Genre: Drama

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Writing Credits: Tennessee Williams (play).  Gore Vidal & Tennessee Williams (screenplay)

In Suddenly, Last Summer, the blazing screenplay by Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal becomes explosive material, set off by the sparks that Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor provoke when they interact on the set.

Between Dr. Cukrowicz (Clift) and Mrs. Violet Venable (Hepburn), the sparkling clash is of an intellectual nature: the sharp mind of the neurosurgeon and the eloquent and aristocratic tongue of the rich lady come head to head like in a sword duel every time they meet. “Isn’t what love is? Using people?” she asks rhetorically, comparing the art of her son Sebastian – a poet – with the surgeon’s trade. “My art is not to use, but to be used”, he fights back.  “We are all trapped by this devouring creation”, states Mrs. Violet theatrically.  “Nature is not created in the image of man’s compassion”, retorts the doctor wisely.  Their confrontations constantly spark off these cutting remarks.

On the other hand, what happens when Miss Catherine Holly (Taylor) and Dr. Cukrowicz are in the same room is of a chemical nature - pure sexual chemistry.  The doctor becomes the personification of what his surname stands for in Polish – that is, sugar. While Miss Cathy is like a helpless animal, just instincts, without the memory of what reduced her to silence and confusion.  “If you’re still alive after dying, then you are obedient”, the girl says.  Obedient like a stray cat that is eager to be tamed.

The whole plot unfolds around the figure of Sebastian, Mrs. Venable’s son, who died in mysterious circumstances the previous summer.  Nobody knows how he died, exactly. Nobody except Catherine.  She was right there with him in Cabeza de Lobo when it all happened.  But she can’t remember.  She just babbles strange, “obscene” stories about Sebastian’s life and death.  And that’s why her aunt Violet put Cathy in a sanatorium, and now wants Dr. Cukrowicz to perform a new, experimental operation on her: lobotomy.

If the story evolves around Sebastian, the kernel question of the screenplay is: what is sanity and what is madness?  According to Dr. Cukrowicz “insanity […] is very unorthodox” and, as such, very difficult to pin down.  And in the movie, there’s a strong denunciation of the American state health system of the time (the film is set in 1930’s), which is way too ready to pronounce somebody crazy just for the sake of getting money from a private foundation and of experimenting on its patients as guinea-pigs.

Again, what to say about the actors?  Clift stares at you so intensely it looks like he’s trying to hypnotize you – as Miss Cathy says.  Hepburn seems at the same time as strong as an oak and as sweet as a nut… And Taylor is like a beautiful helpless kitten, wild, but eager to be tamed by somebody sweet.

Reviewed by Claudia Sandroni, Premier Movie Reviews 2008

Elizabeth Taylor

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Katharine Hepburn

Montgomery Clift

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