Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque

It was going to take a wise man indeed to adapt Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, and as always John Huston was up to the literary challenge. According to critics, the translation is a rousing success. In Time Out New York, Keith Uhlich writes that “O’Connor’s incisive sense of person and place is brilliantly captured in this 1979 film adaptation of her highly regarded first novel, which plays out as a broad comedy set within a timeless purgatory.” In the Los Angeles Times, Dennis Lim sings the praises of both “the singular richness of O’Connor’s creation and the canny intelligence of Huston’s interpretation,” while saving special praise for “a mesmerizing performance by Dourif, a terrific character actor digging with relish into the juiciest role of his career.” And Turner Classic Movies’ Glenn Erickson concurs: “Wise Blood does justice to O’Connor’s mysterious, quirky examination of Bible Belt mania . . . The impeccably cast and brilliantly acted film seems to be happening in an alternate universe of frauds and heretics.”

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