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Wise Blood

Introduced by Sally Fitzgerald
Screening on Film
Directed by John Huston.
With Brad Dourif, Ned Beatty, Harry Dean Stanton.
US, 1980, 35mm, color, 108 min.

One of Huston’s best late works, Wise Blood presents a singular tale of hell and salvation in its portrayal of a young man (Dourif) who returns from the army, stages a doomed private rebellion, and establishes the "Church of Truth Without Jesus Christ." Part comedy, part tragedy, part philosophical farce, Huston manages to imbue this version of Flannery O’Connor’s remarkable first novel with the same zest with which it was written. We present the film as a tribute to O’Connor, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth. As Vincent Canby of the New York Times has noted, "This is not Elmer Gantry land or Marjoe material. Wise Blood is an American classic set in that particular O’Connor country where the rational and irrational intersect and become, for one blinding moment, the same thing."

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