Synopsis
Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with his neighbor Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who prefers the life that Homer Simpson, a lone accountant, can offer her.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Donald SutherlandHomer Simpson
- Karen BlackFaye Greener
- Burgess MeredithHarry Greener
- William AthertonTod Hackett
- Geraldine PageBig Sister
- Richard DysartClaude Estee
- Bo HopkinsEarle Shoop
- Pepe SernaMiguel
- Lelia GoldoniMary Dove
- Jackie Earle HaleyAdore Loomis
Recommendations
- 100
TV Guide Magazine
Day Of The Locust exudes authenticity, from the costuming to the cars, from the exotic clothes to the marcelled hair styles. - 80
Variety
Magnificent production, combined with excellent casting and direction, make The Day of the Locust as fine a film (in a professional sense) as the basic material lets it be. Nathanael West's novel about losers on the Hollywood fringe has lost little of its verisimilitude in adaptation. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie finally becomes just an exercise, then: a brilliant one at times, and with a wealth of sharp-edged performances, but without people for its things to happen to. - 75
Portland Oregonian
Schlesinger's adaptation of Nathaniel West's classic novella, the Hollywood of the 1930s is decidedly as ruinous for its denizens as the Hollywood of the 1970s. [28 Jul 2000] - 75
Boston Globe
Exquisitely painful look at how Hollywood turns its hopefuls into whores. [03 May 1992, p.B35] - 70
Los Angeles Times
There's vivid period atmosphere and similarly vibrant performances from a cast headed by Karen Black and Donald Sutherland. [24 Mar 1985, p.5] - 70
The New York Times
Its grossness—its bigger-than-life quality — is so much a part of its style (and what West was writing about) that one respects the extravagances, the almost lunatic scale on which Mr. Schlesinger has filmed its key sequences. - 60
The Guardian
A tale of the losers and chancers rattling around Hollywood's fringe, the film fatally lacks the black humour and nightmarish edge of Nathanael West's source novel. But there are some good elements swarming through the muddle, not least the performances from Karen Black as a lowly starlet and Donald Sutherland as the emotional wreck who falls under her spell.
