Under the Volcano follows the final day in the life of a self-destructive British Consul Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney in an Oscar-nominated tour de force) on the eve of World War II.Withering from alcoholism Firmin stumbles through a small Mexican village amid the ‘day of the dead’ festival. Attempting to reconnect with his estranged wife (Jacqueline Bisset) and set against the ominous background of war breaking out in Europe coupled with the unsettling fiesta we are taken through one day in a life of alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in the small town in 1939. Firmin’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.John Huston’s ambitious tackling of Malcolm Lory’s towering novel was compared with his greatest works such as the Maltese Falcon The African Queen The Asphalt Jungle and Key Largo. This film also gave the incomparable Finney on of his most legendary roles.
Under the Volcano follows the final day in the life of a self-destructive British Consul Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney in an Oscar-nominated tour de force) on the eve of World War II.Withering from alcoholism Firmin stumbles through a small Mexican village amid the ‘day of the dead’ festival. Attempting to reconnect with his estranged wife (Jacqueline Bisset) and set against the ominous background of war breaking out in Europe coupled with the unsettling fiesta we are taken through one day in a life of alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in the small town in 1939. Firmin’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.John Huston’s ambitious tackling of Malcolm Lory’s towering novel was compared with his greatest works such as the Maltese Falcon The African Queen The Asphalt Jungle and Key Largo. This film also gave the incomparable Finney on of his most legendary roles.
