Themes: Southern Gothic, Doctors and Patients, Wrongly Committed
Main Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Albert Dekker, Mercedes McCambridge
Release Year: 1959
Country: US/UK
Run Time: 114 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
In this lush, lurid adaptation of the 1957 Tennessee Williams one-act, Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn play a seemingly insane, young New Orleans debutante and the wealthy aunt who wants to lobotomize her. Dr. John Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) is a gifted Chicago brain surgeon stymied by the primitive operating conditions at the New Orleans asylum where he works. Society matron Violet Venable (Hepburn) offers a solution in the form of a million-dollar grant -- as long as Cukrowicz will treat her niece, Catherine (Taylor). Catherine, it seems, has been institutionalized since the sudden death of her cousin, Violet's son, Sebastian, overseas the previous summer. As the young doctor tries to get to the bottom of what happened to Catherine, Violet's steely demeanor and devotion to Sebastian present a formidable barrier. Catherine herself doesn't offer much help, her recollections jumbled by medication and the trauma of Sebastian's demise. Under pressure to seal the deal and cut into Catherine's brain, Cukrowicz's principles (and attraction to the young woman) prevent him from proceeding until he uncovers what actually happened to Sebastian. In his memoirs, Gore Vidal claims to have written the screenplay for Suddenly, Last Summer single-handedly, although Williams took half the credit. Vidal toned down the original play's allusions to pedophilia, cannibalism, and incest, but the film nonetheless provoked heated controversy. As for the cast, an unhappy Hepburn reportedly was threatened by the attention lavished on Taylor by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, whom Hepburn had hired to produce The Philadelphia Story two decades earlier. Mankiewicz, for his part, allegedly hated Clift, whose drinking and partial paralysis from an auto accident prevented him from working more than half a day at a time. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
From its gothic settings to its potent female stars and its lurid subject manner, Suddenly, Last Summer presents a mixture of operatic Southern passions and high-camp excess unequaled in American cinema. The sight of Katherine Hepburn coyly descending from on high in an ornate elevator to preside grandly over her prehistoric garden is itself enough to scare away viewers looking for anything approaching quotidian naturalism. Audiences who can stomach Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal at their most overheated, however, will be rewarded by a film rich in nuance, beautiful language, and vivid production details. Costume and set designer Oliver Messel takes the script's over-the-top vision and runs with it; unfortunately, the film's two primary settings -- a Grand Guigol mansion and an insane asylum presided over by vicious nuns -- lose their impact after so many scenes of arch dialogue. Luckily, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz works in a few set pieces involving rooms full of drooling lunatics and a memorable finale that superimposes impressionistic flashbacks across Elizabeth Taylor's haunted face. Taylor would bring Mankiewicz down with her during the Cleopatra debacle a few years later, but here the actress' overripe sensuality and neurotic shrillness are pitch-perfect; her gurgling screams at the climax of the film provoke the sort of chills of which few performers are capable. Hepburn's duplicitous matriarch isn't as nuanced as the morphine-addicted mother she would play in her next film, 1962's epic A Long Day's Journey Into Night, but it's certainly a lot more fun, full of biting humor and scathing psychological insight. As for Montgomery Clift, his booze-soaked solemnity imbues young Dr. Cukrowicz with an almost ancient gravity. Full of studio veterans exercising their craft on a larger-than-life script whose concessions to morality do little to dull its savage power, Suddenly, Last Summer comes off like the overgrown cousin of better-groomed, more celebrated Williams fare like The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Gary Raymond - George Holly; Mavis Villiers - Miss Foxhill; Patricia Marmont - Nurse Benson; Joan Young - Sister Felicity; Maria Britneva - Lucy; Sheila Robbins - Dr. Hockstader's Secretary; David Cameron - Young Blonde Intern; Roberta Woolley - Patient
Credit
William Kellner - Art Director, Joan Ellacott - Costume Designer, Jean Louis - Costume Designer, Oliver Messel - Costume Designer, Norman Hartnell - Costume Designer, Elaine Schreyeck - Continuity, Bluey Hill - First Assistant Director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz - Director, William W. Hornbeck - Editor, Thomas G. Stanford - Editor, Joan White - Hair Styles, Malcolm Arnold - Composer (Music Score), Buxton Orr - Composer (Music Score), Buxton Orr - Musical Direction/Supervision, Dave Aylott - Makeup, Gerry Fisher - Camera Operator, Oliver Messel - Production Designer, Jack Hildyard - Cinematographer, Sam Spiegel - Producer, Scott Slimon - Set Designer, Tom Howard - Special Effects, John Cox - Sound/Sound Designer, A.G. Ambler - Sound/Sound Designer, Peter Thornton - Sound Editor, Gore Vidal - Screenwriter, Tennessee Williams - Screenwriter, Bill Kirby - Production Supervisor, Tennessee Williams - Play Author
The film features Catherine Holly (Taylor), a young woman who seems to go insane after her cousin Sebastian dies on a trip to Europe under mysterious circumstances. Sebastian's mother, Violet Venable (Hepburn), tries to cloud the truth about her son's homosexuality and his death, as she wants him to be remembered as a great artist. She threatens to lobotomize Catherine for her incoherent utterances relating to Sebastian's demise. Finally, under the influence of a truth serum, Catherine tells the gruesome story of Sebastian's death by cannibalism at the hand of local boys whose sexual favors he sought. Both his mother and later Catherine were only devices for him to attract the young men.
Homosexual characterization
As with some of Tennessee Williams' other plays, the plot involves a homosexual man portrayed in a negative light. Williams may have originally used this motif to express his own unresolved shame, while Vidal may have seen it as an opportunity to point out and/or exaggerate and mock the homophobia of 1950s society. In Suddenly, Last Summer, the gay man is cast as a faceless pederast (as opposed to pedophile), who comes to a horrific end as a consequence of his own off-screen actions.
Background and production
The original play on which the film is based is a one-act play, part of the double-bill called Garden District, paired with Something Unspoken, performed Off-Broadway in 1958.
The production was fraught with difficulties. Hepburn was apparently resentful of the attention Taylor was receiving. In addition, Mankiewicz and Spiegel reportedly disliked Clift. Reasons given include that he was gay (he in fact had many affairs with both men and women) and that he was unable to film for more than a few hours a day.
As a result of the May 1956 car crash near the home of Taylor and her then-husband Michael Wilding, Clift was relying heavily on drugs and/or alcohol. Hepburn was deeply resentful of the treatment Clift was receiving, and despite the moral support both she and Taylor (who had been instrumental in getting him the role) provided to Clift, Clift's behavior on the set caused much negativity among the crew. At the end of filming, after confirming her part of the filming was completely done, Hepburn reportedly spat in the face of Spiegel, Mankiewicz or both.[1]
Problems also beset the production of the film's musical score. Malcolm Arnold was originally contracted to provide it, but apparently found some of the story's aspects disturbing and withdrew from the project after writing only the main themes. The score was completed by Buxton Orr.
The film was shot entirely in England, at Shepperton Studios and in London, between May and August 1959, and released in the U.S. on December 22 of that year. Despite opening up the play to include some exteriors and additional scenes, the film cannot hide its stage origins and was felt by some critics to be dialogue-bound.[2]
