Previously lost until being transferred from the sole surviving 16mm print by the cultural terrorists over at Nicholas Winding Refn's byNWR, SUDDENLY THE LIGHT is a low-budget, Texas-lensed oddity that tells the story of Beverly Massegee, erstwhile star of Dale Berry's Dallas-lensed potboiler HOT BLOODED WOMAN, who in the years since ended up marrying a gangster, getting addicted to heroin and finding god.
I sure hope you like singing, because SUDDENLY THE LIGHT is full of it. Beverly sings at a burlesque house, she sings in church; she sings at a funeral, she sings over the credits. Basically, the woman never stops singing. In between there are occasional moments that suggest cause and effect in a manner not dissimilar to a narrative. Beverly starts out singing in the squeakiest-clean burlesque palace you or anyone else has ever seen, where she meets her future husband, George McGann, who makes his living pushing dope to upper-middle-class suburbanites. The kindly burlesque proprietor warns Beverly away from him, but she will not be swayed, and the two seem to make a perfect pair 'til the night of the honeymoon, when George runs off on business. Three years later Beverly is pregnant with their baby but loses it in a miscarriage. She becomes so despondent at her absent husband and lost child that she turns to smack (apparently George deals in that too), and soon is waking herself up in the middle of the night to get her scheduled fix.
One day, Beverly, feeling hopeless, wanders into a church and, mesmerized by the less-than-charismatic oratory of the Rev. Angel Martinez, ends up an instant convert. This doesn't sit too well with her husband, who gets tired of her Bible-thumping ways preventing him from bringing her as arm candy to his backyard drug dealer barbecues. He ends up getting shot in a drug deal gone south (it's never really explained), but Beverly has god to see her through. Not long thereafter she meets the uncharismatic but weirdly affable preacher Charles Massegee, and soon it's wedding bells. They even have their own little boy, Trey, who dies too, while still an infant. Beverly is heartbroken, but with Jesus' help, I guess she handles it better than her miscarriage? Apparently that's moral of the story.
If you ever found yourself complaining about the formulaic structure of Hollywood biopics, here's your antidote - SUDDENLY is rote history, unaltered and unadorned, except probably to scrub Ms. Massegee's image a little cleaner than it ought to be. There's basically no narrative drive, nor are there side characters, B-stories, comedy, or really anything else to maintain interest. Hopefully you're as invested in Beverly's conversation as she is (despite the fact you're never given any real reason to be), because the film is really banking on it.
All that said, it does seem cruel to make fun of such an obviously low-budget (and earnest) regional production. This clearly meant something to the people who made it, and with the proper context - available in a voluminous interview with the star also available on byNWR - you can recognize genuine moments of trauma and pathos through the film's haze of stilted dialogue and wooden direction. Not that SUDDENLY would have been much better even with Bresson at the helm, but the latter can at least be placed squarely on the shoulders of director Irv Berwick, who in both this as well as R-rated drive-in fare like MALIBU HIGH and HITCH-HIKE TO HELL consistently proves he couldn't direct his way out of a wet paper bag. Of course, the script does him no favors, but Berwick's consistent penchant for shooting every scene in an endless, lumbering master-shot nevertheless puts this squarely in line with the rest of his filmography. In the end, for Berwick as for us all, exploitation is exploitation, which is what makes SUDDENLY THE LIGHT as psychotronic as anything else in the filmmaker's oeuvre. It's worth a watch for fans of the outré - particularly if you love singing.
I sure hope you like singing, because SUDDENLY THE LIGHT is full of it. Beverly sings at a burlesque house, she sings in church; she sings at a funeral, she sings over the credits. Basically, the woman never stops singing. In between there are occasional moments that suggest cause and effect in a manner not dissimilar to a narrative. Beverly starts out singing in the squeakiest-clean burlesque palace you or anyone else has ever seen, where she meets her future husband, George McGann, who makes his living pushing dope to upper-middle-class suburbanites. The kindly burlesque proprietor warns Beverly away from him, but she will not be swayed, and the two seem to make a perfect pair 'til the night of the honeymoon, when George runs off on business. Three years later Beverly is pregnant with their baby but loses it in a miscarriage. She becomes so despondent at her absent husband and lost child that she turns to smack (apparently George deals in that too), and soon is waking herself up in the middle of the night to get her scheduled fix.
One day, Beverly, feeling hopeless, wanders into a church and, mesmerized by the less-than-charismatic oratory of the Rev. Angel Martinez, ends up an instant convert. This doesn't sit too well with her husband, who gets tired of her Bible-thumping ways preventing him from bringing her as arm candy to his backyard drug dealer barbecues. He ends up getting shot in a drug deal gone south (it's never really explained), but Beverly has god to see her through. Not long thereafter she meets the uncharismatic but weirdly affable preacher Charles Massegee, and soon it's wedding bells. They even have their own little boy, Trey, who dies too, while still an infant. Beverly is heartbroken, but with Jesus' help, I guess she handles it better than her miscarriage? Apparently that's moral of the story.
If you ever found yourself complaining about the formulaic structure of Hollywood biopics, here's your antidote - SUDDENLY is rote history, unaltered and unadorned, except probably to scrub Ms. Massegee's image a little cleaner than it ought to be. There's basically no narrative drive, nor are there side characters, B-stories, comedy, or really anything else to maintain interest. Hopefully you're as invested in Beverly's conversation as she is (despite the fact you're never given any real reason to be), because the film is really banking on it.
All that said, it does seem cruel to make fun of such an obviously low-budget (and earnest) regional production. This clearly meant something to the people who made it, and with the proper context - available in a voluminous interview with the star also available on byNWR - you can recognize genuine moments of trauma and pathos through the film's haze of stilted dialogue and wooden direction. Not that SUDDENLY would have been much better even with Bresson at the helm, but the latter can at least be placed squarely on the shoulders of director Irv Berwick, who in both this as well as R-rated drive-in fare like MALIBU HIGH and HITCH-HIKE TO HELL consistently proves he couldn't direct his way out of a wet paper bag. Of course, the script does him no favors, but Berwick's consistent penchant for shooting every scene in an endless, lumbering master-shot nevertheless puts this squarely in line with the rest of his filmography. In the end, for Berwick as for us all, exploitation is exploitation, which is what makes SUDDENLY THE LIGHT as psychotronic as anything else in the filmmaker's oeuvre. It's worth a watch for fans of the outré - particularly if you love singing.
