Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death, we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The consul's self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization, is a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic, idealistic half-brother, Hugh, and his ex-wife, Yvonne, who has returned with hopes of healing Geoffrey and their broken marriage.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.3/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.52/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 74%
Metacritic: 70
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
John Huston
Production
Ithaca, Conacite Uno
Cast
Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Andrews, Ignacio López Tarso, Katy Jurado, James Villiers, Dawson Bray, Carlos Riquelme, Jim McCarthy, José René Ruiz, Eleazar García Jr., Salvador Sánchez, Sergio Calderón, Araceli Ladewuen Castelun, Emilio Fernández, Arturo Sarabia, Roberto Sosa, Hugo Stiglitz, Ugo Moctezuma, Isabel Vázquez
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A bleak, literate character study powered by Albert Finney’s ferocious performance and John Huston’s late-career fatalism. It’s less a conventional drama than a slow descent into self-destruction, colonial unease, and prewar dread, so it rewards patience more than plot-hungry viewers.
Best for
viewers drawn to intense alcoholic breakdown narratives
fans of literary adaptations with symbolic, oppressive atmosphere
people who appreciate late-period auteur films with a doom-laden mood
audiences interested in prewar tension and moral decay
Skip if
you want a fast-moving or easily accessible drama
you need clear emotional uplift or redemption
you dislike elliptical, meandering character studies
you prefer films that explain their symbolism plainly
Overview
John Huston turns Malcolm Lowry’s novel into a feverish, sunstruck descent, where every street corner feels like a moral dead end. The film’s power comes less from plot than from accumulation: a man drinking himself into oblivion while the world edges toward catastrophe, and everyone around him is forced to watch.
Worth noting
Albert Finney is extraordinary, making Geoffrey Firmin both repellent and tragic, a figure who seems to have fused with his own ruin. Huston stages the material with harsh conviction, and the result is often uncomfortable by design: a portrait of addiction that refuses glamour, wit, or easy pity.
Bottom line
It can feel deliberately heavy and even unwieldy, but that severity is part of its design. For viewers willing to sit inside its despair, it’s a haunting, deeply atmospheric work about personal collapse mirroring historical collapse.
Top Letterboxd reviews
theriverjordan (4★) · 151 likes
“Under the Volcano” is John Huston’s riff one what “Casablanca” would be like if Ilsa and Laszlo had spent the entire runtime searching for Rick after he had gone on a bender.
In simpler terms, it’s “Casablanca” on half a bottle of mezcal.
“Volcano,” like the Bogart (not Huston-directed) vehicle, is set in a town that chooses to exist on the margins. Here, Mexico substitutes for Morocco. It is, also, set in the moment just before these borderlands would be… more
Ryne Walley (4★) · 104 likes
"Hell is my natural habitat."
What a bastard of a picture. Truthfully, Under the Volcano burns with a spirit of such beastly abhorrence that it can't help but stand defiantly—if somewhat incoherently—apart from other period pieces, or even traditional dramas for that matter. Filmmaker John Huston leaves little out of sight as his expressive and unflinching craftsmanship attacks every angle of the grim material at hand, skill sustained by what must've been a challenging adaptation for playwright-screenwriter Guy Gallo to… more
Sam Thompson (3★) · 79 likes
Under the Volcano is a slow, meandering and meditative look at alcoholism. If you are looking for fireworks or a dramatic erruption, you won't find it here.
I won't lie, I found it very difficult to get into this. It wasn't engaging or interesting to me and I dreaded the hour and a half I still had to go. Mercifully, things picked up when some other characters entered the picture. The middle hour of this film is easily the best… more
Keegan W (3★) · 62 likes
“… Drowned to the rattling of a thousand douche bags…”
Albert Finney’s portrayal in this film as a perpetually wasted alcoholic got me thinking of some of the other best wasted performances. Here are a few off the top of my head:
Jeff Bridges - Crazy HeartNicolas Cage - Leaving Las VegasBradley Cooper - A Star is BornMads Mikkelsen - Another RoundJack Nicholson - Easy Rider & The ShiningNick Nolte - Warrior (and real life)Randy Quaid…
nick (2.5★) · 59 likes
The combo of John Huston and Albert Finney is not enough to make this an enjoyable experience. In a stone-cold character study set on the eve of WWII, an English diplomat wallowed in his raging alcoholism, waiting for the world both inside and outside to explode. I understand and appreciate the symbolic meaning of this slow burn, but the execution is far from my favorite.
Compared to Lost Weekend, which deals with a similar theme, Under the Volcano has a… more