In the opening scenes of John Huston’s 1979 film Wise Blood, Brad Dourif is discharged from the Army thanks to an “injury” whose nature he chooses not to disclose; returning to his home town, he finds most of it gone. Everyone, it seems, has drifted away via an interstate that a local tells him has been around “just long enough for everyone to drive off on it.” Adapting Flannery O’Connor’s 1952 novel, Huston visits an American South where the divide between tradition and modernity has grown even sharper than in O’Connor’s time. Leaving his hometown for the small city of Taulkinham, where a once-thriving downtown has crumbled into drab decay—Huston shot the film in Macon, Georgia—Dourif takes on the persona of an unholy fool, dressing like an old-time revival preacher, but espousing the gospel of “Church Without Christ.” He’s a prophet in a barren land who discovers that faith, even faith in nothing, comes at a cost. Even the impious must be tested.
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