Sanctuary (1961 film)

Sanctuary is a 1961 American drama film directed by Tony Richardson. The film, based on the William Faulkner novels Sanctuary (1931) and Requiem for a Nun (1951), is about a black maid who kills her white employer's baby and is sentenced to death.^[2]

In 1928 in the county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, black woman Nancy Mannigoe is condemned to death for the willful murder of the infant son of her white employer Mrs. Gowan Stevens, the former Temple Drake. On the eve of the scheduled execution, Temple tries to save Nancy by telling her father, the governor, of the events preceding the murder in flashback sequences beginning six years earlier, when Temple was a college girl dating Gowan Stevens.

One night, Gowan becomes drunk and takes Temple on a wild drive, crashing the car in the Mississippi backwoods. They take refuge at a house run by a bootlegger named Candy Man, who rapes her. However, the next day, she willingly submits to him and begins to fall in love with him, living with him in a New Orleans brothel. Although Candy is verbally and physically abusive, Temple is devoted to him. His black maid Nancy repeatedly tries to warn Temple of the evil surrounding her, to no avail.

Candy is killed in a fiery crash while being pursued by police, and with nowhere to turn, Temple reports herself as a hostage and is returned home. She reluctantly marries Gowan and assumes a life of privilege, and the couple have two sons. While on a tour of a prison for narcotics offenders, Temple spots Nancy and frees her so that Nancy can be her maid.

One night, Candy reappears and seduces Temple, who cannot resist him. He convinces her to abandon her life and husband and run away with him. Nancy pleads with Temple to rethink her decision and stay, but Temple is determined to take the baby and flee with Candy. Just before Temple is about to leave, she discovers that the baby is dead. Nancy admits to having smothered the baby in a desperate attempt to prevent Temple from leaving.

Though shocked by his daughter's confession, the governor is unable to grant a pardon for Nancy. The next morning, Temple visits Nancy in her cell and they beg for forgiveness from each other. Temple realizes that it is only through Nancy's sacrifice that she has been able to find salvation.

• Lee Remick as Temple Drake
• Odetta as Nancy Mannigoe
• Yves Montand as Candy Man
• Bradford Dillman as Gowan Stevens
• Harry Townes as Ira Bobbitt
• Howard St. John as Governor Drake
• Jean Carson as Norma
• Reta Shaw as Miss Reba
• Strother Martin as Dog Boy
• William Mims as Lee
• Marge Redmond as Flossie
• Jean Bartel as Swede

Producer Richard D. Zanuck, son of Twentieth Century-Fox head and coproducer Darryl F. Zanuck, sought to combine the William Faulkner novels Sanctuary (1931) and its sequel Requiem for a Nun (1951) into one screenplay as a more commercially viable option than basing the film on one of the books alone.^[3] He acquired the film rights to both novels and also spent $75,000 for the rights to the 1933 film The Story of Temple Drake, which was necessary in order to obtain the rights to the original novel.^[4]

James Poe wrote the script^[5] using an outline and prologue prepared by Zanuck, who was unable to contact Faulkner.^[4]

The character of Candy Man is an amalgamation of characters from both source novels: Popeye, Red and Red's brother Pete (Red's brother).^[4]

Director Tony Richardson was drawn to the film project because of the depiction of the 1920s and 1930s United States in the original script. However, as he disliked the typical editing process for American films of the time, he was unhappy with the completed film.^[6]

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote:

William Faulkner's novel "Sanctuary," and his sequel to it, "Requiem for a Nun," which together provide, quite a lurid introspection of a jazz:-age Southern girl, have been con1bined, cut down and altered to such a dumbfounding degree ... that it is hard to recognize the heroine. Indeed, it is hard to recognize her as a credible human being. The saucy young matron ... is more like the superficial subject of true-confessions yarn. And the picture itself is melodrama of the most mechanical and meretricious sort. What has happened, simply, is that the writer of the script, James Poe, has attempted to extract the basic incidents of the two far-from-simple Faulkner yarns without including the essential sordid details that explain and justify the heroine. He has arbitrarily made her a loose woman, a degenerate of a sort, without specifying why she is ... The consequence is a picture that no more reflects or comprehends the evil in the Faulkner stories or the social corruption suggested in them than did the first screen handling of "Sanctuary" in 1933, under the title of "The Story of Temple Drake."^[7]

• List of American films of 1961

• Degenfelder, E. Pauline (Winter 1976). "The Four Faces of Temple Drake: Faulkner's Sanctuary, Requiem for a Nun, and the Two Film Adaptations". American Quarterly. 28 (5): 544–560. doi:10.2307/2712288. JSTOR 2712288.
• Phillips, Gene D. (Summer 1973). "Faulkner And The Film: The Two Versions Of "Sanctuary"". Literature/Film Quarterly. 1 (2). Salisbury University: 263–273. JSTOR 43795435.
• Phillips, Gene D. (2001). Fiction, Film, and Faulkner: The Art of Adaptation. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-1572331662.

• Sanctuary at IMDb
• Sanctuary at the TCM Movie Database