] |
Box office | $1.7 million (est. US/Canada rentals) [2] |
The Sound and the Fury is a 1959 American drama film directed by Martin Ritt. It is loosely based on the 1929 novel of the same title by William Faulkner.
Quentin Compson is a girl of 17 in the small Mississippi town of Jefferson. She lives with her step-uncle, Jason, who has practically raised Quentin ever since her promiscuous mother, Caddy, abandoned her.
Jason makes ends meet working in the store of Earl Snopes, a man he detests. He is the provider for several people in the large family house, including Howard, who is Quentin's uncle, and his step-brother, and a mute, mentally handicapped man named Benjy, his other step-brother. Other occupants include Jason's bitter, resentful mother; Dilsey, a black housekeeper, and Luster, Dilsey's grandson who looks after Benjy.
Quentin is bored, restless, and not interested in Jason's wishes that she continue her education. When a carnival comes to town, she becomes infatuated with Charlie Busch, a carny worker who tries to seduce her.
Caddy returns to town. She has a tentative reunion with Quentin, but takes Jason's side because she has no money and needs him to shelter her now. Caddy flirts with Snopes, who implies that they had intimate relations and is beaten by Jason for saying as much. Benjy becomes incensed when he catches Quentin sneaking out to meet Busch and tries to strangle her, whereupon Jason decides that Benjy must be committed to an institution.
A frustrated Quentin wants to leave with Busch and claims she can get her hands on $3,000. She steals it from a suitcase of money Jason had been saving for her future. To prove the stranger's true intentions, Jason goes to Busch and gives him a choice: the girl or the money. Quentin is crushed when she realizes what Busch is really after. She returns to Jason and promises to be more mature in their future together.
In September 1955 the novel was optioned by Jerry Wald who had a deal at Columbia. The previous month Wald optioned the Faulkner story, Soldier's Pay. [3] In August 1956 Wald announced he had purchased the screen rights and would make it for 20th Century Fox, and that the team of Harriet Frank and Irvin Ravitch would do the adaptation. Wald had a tendency to film older novels; he said he took advice from a survey of librarians throughout the country to see what older books were "perennial favorites" with readers. [4] Wald offered the leading roles of Jason and Candace to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. [5]
In January 1957 Gregory Peck signed to star with filming to begin in June. [6] Audrey Hepburn was sought to co star and Jose Quintero to direct. [7] Quintero turned down the film, By May 1957 Martin Ritt was signed to direct and Wald was going to make another Faulkner tale as well, The Hamlet, which became The Long Hot Summer. [8] Ritt did it under a two-picture contract with Fox. [9]
Eventually Ritt filmed Long Hot Summer first.
In December 1957 filming was postponed due to difficulties in casting. [10] Lana Turner was to star as Caddy. [11]
In January 1958 Yul Brynner signed to star. [12]
The film opened at the RKO Pantages Theatre at the end of March 1959 and grossed $13,000 in its first week. [13] [14]
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that the film "lacks texture" and is "sentiment-dappled and synthetic". [15] The negative reception may also have been partly due to Joanne Woodward's being so much older than the character she played; at almost 30 years old, it was hard to find her believable as a 17-year-old girl.[ citation needed ]
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer, whose novels and short stories were set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Absalom, Absalom! is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. Taking place before, during, and after the American Civil War, it is a story about three families of the American South, with a focus on the life of Thomas Sutpen.
The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. It employs several narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner's fourth novel, and was not immediately successful. In 1931, however, when Faulkner's sixth novel, Sanctuary, was published—a sensationalist story, which Faulkner later said was written only for money—The Sound and the Fury also became commercially successful, and Faulkner began to receive critical attention.
The Compson family is a fictional family created by American author William Faulkner for use in his novels and short stories. A once prominent family in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the family began to fall on hard times in the twentieth century. Principally depicted in The Sound and the Fury and in its appendix, they also make appearances in Absalom, Absalom! and stories such as "That Evening Sun". The family name is also referred to briefly in the opening chapter of Requiem for a Nun. Faulkner traced their genealogy from 1699 to 1945.
Martin Ritt was an American director, producer, and actor, active in film, theatre and television. He was known mainly as an auteur of socially-conscious dramas and literary adaptations, described by Stanley Kauffmann as "one of the most underrated American directors, superbly competent and quietly imaginative."
Jerome Irving Wald was an American screenwriter and a producer of films and radio programs.
Quentin Compson is a fictional character created by William Faulkner. He is an intelligent, neurotic, and introspective son of the Compson family. He is featured in the classic novels The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! as well as the short stories "That Evening Sun" and "A Justice". After moving north to study at Harvard College, he eventually commits suicide by drowning himself in the Charles River.
"That Evening Sun" is a short story by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1931 in the collection These 13, which included Faulkner's most anthologized story, "A Rose for Emily". The story was originally published, in a slightly different form, as "That Evening Sun Go Down" in The American Mercury in March of the same year.
The Roots of Heaven is a 1958 American adventure film made for 20th Century Fox, directed by John Huston and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. The screenplay by Romain Gary and Patrick Leigh Fermor is based on Romain Gary's 1956 Prix Goncourt-winning novel of the same name. The film stars Errol Flynn, Juliette Gréco, Trevor Howard, Eddie Albert, Orson Welles, Paul Lukas, Herbert Lom and Grégoire Aslan. Huston later said that Roots of Heaven "could have been a very fine film. And largely owing to me was not a good film at all."
The Long, Hot Summer is a 1958 American drama film starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, and Orson Welles. It was directed by Martin Ritt, with a screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., based in part on three works by William Faulkner: the 1931 novella "Spotted Horses", the 1939 short story "Barn Burning" and the 1940 novel The Hamlet. The title is taken from The Hamlet, as Book Three is called "The Long Summer". Some characters, as well as tone, were inspired by Tennessee Williams' 1955 play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a film adaptation of which – also starring Newman – was released 5 months later.
In Love and War is a 1958 American CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color film set in World War II, directed by Philip Dunne. It is based on the 1957 novel The Big War by Anton Myrer. Myrer was a former Marine wounded during the Second Battle of Guam in 1944.
The Wayward Bus is a 1957 American drama film directed by Victor Vicas and starring Joan Collins, Jayne Mansfield, Dan Dailey and Rick Jason. Released by 20th Century-Fox, the film was based on the 1947 novel of the same name by John Steinbeck.
The Best of Everything is a 1959 American drama film directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Edith Sommer and Mann Rubin, based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Rona Jaffe. It stars Hope Lange, Stephen Boyd, Suzy Parker, Martha Hyer, Diane Baker, Brian Aherne, Robert Evans, Louis Jourdan, and Joan Crawford. The film follows the professional careers and private lives of three women who share a small apartment in New York City and work together at a paperback publishing firm. Alfred Newman wrote the musical score, the last under his longtime contract as 20th Century-Fox's musical director.
Yellowstone Kelly is a 1959 American Western film based upon a novel by Heck Allen with a screenplay by Burt Kennedy starring Clint Walker as Luther Sage "Yellowstone" Kelly, and directed by Gordon Douglas. The film was originally supposed to be directed by John Ford with John Wayne in the Clint Walker role but Ford and Wayne opted to make The Horse Soldiers instead.
Harriet Frank Jr. was an American screenwriter and producer. Working with her husband Irving Ravetch, Frank received many awards during her career, including the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and the Writers Guild of America Award, and several nominations.
Return to Peyton Place is a 1961 American drama film in color by De Luxe and CinemaScope, produced by Jerry Wald, directed by José Ferrer, and starring Carol Lynley, Tuesday Weld, Jeff Chandler, Eleanor Parker, Mary Astor, and Robert Sterling. The screenplay by Ronald Alexander is based on the 1959 novel Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. The film was distributed by 20th Century Fox and is a sequel to their earlier film Peyton Place (1957).
Irving Dover Ravetch was an American screenwriter and film producer who frequently collaborated with his wife Harriet Frank Jr.
Mardi Gras is a 1958 American musical comedy film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Pat Boone and Christine Carère.
The Sound and the Fury is an American drama film directed by James Franco. It is the second film version of the 1929 novel of the same name by William Faulkner. The film stars Franco, Tim Blake Nelson, Scott Haze, Loretta Devine, Ahna O'Reilly, Joey King, Jacob Loeb, Janet Gretzky, Dwight Henry, Logan Marshall-Green, Jim Parrack, Seth Rogen, and Danny McBride.
Benjy is a masculine given name, usually a diminutive form (hypocorism) of Benjamin. It is also a surname.