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Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn, Albert Dekker, Mercedes McCambridge
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| Review Summary and Plot Commentary about Suddenly, Last Summer |
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Based on Tennessee Williams's play, SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER has been directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1959. Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor were nominated in 1960 for the Oscar in the Best Actress in a Leading Role Category.
New Orleans, 1937. Dr. Cukrowicz, a character played by Montgomery Clift, is the main neuropsychiatrist of the city State Asylum. The asylum desperately needs money while Montgomery Clift practices lobotomies on incurable patients. One day, Katharine -Mrs Venable- Hepburn, a rich widow who has read an article about Montgomery Clift's surgical skill, asks him to lobotomize her niece Elizabeth -Catherine- Taylor who is locked in a local religious hospital. She's ready to give 1 million dollar to the asylum as soon as the operation is completed. She also informs Clift that Catherine has become mad when Sebastian Venable, Hepburn's son and Catherine's cousin, died the precedent summer of an heart attack in Central America. Clift accepts to meet Catherine and soon realizes that the young woman suffers from amnesia and refuses to remember what has happened the last summer during the trip with Sebastian. He also understands that Hepburn hates Catherine because she took her place that summer at Sebastian's side. Until then, she used to spend every summer with her son, traveling around the world and helping him to write his yearly poem. Clift, urged by his hierarchy to perform the operation, tries to cure the girl by a more Freudian method than lobotomy, and, little by little, obtains more informations about the tragic events. He learns that the shy Sebastian always brought an attractive woman with him while traveling because he used them as baits to attract young men.
Maybe the best movie adapted from A Tennessee William's play.
--Daniel Staebler, Resident Scholar
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| Analysis of Suddenly, Last Summer |
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Time/era of movie:
- 1930's-1950's
Family, struggling with
Yes
Struggle with:
- Aunt
Inner struggle or disability
Yes
Struggle with
- (General) search for meaning/identity
Brain/Body not working?
- mental illness
Battle with shrink/bum?
- battle with a psychiatrist
Coping with loss of loved one?
Yes
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- doctor
Age:
- 20's-30's
Hair type
- (man) short/standard straight
Body type
- (man) average
Events of movie makes character more...
- caring
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor?
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Secondary Main Character
Identity:
- Female
Hair color
- brunette (Black)
Hair style
- (woman) medium/shoulderlgn wavey
Body type
- (woman) ample bosom & buttocks
Unclothed?
- very tight clothes
How much in movie?
- 80%
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Female
Age:
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- not employed but independently wealthy
Eccentric:
Yes
- eccentric
- mentally ill
- deluded
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- 60%
Hair type
- (woman) medium/shoulderlgn straight
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- hard edged
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Setting
United States
Yes
The US:
- Deep South
The Americas (not US):
Yes
The Americas:
- Central
Misc setting
- fancy mansion
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- generic/vague references to death/punishment
Movie makes you feel...
- concerned
Sex/nudity in movie?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- kissing
Check here if B&W
Yes
If soundtrack VERY NOTICEABLE...
- Orchestra/classical
Is this movie based on a
- play
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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