By train, by car, by bus, they came to Hollywood... in search of a dream.
Overview
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.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.0/10
IMDb: 6.9/10
Letterboxd: 3.58/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 63%
Metacritic: 61
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
John Schlesinger
Production
Paramount Pictures, Long Road Productions
Cast
Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, William Atherton, Geraldine Page, Richard Dysart, Bo Hopkins, Pepe Serna, Lelia Goldoni, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Barty, Gloria LeRoy, Natalie Schafer, Jane Hoffman, Paul Stewart, John Hillerman, Paul Jabara, Norman Leavitt, Madge Kennedy, Ina Gould
Curator Review
Verdict
A vicious, grotesque Hollywood satire with striking production design and a genuinely apocalyptic finale. It can feel overstuffed and blunt, but its nightmare vision of fame, desire, and collapse is memorable and distinctive.
Best for
Viewers who like dark, acidic showbiz satire
Fans of 1970s American cinema with a surreal edge
People drawn to tragic, performance-heavy ensemble dramas
Viewers interested in Hollywood as a site of delusion and decay
Skip if
You want a tight, subtle, or emotionally easy drama
You dislike abrasive tonal shifts and heavy-handed symbolism
You prefer sympathetic characters or uplifting stories
You are looking for a breezy classic-Hollywood nostalgia piece
Overview
The Day of the Locust is less a movie about Hollywood than an infection spreading through it. Schlesinger turns Nathanael West’s sour vision into a fever dream of ambition, lust, and humiliation, where everyone seems trapped in the same collapsing fantasy. The result is messy, but intentionally so: a lurid pageant of broken people circling a dream factory that has already turned predatory.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the film’s atmosphere. The production design is sumptuous, but it’s a poisoned kind of beauty, constantly undercut by cruelty and desperation. Karen Black gives the film its most volatile energy, and the supporting cast helps sell the sense that every interaction is a transaction, a performance, or a plea.
Bottom line
It does overreach at times, and the symbolism can be blunt to the point of bludgeoning. Still, the final stretch is unforgettable, escalating from social satire into something like civic nightmare. If you want a Hollywood film that treats glamour as rot and fantasy as violence, this is a strong, uneasy watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Ruth Scouller (3.5★) · 161 likes
You would have to be full of ostentatious lunacy to dare to make such a film of grotesque beauty as this. Hollywood as the little shop of horrors has never looked so right and so very very acidic.
Firstly, The Day of the Locust is a particularly gay film, even by Schlesinger standards. From the sleazy yet enticing decadence of Tinseltown bauble seduction, full of mindless clawing hope and regurgitated, failed dreams, to the way all the characters orbit deliriously… more
shookone (3★) · 149 likes
Day of the Locust walked so Babylon could run. Schlesinger's new Hollywood looks at old Hollywood in a satire that is a beast of his own though. a two-and-a-half hours monstrosity to be fully correct.
starting off as a portrait of a never-risen-to-fame starlet that in a mixture of natural blonde naivety and sexualizing histrionic calculation surrounds herself with a plethora of different men, that have their own - mostly penis or heart oriented - agenda. Homer Simpson (15yrs before… more
Liz (4★) · 121 likes
Chinatown for the gays
Graham Williamson (3.5★) · 105 likes
Nathaniel West's novel is so pitiless an observation of life at the very bottom rung of Hollywood that it almost feels cruel to give it an adaptation as lavish as this; the flawless production values, massive set-pieces and iconic '70s stars give it an uncomfortable feeling of very successful people punching down at their inferiors. Taking something crabby and nasty and unwholesome and handing it to a major studio is always going to be a bit of a give-and-take, and… more Nathaniel West's novel is so pitiless an observation of life at the very bottom rung of Hollywood that it almost feels cruel to give it an adaptation as lavish as this; the flawless production values, massive set-pieces and iconic '70s stars give it an uncomfortable feeling of very successful people punching down at their inferiors. Taking something crabby and nasty and unwholesome and handing it to a major studio is always going to be a bit of a give-and-take, and… more
Vanina (3★) · 87 likes
Overlong and heavy-handed. I'm torn about this film, on the one hand it focuses in on one of the most interesting periods in Hollywood history, full of sleaze and intrigue and scandal, but on the other hand it uses really over-the-top metaphors that make sure any subtlety is bludgeoned out of the film. It's Lynch Lite, but at least it's impossible to be ambivalent about Lynch's work (Lynch is much better at using imagery to his full advantage). This was… more Overlong and heavy-handed. I'm torn about this film, on the one hand it focuses in on one of the most interesting periods in Hollywood history, full of sleaze and intrigue and scandal, but on the other hand it uses really over-the-top metaphors that make sure any subtlety is bludgeoned out of the film. It's Lynch Lite, but at least it's impossible to be ambivalent about Lynch's work (Lynch is much better at using imagery to his full advantage). This was… more
For the self-destructive performer energy and the sense of fame as a trap.
Topics
Hollywood satire, 1970s drama, psychological decay, showbiz noir, grotesque beauty, ensemble tragedy, surreal atmosphere, American disillusionment, period drama, acidic tone