Suddenly, Last Summer
Tennessee Williams’ one-act play Suddenly, Last Summer is given grand cinematic treatment by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in the 1959 film adaption. The picture is stunning from beginning to end, filled with staggering performances and terrific cinematography from Jack Hildyard. The Buxton Orr score, complete with the foundation laid by Malcolm Arnold, also helps increase the movie’s tension and overall mood.
The screenplay was penned by Williams and Gore Vidal, although there appears to be some dispute about how much work both parties did and whose work was more represented in the finished product. The production was a difficult one, with a number of personality clashes reportedly occurring behind the camera. Fortunately this does not play out on screen and the resulting performances are tremendous.
Suddenly, Last Summer stars Montgomery Clift as Dr. John Cukrowicz. He is a neurosurgeon sick and tired of working in the roughshod facilities he’s housed in. The doctor is soon called to meet with the wealthy and bizarre Mrs. Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn) about her “troubled niece.” The plan is for this niece to have a lobotomy and for Venable to spring for some cash to make improvements on the doctor’s facilities. Of course, the doctor’s boss Dr. Hockstader (Albert Dekker) more than agrees.
This leads to Cukrowicz’s meeting with the niece, Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor). She tells a different version and explains that Venable is angry at her over the death of Venable’s son, the mysterious Sebastian. Through a series of excruciating monologues and sequences, the truth eventually boils the surface as Cukrowicz discovers the terrible reality behind Sebastian’s demise and Venable’s search for answers.
Taylor, Hepburn and Clift are all tremendous here. The way the performers deliver the monologues is seamless, with Taylor especially impressing during the movie’s closing sequence. Her final scenes as Catherine are among the best I’ve seen in a very, very long time. She delivers an emotional, terrifying performance as a woman desperate to block something out of her memory. And the secrets she hides are more than controversial, even by today’s standards.
Homosexuality is a vital theme of the picture, but it is laid out as an “evil” here. Perhaps this was because of puritanical Hollywood, but I think there’s more to it than that. Williams, some believe, may have dealt with the shame of his homosexuality or he may have been, presumably with the help of Vidal, exploring some of the broader themes are to how homosexuality is portrayed. In considering it an “evil” act or something “terrible,” it adds weight to the picture’s overall impact.
But there’s more to it, I believe. Couple Williams’ exploration of homosexuality with the cannibalism and the sparagmos of Sebastian’s demise and Suddenly, Last Summer takes several morbid, terrifying turns. Williams is full in the knowledge of the scope of the horror that befalls Sebastian and he wants us to understand it. In using the character of Catherine to tell us, he spares us nothing. That Mankiewicz and the rest tackled such a bold theme deserved to be applauded, too.
Unflinching and bold, Suddenly, Last Summer takes its place among the finest motion pictures I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. It is a heart-pounding piece of work, with great performances and a terrific script that plays with our reactions and the “terrors” of the time in ways that few films have. The Mankiewicz-directed film is surprising and shocking, even by today’s standards, and should be required viewing by those with an interest in how difficult stories ought to be told using the medium of film.
Trailer:
