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65 out of 90 people found the following review useful: Thinly veiled story about the unspeakable!, 31 March 2000 Author: MickeyTo from Toronto, Canada
The moral majority's campaign to censor anything on the movie screen considered too taboo had an incredible impact on Hollywood during the 1930's right through to the 1970's. Censors went through Hollywood scripts, tearing out anything considered unspeakable, no matter how important it was to the plot at hand. It became an art form of sorts, for Hollywood film makers to veil their nasty little subjects so that the censors (who weren't that bright anyway) couldn't find it, but so that a smart audience could. Suddenly Last Summer is a classic example of this art in action.Tennessee Williams was the toast of Broadway in the 1950's, with his melodramatic plays that often tackled heavy subjects such as addiction, adultery and in the case of this story, homosexuality. Katherine Hepburn plays a classic Tennessee Williams vamp, Violet Venable, a lady of means who is mourning the loss of her son. She has sought the help of a psychiatrist, played by Montgomery Clift, as she would like to have a lobotomy performed on her niece, who is apparently off her rocker (as most of Tennessee Williams' ladies are) and is spouting nasty rumors about the dead son.Like most of Williams' work, Suddenly Last Summer flows along with over the top dialogue, the kind that actors love to sink their teeth into. I have not seen the original stage play but I suspect that this screenplay has been severely hacked to obliterate any talk of homosexuality. Venable's son was murdered while on vacation in Europe. If you take the dialogue literally you might believe that he was murdered for his religious convictions. If you read between the lines you will see that this was clearly a gay bashing.Hepburn and Taylor both shine in their roles, that seem almost custom made for them. It's rare that Hepburn is cast as a villain, however, her performance leaves me wondering why she hasn't done it more often. Taylor's hyper-active hyper-ventilating, Catherine Holly works well here. Her own brand of melodramatic acting seems to compliment Williams' work.Clift was a tad cardboard in his role as the psychiatrist, however, it is still interesting to watch this performance that was filmed after his face-altering car accident. One might think that he recently underwent a lobotomy. On the other hand, he is competent, and the performances of the actresses more than compensate.Suddenly Last Summer works as a film, but I am hesitant to recommend to everyone. This is not an action flick, by any means, but rather a character piece. Scenes are long and they require your concentration, as important statements can be found between the lines. For fans of any of these actors, this is a must see!
40 out of 54 people found the following review useful: Suddenly, last summer in Cabeza de Lobo, 18 October 2005 Author: jotix100 from New York
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"Suddenly, Last Summer" was perhaps Tennessee Williams most autobiographical play. Mr. Williams never forgave his mother for letting his sister Rose undergo a lobotomy to "cure" her anxiety problems, something that he dealt with in this work, as well. As a play, this was done Off-Broadway, something unheard in those days about the work of one of last century's best regarded playwright. It proved to be a great artistic success for the author, even with a cast of non stars in it. In fact, "Suddenly, Last Summer" was paired with a shorter play, "Something Unspoken", under the title "Garden District".Joseph L. Mankiewicz, one of the best directors and writers that ever worked in Hollywood, undertook the direction of Gore Vidal's screen adaptation. In a way, it must have been a daring decision to bring it to the movies, since the play speaks about things that in the theater it could get away with, but in the movies, a different medium, and with the censure of those years, not even a distinguished team as the one assembled here, could get away with a movie that seemed to be years ahead of its time. The film is set in 1937.If you haven't seen the film, please stop reading here.We meet young doctor Cukrowicz at the start of the film as he is about to perform a lobotomy on one of the patients in the public hospital, where the lights go out during the operation. The ambitious director, Dr. Hockstader, wants to send the young doctor to talk to Mrs. Violet Venable, one of the richest ladies in New Orleans, because she is interested in donating money toward a hospital's improvements, with the caveat that her young niece, Catherine, undergoes the operation. Evidently, she has been "babbling" all kinds of nonsense and has been diagnosed suffering from schizophrenia.What Mrs. Venable doesn't tell the young doctor is the reason why her niece is acting in such a strange manner. During the visit, she speaks of her dead young son, Sebastian, who died tragically, suddenly, last summer of a heart attack. Violet doesn't go into details, but it seems there is much more to the story than she tells Dr. Cuckrowicz. Mrs. Venable talks about her summer trips with Sebastian and the horrible experience she had in the Galapagos watching the young turtles rushing to the sea falling prey to the predatory black birds that seem to cloud the sky.That there's something more, is clearly noticed by the young doctor when he meets Catherine, the lovely young woman being kept in another hospital's mental ward. Catherine comes across as quite sane, which poses a moral dilemma for the Cukrowicz, who is under pressure to rush Catherine's lobotomy. Since he has so many doubts and in trying to see what's wrong with the girl, he hears about how Catherine and Violet have served as procurers to the late Sebastian.The climax comes as a family reunion in which Dr. Cukrowicz gathers in the Venable mansion's patio all the people involved in the case. It is in this setting that he is able to extract from Catherine's memory what she has kept bottled up there. In a sequence that plays as a film within Catherine's mind, we watch the horrors this young woman went through when the situation gets out of hand between Sebastian and the young men of Cabeza de Lobo, where they had spent part of their vacation.Tennessee Williams, the playwright, and Gore Vidal, the adapter, both spent time in Italy. It's somehow disorienting that Catherine is talking about Amalfi and changes to another location, the scene of what appears to be the martyrdom of Sebastian, paralleling the life of the saint of the same name, to Cabeza de Lobo, which sounds more as being set in Spain than in Italy. Nevertheless, these starving children Sebastian lures to him by using his gorgeous cousin in revealing swimsuit, are key to what happens to him in that shocking day.Katherine Hepburn is about the best thing in the film. She plays a refined and dignified wealthy New Orleans matron with great assurance. Ms. Hepburn gave an understated performance showing a restraint that with some other actress might have develop into caricature. Her Mrs. Venable is a woman whose sorrow for the lost of the son knows no bounds and is trying to shut up the only person that knows the truth about what really happened to him.Elizabeth Taylor makes an invaluable contribution to the film with her luminous portrayal of Catherine. She was seen in the film at the height of her beauty and youth. Ms. Taylor, in one of her best appearances in any film, is convincing as the young woman who has been traumatized by what she had witnessed that fateful summer.Montgomery Clift, who has the lesser part of Dr. Cukrowicz, does what he can with his role. Mercedes McCambridge, on the other hand is perfect as the ambitious poor relative without scruples, who will do anything to receive the crumbs of her richer relative and couldn't care what happens to her daughter.This film was ahead of its times and still packs a lot of power because of the direction of Mr. Mankiewicz and his stellar cast.
40 out of 58 people found the following review useful: One of the better film versions of a Williams classic, 2 June 2003 Author: ian_harris from London, England
Film versions of Tennessee Williams great plays can be a little frustrating, especially for those of us lucky enough to have seen a fine production of the play on stage. I saw a fine production of this piece in London in 1999, with Sheila Gish as Mrs Venable, Rachel Weisz as Catherine and Gerard Butler as Doctor Cukrowicz.But this film version is actually extremely good. The cast more or less speaks for itself. Katherine Hepburn is not quite as repulsive as I imagine Mrs Venable to have become, but this is a movie version after all and somehow Katherine Hepburn seemed to become increasingly ghastly as the movie goes on - strong work on her part and the Director's part I shouldn't wonder. Taylor and Clift are predictably good.Most Tennessee William's plays had their endings tampered with for Hollywood and this piece is no exception. However, there is only a subtle difference between the ending of the film and the ending of the play, unlike the cringe-inducing changes to some ("Streetcar" and "Cat" being the main offenders).This is not William's best-known piece, but it is one of my favourites and this film version also slots in right up there with the very, very best.Well worth seeing, is this.
29 out of 45 people found the following review useful: Florid and fevered, it is Williams' Southern Gothic at its full flavor..., 12 June 2005 Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico
Acted with violent enthusiasm by Liz Taylor and Katharine Hepburn as the arch-rivals for the savagery poet, "Suddenly, Last Summer" is a steamy blend of venality and insanity, a truth and falsehood of a very high order… Her homosexual cousin used her as a procuress; her vindictive aunt demands that she be given a lobotomy: Liz is again the unappreciated beauty… But she's also the abandoned innocent, a girl fighting to remember what happened to her cousin Sebastian Venable died suddenly, in North Africa, during the summer… Taylor's performance is like a melody, rising toward the end to an emotional crescendo of desperation and release… And Taylor handles it expertly; she is ironical, self-deprecating, and self-aware…For all that Catherine Holly starts out as a neurotic kid in the woods, she ends the film as a courageously woman set free by her confession… The film belongs to the women; even McCambridge, in her relatively small role, has a showier part than Clift's… Clift is thoughtful, considering, and considerate… Hepburn's performance is quite restrained… Feeding insects to a carnivorous plant in a gesture that is a metaphor for the incestuous nature of the relationship with her son, Hepburn is all cool rationally and sweet reason… Violet Venable is an expert at getting her own way and Hepburn makes her most outrageous actions seem those of a moderate and kind-hearted woman…
15 out of 19 people found the following review useful: good adaptation of Williams play, 23 November 2006 Author: blanche-2 from United States
Katharine Hepburn is a wealthy woman who uses her checkbook in the hopes of having her niece lobotomized in "Suddenly, Last Summer," a 1959 film directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, and Mercedes McCambridge. Hepburn plays Mrs. Venable, whose son, Sebastian, died the previous summer of a heart attack. However, her niece Cathy, who accompanied Sebastian, has had a sort of breakdown and is institutionalized. Mrs. Venable wants Cathy lobotomized. Before doing so, however, the gifted surgeon (Clift), sent there by his boss as Mrs. Venable dangles money for the hospital in front of him, becomes determined instead to find out what happened and how Sebastian really died.This is a film that would never be made today - it's character-driven and has too much dialogue. It's a shame because the dialogue is excellent. A previous Mankiewicz film, "All About Eve," is word-rich as well, and there the dialogue sparkles. Here it is more poetic. And, like "Eve," the great roles are the womens.Though references to homosexuality are only inferred, this film and the much more poorly adapted "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" hold up very well today. With homosexuality much more discussed, the role this plays in both plots is very obvious, at least to this viewer. In "Suddenly, Last Summer," Sebastian's proclivities are evident from the beginning as Mrs. Venable describes an almost husband-wife relationship with her son, claiming to the surgeon that Sebastian was "chaste" and that her relationship with him was enough for her son.One of the comments here mentioned that "Cathy is crazy, like all Williams heroines." But in truth, Cathy like Blanche is disturbed (though Blanche may be a little closer to being nuts) and both are "put away" to shut them up - Blanche for her accusations against Stanley and Cathy because she knows how Sebastian really died.Katharine Hepburn gives a brilliant performance as Mrs. Venable - charming but made of steel, her anger and jealousy toward her niece just barely beneath the surface. Elizabeth Taylor gives one of her best performances under the strong direction of Mankiewicz. Taylor was blessed with great beauty but alas, not a great speaking voice. However, she is nevertheless very effective, particularly in her long, harrowing monologue near the end of the film.Clift's passive portrayal of the surgeon is problematic, and one wonders why he was cast. The opening scene in which he performs an operation had to be redone many times because of his drunkenness and codeine addiction - he was washing down the pills with brandy; his voice quavers, he is unsteady on his feet, and his eyes are glassy. He comes off a little better in the previous year's "Lonelyhearts," though in that film, he actually winces in pain when he has to sit. While Clift had the support of his fellow actors, he had none from Mankiewicz and producer Sam Spiegel. Had it not been for Elizabeth Taylor's insistence, he would have been replaced. It seems cruel (as it did to Hepburn at the time) but Mankiewicz was trying to make a movie and Spiegel wanted it to be on budget - Clift's addictions and physical problems weren't helping. He couldn't remember lines; when he finally said them, he was often inaudible; and he was always late arriving on the set. Fortunately for audiences, this wasn't his last big-budget role. Under the direction of Elia Kazan, he would do the magnificent "Wild River" and seemingly be more in control.Despite this, "Suddenly, Last Summer" is an excellent, disturbing film, and is highly recommended. It's not Williams' best play, but it is served well in its film adaptation.
22 out of 33 people found the following review useful: This film should have earned Taylor her first Oscar, 1 June 2006 Author: belcanto26 from United States
"Suddenly, Last Summer" brought Elizabeth Taylor her third Oscar nomination, and she probably should have won (though winner Simone Signoret's performance in "Room at the Top" was also outstanding). Taylor is awesome in this film ----- most notably in the final twenty minutes, which she virtually dominates. This entire scene was reportedly shot in one take, which makes sense, since the character begins with a narrative and gradually builds to an emotionally shattering climax. Taylor's previous film, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", was also Oscar caliber, but this performance is even more impressive. The 1960 Oscar for "Butterfield 8" was probably a consolation prize for the Oscar she should have received for either of these two previous films.
28 out of 45 people found the following review useful: The Name Tennessee Williams Says It All, 8 October 2005 Author: Lechuguilla from Dallas, Texas
In 1930's New Orleans, a wealthy and eccentric older woman named Mrs. Venable (Katharine Hepburn), wants a surgeon (Montgomery Clift) to perform a lobotomy on her niece (Elizabeth Taylor), for reasons that become clear toward the end of the film. This macabre Tennessee Williams story, with overlapping adult themes, must surely have been a shock to audiences in 1959. The film provides a great vehicle for the talents of both Hepburn whose acting is engaging, and Taylor whose performance is superb.The Mankiewicz script is very talky. The characters of both Hepburn and Taylor engage in lengthy and at times tedious monologues. In all that talking, at least there are some really good lines. My favorite is near the beginning. In a nonchalant tone, Mrs. Venable tells us about the daily vicissitudes of Lady, the Venus flytrap that Mrs. Venable keeps in her garden. "Lady must be kept under glass, and while she is under glass, we have to provide her with flies, flown in at great expense." Priceless.As one would expect for a film derived from a stage play, cinematography and music are less important than dialogue and acting. "Suddenly Last Summer" is worth viewing for its unusual story, and for the acting accomplishments of Hepburn and Taylor.
17 out of 24 people found the following review useful: Born to play Tennessee Willams, 2 November 2006 Author: Martin Bradley (MOscarbradley@aol.com) from Derry, Ireland
This screen version, by Joseph L Mankiewicz, of Tennessee Williams' play isn't as highly thought of as it should be. It's not a classic and on occasions it comes over as crude and stilted, but it also has many fine things going for it. Although he never really opens it out, Mankiewicz gives it a fluency that isn't at all theatrical and although he often films scenes intimately and between only two characters, he ensures it is photographed and cut in a very cinematic fashion.Unfortunately, one of the two people on screen during these 'cinematic' sequences is Montgomery Clift who is at his worst here. It was after his accident and he looks as if he's in pain. When he walks it's as if there is a board up his back and he talks as if out of the side of his mouth. Luckily, with him in these scenes is either Elizabeth Taylor or Katharine Hepburn or both and when they are on screen you don't pay too much attention to Clift.Dilys Powell said Elizabeth Taylor was born to play Tennessee Williams and she was right. Indeed this may be her best performance after "Virginia Woolf". Catherine's lines don't have the kind of poetry in them that Violet Venable's does but Taylor finds a poetry of her own in her readings. She builds on her long speech at the end and is very moving, even if Mankiewicz can't resist 'showing' us, in flashbacks, what Taylor is telling us, as if he doesn't trust an audience to sit still and just listen to Taylor. (They would have to in the theatre).As Violet, Hepburn has the showier part and she milks it for all it's worth. It's a great piece of acting because Violet never seems to be acting, though she tends to think of her life as a kind of performance, something she has passed on to her homosexual son, Sebastian. (If the old adage, 'my mother made me a homosexual', has any validity you don't have to look any further than here). She enters from above, descending in her small baroque lift, and Hepburn can see the comic potential in such an entrance. Moments later, however, she is recounting how the sea-turtles were devoured by flesh-eating birds in the Galapogos, and you can see just how dangerously unstable this woman really is.Any film that has acting of this calibre automatically qualifies as worth seeking out, (you forgive the lame work of Clift and Gary Raymond and draw a blind over Mercedes McCambridge, though Albert Dekker is very fine), but this qualifies on other grounds; as one of the better Tennessee Williams adaptations, (he co-wrote it with Gore Vidal), as a flawed, dated but strangely fascinating example of how Hollywood viewed homosexuality at the time, (negatively, naturally, but any face, no matter how horribly distorted, so long as it was in the public gaze, was better than no face at all), and as a serious addition to the Joe Mankiewicz canon.
19 out of 28 people found the following review useful: The love that dared not speak its name., 17 February 2005 Author: John Primavera (jpseacadets@cox.net) from San Diego, CA, USA
Being an admirer of both Monty Clift and Tennessee Williams, I went to see this film with great anticipation. I was eighteen at the time and topics such as homosexuality were taboo in the cinema back then. But with the by Tennessee Williams attached to it, I expected to be confronted with material, characters and situations that challenged my sheltered mind. But with "Suddenly, Last Summer," I was amazed to learn that Williams surpassed even himself! From the very beginning, I beheld a Katharine Hepburn playing a character so bizarre and cryptic, that it bordered on the comical. Even Monty Clift, his youth and tender looks despoiled by accident, pills & booze, looked tired. But Liz Taylor seemed perfectly okay, her beauty never more radiant. The only thing wrong with her character was her sanity. Apparently she witnessed something so awful the summer in question happening to her cousin Sebastian, that it drove her over the edge of sanity into madness. But the eccentric aunt and the deranged cousin aren't the focal point of this grim tale. Sebastian is the one who motivates all the others. The one we are tantalized with and shocked by and made so mysterious, that we don't even get to see his face, hear his voice or learn what made him the way he was. He's always shot from behind, as if to see his face might just make the audience care about him, know his humanity and, possibly, even sympathize with him. Sebastian was made to be abstract, and censorship being what it was, that made the producers breathe easier. Although he meets a horrible death at the hands of some Third World beach boys, he's not meant to be the victim of the film. Instead, his pretty cousin is the one who must be sacrificed to protect the memory and reputation of her cousin. Mama wants it that way and what Hepburn wants, she gets, even going so far as to blackmail two doctors to silence her niece! Mama Hepburn, to me, is the real monster of the film and Taylor her helpless victim. Made helpless by the need for secrecy at all costs. If anything, this tale can be about how an obsession with secrecy leads to madness.As for Sebastian, we are supposed to think he got what he deserved. As for me, the movie left me emotionally drained. The predatory beasts unleashed, the primeval garden(replete with insect-devouring plants), the attempted suicide and gang rape by loony inmates of Taylor.... the long speech at the beginning about swooping blackbirds preying on baby turtles that Hepburn delivers, all made me limp at the end. Hepburn and Taylor both received worthy Oscar nominations for their work. The set designer as well for the foreboding lunatic asylum and simmering garden; the primitive operating room where lobotomies are performed - - all excellent. Rent the video if you can. But remember, this is set in 1937 when homosexuals weren't getting elected to Congress. Remember, also, that Sebastian is a martyr if only because he was before his time. Just like the saint he's named after. I was made to realize above all else from this film that there is a beast that lurks in our unconscious mind; a remnant from our prehistoric past; and of which we are reminded by the frequent animal imagery used in this film. Something to think about whenever we see the strong preying upon the weak. To quote a line from the film: "Nature is not made in the image of man's compassion."- - Sound Track
13 out of 17 people found the following review useful: Flamboyant Southern Gothic Tennessee Williams Served Up by Masters, 18 July 2006 Author: Ed Uyeshima from San Francisco, CA, USA
It's hard to take your eyes off an impossibly beautiful, 27-year old Elizabeth Taylor, especially in her skintight white bathing suit, and the fact that she gives a powerhouse performance, likely her best prior to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", is reason enough to watch this 1959 Gothic melodrama from the fulsome pen of Tennessee Williams. She plays Catherine Holly, a mentally unstable young woman traumatized by a violent incident which ended with her cousin Sebastian's death last summer in a Mexican beach resort.Trapped in a mental hospital that recalls the bowels of the asylum presented in "The Snake Pit" ten years earlier, she cannot remember what happened and is constantly drugged but manages to exhibit enough credibility to make Dr. Cukrowicz assess that she may not be disturbed enough to warrant a lobotomy. The procedure is being pushed by the late Sebastian's grande dame mother, Violet Venable, who wants to silence Catherine lest she reveal the shocking secrets of Sebastian's life and death. A doyenne of New Orleans society, Mrs. Venable dangles a tempting carrot of a $1 million donation to Cukrowicz's hospital for brain research if the lobotomy is done.As was common under the production code in the 1950's and similar to what was done to dilute Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", the film only alludes to Sebastian's homosexuality, using rather graphic symbolism to bring across the dramatic tension of the situation. In this case, it works because it's consistent with the Baroque style of the entire movie. Taylor goes toe-to-toe with the formidable Katharine Hepburn playing against type as Mrs. Venable, a cold and manipulative character whose flamboyant hypocrisy hides her own unsteady state. Each actress gets a showy monologue with Catherine's climactic description of that infamous summer the true capper of the story.Saddled with the purely observational role of Cukrowicz, Montgomery Clift seems rather passive as he has to explain the more convoluted plot points in a becalmed manner. Co-adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal and Williams, the film is dialogue-heavy as most of Williams' works are, and director Joseph Mankiewicz ("All About Eve", "A Letter to Three Wives") is a master at this type of character interplay. Jack Hildyard's crisp black-and-white cinematography works well for this story as color would have emphasized the melodramatic excesses (note how pale Taylor's violent eyes look). The only notable extras on the 2000 DVD are some vintage photo stills. Unfortunately, this film was not included as part of the recently released, six-film Tennessee Williams Film Collection.
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