Ideas interpreted on a scale different from the one in which they were conceived frequently accumulate new meaning along the way. Huston's rescaling—you might call it "cinematizing"—of [The Night of the Iguana] results in a reduction of meaning, yet sometimes the results are surprisingly beneficial. Listening to the protagonists reel off accounts of their spiritual difficulties and arrive verbosely at poetic solutions to them, it becomes patently clear that [Tennessee] Williams' thinking is no longer abreast of the times…. Williams has fallen behind, has been overtaken by America, and Huston's reinterpretation, whether by deliberate deflation or plain vulgarization, often acts to soften the blow.

Watching The Night of the Iguana as Huston's film rather than Williams' play—which is not quite impossible—other difficulties arise. Half the time the dialogue appears wholly unrelated to the action; one or the other is more often than not superfluous...