[Last Film I Saw] Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) [7/10]

Title: Suddenly, Last Summer
Year: 1959
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Writers:
Gore Vidal
Tennessee Williams
Music:
Malcolm Arnold
Buxton Orr
Cinematography: Jack Hildyard
Cast:
Elizabeth Taylor
Katharine Hepburn
Montgomery Clift
Albert Dekker
Mercedes McCambridge
Gary Raymond
Mavis Villiers
Eddie Fisher
Rating: 7/10

A Tennessee Williams’ play’s film adaption, with Gore Vidal as the screenplay writer, stars three Hollywood luminaries, Hepburn, Taylor and Clift, and considering its glaringly contentious but majorly underplayed theme of taboos in the carnal knowledge (owing to the rigid censorship at that time), it is a technically thespians’ wheelhouse with a principally in-door production scale (nabbed two Oscar nominations for Hepburn and Taylor), last but not the least, it is directed by Joseph. L. Mankiewicz, the consummate actor’s director (ALL ABOUT EVE 1950, 9/10; CLEOPATRA 1963, 6/10; SLEUTH 1972, 7/10), so if you are oblivious of the play or the story, wait and see to be shocked and amazed spontaneously.

A wealthy widow Ms. Violet Venable (Hepburn), loses her mollycoddling son Sebastian one year earlier during his vocation in Spain with her niece Catherine Holly (Taylor), who after witnessing Sebastian’s death, goes mad and acts erratically during her confinement in the convent, so Violet finds Doctor Cukrowicz (Clift), a first-rate dab hand of psychosurgery,with a munificent proposition to finance the state asylum where he works, under one conditional that he should lobotomise Catherine. This is a moral challenge for Cukrowicz firstly, but when he meets Catherine in person and is intrigued by her side of story, his decision tips the scale in her favour. Finally under the influence of hypnotherapy, Catherine is induced to divulge what had happened last summer, the superimposition of her narrative and footages build up to the shocking truth of Sebastian’s demise.

The story provides a substantial platform for Hepburn and Taylor to duke it out, a ruthless matriarch will go to great lengths to cover up his dead son’s nature vs. an innocent lamb with a perturbed soul suffering from beholding a Mondo Cane brutality. Both are at the top of their games, Taylor is shockingly vulnerable in her plain attire and make-up free candidness, all the more voluptuously alluring, her final recount of what she saw “suddenly, last summer” is one of the most emotionally-charging showpiece ever, it is the spectacle you only need to watch once. Hepburn, is not endowed with as much screen time as Taylor, however, exudes her majestic viciousness through the tour-de-force eloquence and cadences of her utterance, from her first scene descending as an imposing empress from a lift, viewers will be ceaselessly enthralled by her domineering splendour, and in the end, one can even partially side with her as a mother entrapped by the over-bonding relationship with her only son, which is ghastly unhealthy, but a mother’s love is unreserved, remorse can invoke the cruelest retaliation and her final scenes indicate she is another living victim as well. Clift, is the bridge between the two strong female roles, as we would know, it was the twilight years of his career, a physical jadedness is pervading with his presence, he is a listener, a reluctant mediator, a conscientious doctor, yet never dare to steal the thunder from his two extraordinary co-stars. Mercedes McCambridge and Gary Raymond are Catherine’s avaricious mother and brother respectively, ludicrously dampens the madhouse intensity with their simpleton’s wickedness.

The suspenseful score from Malcolm Arnold sets the primary tone in the very beginning, a recurring skeleton in the luxuriant garden with the Venus’ flytrap is a not-too-subtle clue of the theme, “quiet desperation is the word for most lives”, words with wisdom are bountiful, the indelible sea turtle fable at the Encantadas echoes Sebastian’s singular destiny, the most mystifying character we have learnt from a post-mortem viewpoint, a self-reflective plea from Williams maybe, and indeed should be put on the remake list, Todd Haynes will be a right choice for the director chair, someone who is competent and independent enough to explicate on the taboos and enliven the mise-en-scene, then pass the roles to Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams, and if there is any justice in the Oscar game, their time would finally arrive!

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Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench