Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 123movies

Watch: Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 123movies, Full Movie Online – A wealthy harridan, Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn), attempts to bribe Dr. John Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift), a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans, Louisiana mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly (Dame Elizabeth Taylor). Violet wants the operation performed in order to prevent Catherine from defiling the memory of her son, the poet Sebastian (Julián Ugarte). Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian’s mysterious death that she witnessed while on vacation together in Spain the previous summer..
Plot: The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable dies while on vacation with his cousin Catherine. What the girl saw was so horrible that she went insane; now Mrs. Venable wants Catherine lobotomized to cover up the truth.
Smart Tags: #lobotomy #dysfunctional_family #asylum #mother_son_relationship #based_on_play #gay_subtext #repressed_memory #homosexual_son #garden #attempted_suicide #amnesia #trauma #homosexual #new_orleans_louisiana #cannibalism #makeshift_instrument #surgeon #poet #spain #chain_link_fence #referring_to_oneself_in_the_third_person

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Ratings:

	7.5/10 Votes: 15,888
	68% | RottenTomatoes
	54/100 | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 225 Popularity: 6.202 | TMDB

Reviews:

Talk is never cheap when sourced from Tennessee Williams.

Millionairess, Violet Venable is obsessed with her now dead son, Sebastian. Sebastian met his untimely end whilst on vacation with his cousin Catharine, an end that has sent Catharine almost to the edge of insanity. Violet, very concerned about Catharine and her hurtful ramblings, enlists brain surgeon Dr. Cukrowicz to see if he will perform a lobotomy on the poor girl, but as Cukrowicz digs deeper, motives and facts come crashing together to reveal something far more worrying.

As one expects from a Tennessee Williams adaptation, this picture is very talky, perhaps borderline annoyingly so? Yet it has to be said that for those willing to invest the time with it, the pay off is well worth the wait. Suddenly Last Summer is an odd mix of campy melodrama and Gothic horror leanings, a mix that personally doesn’t quite hit all the intended spots. It could have been so different, though, for if Gore Vidal and Joseph Mankiewicz had been given free rein back in this day of code restrictions, well the picture would surely have been close to masterpiece status. This adaptation only gives us little snippets on which to feed, we are aware of the homosexuality of the departed Sebastian, and other hints that come our way include incest, sadism and dubious class issues, but ultimately such strong material is never fully formed.

Elizabeth Taylor owns the picture as Catharine, sultry with heaving bosom, she does an excellent line in borderline nut case, all woe is me martyrdom and her final scenes are what pays the viewer off for their patience. Katharine Hepburn plays Violet and manages to chew the scenery and spit it out, it’s an elegant performance but you really want more than we actually get! Montgomery Clift is the good doctor, not one of his better performances because he isn’t asked to expand the character, just say his lines right, look baleful from time to time and play off Taylor’s lead, job done really.

It’s a recommended film to a degree, certainly one that simmers with an almost oppressive feel, but if the film is one to revisit often? Well that’s up for debate and dependent on the viewer’s inclination towards dialogue driven films. 7/10

Howard Hawks defined a good film as “three good scenes and no bad ones.” Suddenly, Last Summer has four very good scenes dominated by one of the two great great actresses who play the leads – or, in one instance, both.

These are long scenes but never boring, and we are at all times bolted to our seats, our eyes glued to the screen; Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor give different, even contrasting performances – the one as a crazy, rich, old lady who feigns sanity, the other as a traumatized yet sane young woman who is “classified as violent” –, but the result is in either case nothing short of magnetic : we can’t stop looking at Taylor, and we dare not look away from Hepburn (after all of her scenes had been shot, Hepburn reportedly spat in the faces of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and producer Sam Spiegel).

We are drawn toward, and gravitate around, the two of them – not unlike the other characters (as few as one and as many as the rest of the main cast in any given scene), who are little more than bystanders, the actors who portray them VIP audience members fortunate enough to watch a pair of masters of the craft from up-close.

Actually, there is one other presence looming large over the proceedings – that of Sebastian Venable, Hepburn’s only son and Taylor’s cousin, whose implied homosexuality Hepburn hopes to cover up by having Taylor lobotomized by Montgomery Clift’s neurosurgeon.

As he died before the events of the film, Sebastian is oft-mentioned but never seen other than in glimpses while Taylor flashbacks to the titular last summer. This is not a bad scene, but a good scene with some bad in it; it’s not a full-on flashback with a voice-over narration as much as it is a monologue with visual aids that are unnecessary – for one thing, they are absent from Tennessee Williams’s stage play, and here they detract from the performance; the actress playing the role, whoever it may be, should be able – and Liz most certainly was – to create the imagery with her own language, both verbal and facial.

Moreover, there are a couple of background details in the flashbacks that don’t make any sense; for example, a skeleton that becomes an old woman in the next shot – something like this is meant to be a part the character’s recollection of past events, but she herself takes no notice of it, and the people listening to her have no possible way of knowing it’s there at all; the question, then, is why, indeed, is it there? Is Mankiewicz trying to tell us something about her subconscious mind? (and if so, what exactly?). Or was he the one subconsciously – and, thank God, unsuccessfully – trying to sabotage the film? I know I wouldn’t put it past a Mankiewicz.

Smoldering summer
Had heard a lot of great things about ‘Suddenly Last Summer’, and it is hard to resist a film based on a Tennessee Williams (in my mind one of the all-time great playwrights, the quintessential American one perhaps, that isn’t Shakespeare) play, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz who directed one of my favourite films ever ‘All About Eve’, was nominated for three Oscars and starring a great actress such as Katharine Hepburn.

‘Suddenly Last Summer’ doesn’t disappoint really. It may not have the same impact as the play or when performed on stage and tones down and infers some content, but it is still a very powerful film on its own. Where one can definitely see why it was considered ahead of its time and daring back then, with subjects that most films at the time wouldn’t think of taking on. As far as film adaptations of Williams’ plays go, ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ is among the best from personal opinion (the definitive one will always be ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’).

It does feel dragged out at times with the film going on a little longer than it needed to. The early stages did need a tightening up and the flashback is a little lengthy, despite having a lot of emotional impact.

Do have to agree with the negative comments regarding Montgomery Clift. Like him as an actor and as has been noted am aware that this was a post-car accident role (which is just awful and how he managed to keep on working is anybody’s guess), but he looks very ill at ease throughout, his substance abuse all too clear and this is suggestive of him having gone back to work too soon.

On the other hand, ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ looks both elegantly beautiful and frighteningly Gothic. The score is not too over-heated while suiting the tone of the film well. Mankiewicz’s direction could not have been more spot on, some of his best. The script is very talk-heavy, especially early on, but Williams is talky. Besides the dialogue truly sizzles. The story does get increasingly compelling, with a climax that shatters the senses in all regards.

Clift aside, the acting is without complaint. The support acting is uniformly good, excellent in the cases of Mercedes McCambridge and Albert Dekker. Hepburn was born for Violet, restrained yet in a sinking-her-teeth-into-it-still way and moving with a touch of chill. Taylor is an absolute scorching powerhouse as Catherine, a performance only bettered by ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, especially at the end.

Altogether, very, very good though could have been excellent. 8/10

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 54 min (114 min)
Budget 3000000
Revenue 9000000
Status Released
Rated Approved
Genre Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Writer Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal
Actors Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift
Country United States, United Kingdom
Awards Nominated for 3 Oscars. 4 wins & 10 nominations total
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Mono (Westrex Recording)
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera N/A
Laboratory N/A
Film Length N/A
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm