Hollywood in the late 1930s. We are introduced to the various residents of the San Bernadino Arms, a complex that serves as the home of a variety of people related to showbusiness, or at least those who claim to be. Tod Hackett (William Atherton) is a talented visual artist who has been relegated to drawing concept art for big-budget studio blockbusters. He is in love with Faye Greener (Karen Black), whose vanity leads her to believe that she is the next big star when in actuality she cannot book any substantial roles. Her father, Harry (Burgess Meredith) is a former vaudeville star now forced to peddle useless products as a door-to-door salesman, where not even his exuberant personality learned through years of comedy can help him make a living. Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland) is a quiet, repressed accountant who has just moved to town and starts to fall in love with Faye, who doesn’t return his affections in any way, rather opting to focus on herself and her own career and aspirations. Characters weave in and out of the film, painting a bleak portraits of Hollywood, where abstract dreams are common, but tangible accomplishments are rare, and the only way to succeed is to sell yourself in some way, because as becomes increasingly clear, there isn’t much space in the entertainment industry for those who aren’t willing to go to any lengths for even just a momentary sensation of fame and acclaim.

John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (adapted from the book of the same title by Nathanael West) is a film that has two very different sides. One is that of a loving tribute to Hollywood in its Golden Age – there was no better time to be a movie star than in the 1930s, where they were worshipped in a way that even exceeded that of the most divine historical figures. The other side is that of a harrowing story of greed, corruption and the loss of innocence. Most surprisingly isn’t that this film has two very different ways of telling the story – it’s that Schlesinger somehow finds a way to merge them, crafting a film that is simultaneously fascinating and irreverent, but also terrifying and truly lacking in any semblance of optimism or hope. There are few films that manage to exert themselves so heavily on the viewer that it results in an existential crisis, but as the credits appeared at the end of this film’s nearly 150-minute duration, I was aghast at how traumatic an experience The Day of the Locust actually was. There aren’t many films capable of inciting such passionate despair, but through the seamless blend of pathos and horror, the director has taken West’s extraordinary novel and translates it into one of the most peculiar and distressing films about excess and fame ever made, a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of going in search of some bigger meaning in an industry that only seems so glamorous because it was designed specifically to celebrate those with superficial qualities, and to blatantly reject all of those that exist outside these preordained boundaries of what constitutes a star.

Where do we start with The Day of the Locust? First, a brief warning: no matter what you know or expect from this film, absolutely nothing will prepare you for what it has in store for you. A bewildering experience if there ever was one, this is a work that exists outside of all logical categorization. It seems to take inspiration from so many different genres (perhaps a byproduct of the fact that this was a film that may deride the industry, but still is very much indebted to the culture of cinema and filmmaking itself), including romance, comedy, action and toward the end, deeply disturbing horror. Personally, I was not sure what I was getting myself into – I expected somewhat of slightly darker Robert Altman-inspired film, something that makes use of a large ensemble cast to create a tapestry of a certain industry, where we see the trials and tribulations of various individuals as they navigate the unpredictable world of Hollywood, especially in the period before the Second World War, where movies were growing in audacity, and social and political tensions were starting to arise. Caught between the Great Depression and the outset of the war, The Day of the Locust tells a compelling but brutal story about survival and resourcefulness, as well as showing the broken promises of the concept popularly called The American Dream, which was clearly an aspiration created as a form of natural selection – those who achieve it are those who have the ability to go all the way through willpower, strength and the occasional loss of morality. All of those who defy this process are bound to be left behind. The Day of the Locust does not tell a triumphant story about fame and fortune – those characters are entirely absent from this film. This is a film that focuses on those who have been leftover from the perilous, volatile machinations of the industry, stringing them together into what is undeniably one of the bleakest representations of fame ever committed to film.

The Day of the Locust features an exceptional ensemble cast, all of which are given some terrific moments to show off their skills and play some fascinating characters that are not too different from the kinds of archetypes they were bound to have encountered at some point as constituents of the industry they are satirizing here. The film is anchored by Karen Black, whose ferocious performance as Faye Greener is singularly unforgettable – far too few films made use of Black’s natural expressivity, as well as her penchant for playing to the rafters when needed. In The Day of the Locust, she is given the chance to lose all her inhibitions that had previously been suppressed by her attempts to be a traditional leading lady, when in actuality she flourished most significantly when given more intense character work – and Faye Greener is certainly the role of a lifetime, with Black playing an individual who runs the gamut – from confident and filled with unrelenting pluck, to fractured and insecure, the actress commits to this role in a way that leaves an indelible impression. One wouldn’t be wrong in thinking The Day of the Locust was a film made specifically to boost Black’s profile and bring her wider acclaim as a leading star – and while it may not have worked entirely well, it did prove the immense abilities she demonstrated in her supporting work prior to this film were not coincidental, but rather an unimpeachable quality of her talents, which she demonstrates with true conviction throughout the film, in a role that could not have been easy to play, but made to appear so effortless through Black’s unquestionably powerful work.

Donald Sutherland is another highlight of the film (and despite being first-billed, he makes his first appearance nearly a quarter of the way into the film), taking on a character very different from the more likeable everyman he had played up until that point. His character, Homer Simpson (yes, it isn’t lost on me) is truly enigmatic – he is the only major individual in this film whose past is never made evident, nor are his intentions shown to be clear. He is a lonely drifter who has just found his way into Hollywood, and unlike the others, he is not aspiring to be a star – but he doesn’t reject the lifestyle when he accomplishes his goal of striking up a passionate romance with the beguiling Faye, who finds Homer to be truly captivating, especially in his reserved, quiet detachment from the rest of the world. Burgess Meredith steals every scene he is in as the eccentric father of Faye, a man who made a name for himself on the vaudeville circuit decades before, but has now been forced into a life of shilling mediocre products to disinterested audiences, who are shown to have very little patience for a man who quite literally sings for his supper (yet, had he been doing the same schtick on screen, they would probably revere him – just because he is impinging on their space, he is suddenly a nuisance). Finally, William Atherton is the audience surrogate, a calm and collected young artist who arrives in Hollywood to make a living and experiences the organized chaos of the film industry firsthand. The cast of The Day of the Locust is absolutely perfect, and even smaller performances, which may only last a scene or two, are memorable – Geraldine Page’s incredible scene as a preacher named Big Sister is unforgettable, and her performance is one of the most affecting in the entirety of this film, even if she is only on screen for a single scene.

On the topic of preachers, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that The Day of the Locust is brimming with religious allegory from beginning to end. Even the title of the film contains a very overt reference that is only made clear towards the end of the film when it starts to resemble something akin to the Day of Reckoning. Throughout the film, there are moments of religious reference – whether it be one of the main characters playing a harem in a particularly tasteless historical epic, or an extended scene where we see a large number of people attending an early precursor of a mega-church, watching the exuberance of the preacher in the same way audience watch their favourite actors frolic across the scream, captivating us with their every word and movement. It becomes most clear in the film’s climax, where The Day of the Locust becomes nothing short of a horror film – crowds gather to greet the movie stars they treat like deities, worshipping them with the reckless abandon not even those who are deserving of such adulation can hope to receive. It is followed by moments of unmitigated violence, where various characters are killed, trampled and torn apart by the crowd, and help up in the same way Christ was during his crucifixion, a disturbing image of the perils that occur when the masses begin to lose control and turn against someone they perceive as guilty of a certain crime. The Day of the Locust should certainly be given a closer inspection, and a second viewing seems more than adequate to uncover the innumerable religious references that serve to depict Hollywood as a sacred site where movie stars and producers are treated with almost divine reverence, and where everyone inclined towards a career in the film industry have to make a sometimes perilous pilgrimage in order to have any hope of making it.

Hollywood certainly is a perilous place, and the cutthroat nature of the industry has been well-documented throughout the years. Yet, no films have ever been so brutally honest, they start as a quirky comedy and devolve into a harrowing horror, where chaos reigns and escape is impossible. John Schlesinger was not a director who ever flirted with subtletly – his films were bold, audacious and loudly proclaimed their intentions in a way that could not be ignored. It sometimes makes his work heavy-handed, but also utterly gorgeous when they strike the right chord. The Day of the Locust is a bewildering film – it is unclassifiable and undeniably complex. It is a dense exploration of the film industry in a period that is all to often viewed through rose-tinted glasses, where nostalgia dictates how we view the formative days of an industry that, despite its impenetrable and sometimes tragic nature, is still so alluring and seductive. The primary purpose of The Day of the Locust seems to be a cautionary tale about fame and fortune, depicting the darker side of Hollywood through exposing us to the table-scraps of the industry, allowing us to see the bleak nature of a world that is so familiar, yet still so mysterious, through the eyes of the people who exist on the margins. The end of this film is a barrage of unsettling, often overtly terrifying, imagery that will not soon be forgotten by any viewer. We are witness to an almost misanthropic view of a portion of society that so many aspire to through blind faith and a lot of hope, without ever being armed for the fact that it is an industry that thrives on rejection and destruction almost as much as it does success and fortune. The Day of the Locust is an unforgettable film, a harrowing dosage of bleak social commentary that never falters in its steadfast pursuit of revealing the grotesque side of something as beloved and iconic as Hollywood.