UNDER MILKWOOD, Dylan Thomas’ 1954 play about the perculiar characters in a Welsh village was adapted for the screen in this 1972 British production, directed & scripted by the prodigious author Andrew Sinclair. Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and Elizabeth Taylor headline a worthy cast shooting on location in the small Wales coastal community of Fishguard.

‘First Man’ (Burton) narrates the lives, livelihoods and dreams of the residents of ‘Llareggub’ (spelled backwards is “bugger all”) who include an old, blind seaman ‘Captain Tom Cat’ (O’Toole), pining over his lost love, prostitute ‘Rosie Probert’ (Taylor).

Others in the cast—there are dozens of characters—include Sian Phillips (O’Toole’s wife at the time), Glynis Johns (always a joy), Vivien Merchant, Victor Spinetti, Angharad Rees, Susan Penhaligon, Meg Wyn Owen.

We have to beg off on this one. Much as I admire some of the actors this was a chore & a half to ‘enjoy’, and patience was wanting early on. Admirers of Thomas will appreciate it, and it’s certainly fine that a treasured work of free form verse is amber’d onto film, but the rank & file moviegoer will struggle to stay awake.

Sample reviews—John Russell Taylor of The Times  offered “The enterprise is, after all, doomed from the outset by the nature of the original material”…”the final effect is to leave one wondering what, precisely, is the point of the exercise”.   The Guardian’s Derek Malcolm said “What Sinclair has done is to transpose the piece virtually line by line into visuals, so that if Thomas talks about the sea we see it, if he mentions love then we watch an approximation of it on the screen”. ..”Perhaps the cinema is simply the wrong medium.”   Peter Hanson of Every 70s Movie: “For most of Under Milk Wood’s running time, I had no idea what was going on, couldn’t figure out what X event had to do with Y event”…”the movie left me so cold I can’t offer much in the way of original insight”.   Film Fredonia‘s Roderick Heath lays out “The hazy updating of the material is also problematic. Thomas was writing in the late 1940s and early 1950s of the life he had loved and despised as a youth in the 1920s; it was filmed in the very different atmosphere of the early 1970s.”

Running 88 minutes, it appears to have been produced for £273,279 (£3,343,000/$4,389,000 in 2024) with the three big stars taking just £10,000 apiece (£145,000 in ’24) but the box office return was scant. Though it premiered in Italy in August of ’71, the British release came in late January, 1972. It made to the States one year later. Conflicting sources give varying receipts. Cogerson has it making $1,800,000 in the US, yet lists it for 1971 and not 1973, and posts as clinging to spot #128. As such it was the least financially successful of the ten Taylor-Burton features. Now you know, and I can find some aspirin. Or maybe another movie dealing with a gaggle of Welsh folks. Like Zulu…