Suddenly, Last Summer on DVD (1959)

Hepburn Taylor Clift? - Go on then....

Noise-Unit from London , 28/09/2004

When a film opens with Katharine Hepburn descending a Rocky Horror-type elevator to greet partially-paralysed Montgomery Clift in a garden of carnivorous plants - you know you're in for some classic twisted melodrama. Looking like Edith Head dressed The Bride Of Frankenstein, Hepburn goes full-on Gothic for this one, swatting underlings like flies and seething incestuous monologues (carefully adapted from Tennessee William's play by himself and Gore Vidal) as she campaigns obsessively for Clift to serve up a swift lobotomy on mental patient Liz Taylor to conceal what she knows about the life and death of her Son. This is bleak, daring stuff - swimming with themes that would be tough to approach even today (at least by a major Hollywood studio) - and which doubtless would emerge as far less of an achievement than is preserved here in this poetic, perverse and eerie 50's Classic.

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Taylor Made

Claude from Berwick upon Tweed , 09/02/2005

The narrative of this film, set in a psychiatric ward, is built around the struggle for a woman’s memory. At times Suddenly One Summer can be a bit trying, develops to be compelling and is continually unsettling. Largely this was down to gripping acting, particularly from Elizabeth Taylor, but also Katherine Hepburn, who gives the Bates Motel matriarch a close run for the most disturbing screen mother award.

The overarching themes of the film, memory and the subconscious, are played out through Freudian and surreal imagery and the characters contained within could keep the psychiatrist’s couch warm indefinitely. You don’t have to be mad to be in this film – but it helps!

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Great dialogue

Mandy from Cheshire , 29/06/2004

Fantastic dialogue as with all William's plays, good acting and well worth a look at

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classic Tennessee Williams

Great Expectations from Leeds, West Yorkshire , 25/04/2007

This Tennessee Williams play translates beautifully onto the screen with powerful performances by Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. It's a story of a mother's warped dominion over her son, Sebastian (who has died in horrific circmstances). Taylor plays Sebastian's cousin who was on vacation with Sebastian when he died - as a result of her (Taylor's) distress Sebastian's mother is hell bent on her having a lobotomy, however, the her real motive is only revealed toward the cliimax at the end of the play. This film has 'added value' because Gore Vidal and Williams wrote in extra material for this film version. It was also contentious because Sebastian was clearly homosexual and as a result of pressure from censors, Vidal and Williams had to adjust material to the point that we never really hear Sebastian's point of view in the flashbacks - he is given no 'voice' whatsoever. Tennessee Williams had a very domineering mother and his sister was also subjected to a lobotomy - so clearly this is semi-autobiographical. The leitmotif that pervades the film relates to the intellectual sophistication of man versus the primal nature of man and that God and/or Nature has the power to be both beautiful and horrific.

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classic Tennessee Williams

Great Expectations from Leeds, West Yorkshire , 25/04/2007

This Tennessee Williams play translates beautifully onto the screen with powerful performances by Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. It's a story of a mother's warped dominion over her son, Sebastian (who has died in horrific circmstances). Taylor plays Sebastian's cousin who was on vacation with Sebastian when he died - as a result of her (Taylor's) distress Sebastian's mother is hell bent on her having a lobotomy, however, the her real motive is only revealed toward the cliimax at the end of the play. This film has 'added value' because Gore Vidal and Williams wrote in extra material for this film version. It was also contentious because Sebastian was clearly homosexual and as a result of pressure from censors, Vidal and Williams had to adjust material to the point that we never really hear Sebastian's point of view in the flashbacks - he is given no 'voice' whatsoever. Tennessee Williams had a very domineering mother and his sister was also subjected to a lobotomy - so clearly this is semi-autobiographical. The leitmotif that pervades the film relates to the intellectual sophistication of man versus the primal nature of man and that God and/or Nature has the power to be both beautiful and horrific.

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Great dialogue

Mandy from Cheshire , 29/06/2004

Fantastic dialogue as with all William's plays, good acting and well worth a look at

Read all highest rated reviews