Suddenly, Last Summer (Standard Edition)

What is remarkable about this dialogue driven film is that the performances are gripping enough to make one concentrate on quite complex thought processes. This required excellent playing from all the performers who enact the dialogue in a claustrophobic atmosphere. The rich widow, Violet, had a son to whom she was obsessively attached, perhaps incestuously so. The son, Sebastian, had died allegedly of a heart attack whilst on holiday in a coastal village. His wife, the beautiful Catherine, , has not been able to function properly since her return because what she had in her head was difficult to relate. She was in a mental institution frustrated because she is kept almost like a prisoner.Into Catherine and Violet's lives comes a neuro-surgeon,Dr.Kubrovich. His father runs the local asylum with very primitive facilities for surgery, which included a lobotomy. Violet has promised to give money to provide extra facilities for the asylum if Kubrovich were to lobotomise Catherine.Violet just wanted to relieve her niece's pain but it is obvious that she has another agenda- She doesn't stop talking about the wonderful Sebastian, about his poems, his view of life and his position in the netherworld they both inhabited. She does not want the memories in Catherine's head to come out. What was she so afraid of?Kubrovich agrees to meet Catherine at another asylum to see what is causing her mental anguish. Catherine is in intensive care because of her violence towards others but the doctor realizes that the institution itself may be responsible for that. The two talk about what had happened suddenly last summer, but all she did was to confirm the death by heart attack. The doctor knows that there is more to be revealed and it is the progress towards the shocking revelations which occupy the last third of the film when the audience is taken on a ride to the lower depths of human existence.Violet has the means and clout to prevent the real truth being revealed but the antithesis to this is calm,measured but equally ruthless mission of the doctor is to find the origins of Catherine's trauma. With Violet it is the lobotomy or no hospital funding. Another element is the fact that Violet's sister and her son have a share of Sebastian 's estate which,having sponged on Violet for years,they don't really deserve. The doctor has all this to think about too but he is not prepared to compromise his ethics and operate for no reason. He gives Catherine a shot and then she can relax and think back to the origins of her trauma. When she does so,she has her life back, we hope.The atmosphere of the film is a major factor in its success. Violet takes the doctor into her garden jungle where Nature can take its course; the maid feeds the Venus Fly-Trap,using it as a metaphor for Nature being cruel.Katherine Hepburn's delivery of her lines is marvellous - a contralto edge to her voice which we hear all the time in praise of her perfect son. Her first entrance coming down in a lift presented her rouged lips and arrogance which summed up her regal demeanour with her pride bursting out of her along with her contempt for everyone. Montgomery Clift 's delivery of lines is the complete opposite. Elizabeth Taylor managed a great performance too; she was beautiful but she did convince that behind the beauty was a strong mind,the equal of Violet'sin fact. A great film and challenging.

Indicator seldom disappoint and they have done a first rate job with this blu ray of Suddenly, Last Summer. The restoration is first rate. They seem to have searched far and wide for the informative and entertaining extras. Highly recommended.

In 1959, the year of the release of The 400 Blows and the shooting of Breathless, a film like Suddenly Last Summer must have seemed quite far from the cutting edge, with its theatrical presentation and artificial, closed-in feel. The Hays Code meant that reference to its central theme, the homosexuality of Sebastian, could never even be mentioned directly. Yet this very constraint ends up by adding to its power, as so often where limitations are imposed in art. It resonates even more than it would otherwise, as the characters suffer from the same taboos inhibiting the film itself. Elizabeth Taylor (Catherine) witnessed her cousin Sebastian's death the summer before, and has since then been mentally unstable; Sebastian's mother wants her to undergo a lobotomy to silence her, as his death was the direct result of his abusing boys, or at least exploiting them, while on holiday with Catherine, who was used to lure them into his orbit. He was a shy poet, but not that shy, it seems ...To add a further note of malice, the mother, played by Katharine Hepburn, wants to pay for a new wing of a hospital to be built as a legacy to her son's memory, so the hospital finds itself under pressure to perform the operation. The doctor in charge of the case is brilliantly portrayed by Montgomery Clift in another of those roles, a bit like his Father Logan in I Confess, where he has to juggle what he can and can't say, and shows immense discretion as well as a protective feeling towards someone in trouble. These three actors all give superb performances and the script, by Gore Vidal from a play by Tennessee Williams, is riveting. At times it does seem a bit static, and the lurid nature of the story might be better suited to the kind of treatment Powell and Pressburger give to Black Narcissus, or at least an expressionistic use of colour film. But in the last twenty-five minutes Mankiewicz's style comes into its own, with a narration by Catherine, whose face is seen at the side of the screen - dominated by a pair of glossed lips - against numerous superimpositions, creating a dizzying intensity and texture. It really does reach a most shattering climax, and fully transcends the bleakness of the vision of life it seems to support as a general principle.