Review of Suddenly, Last Summer (2013) by Glen O — 30 Jul 2008

Suddenly, Last Summer.

Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.

Written by Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal.

Based on the play by Tennessee Williams.

Starring Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Mercedes McCambridge, Albert Dekker, Gary Raymond, Mavis Villiers.

Based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams, this film explores denial, mental illness and the nature of trust. Featuring top-notch performances by Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor in the principle roles it employs a strict play like structure using extensive dialog to relate a tale of longing, agony and purity.

As the film opens Sebastian, the son of Violet Venable (Hepburn) , has recently died leaving his aging mother bereaved and her world empty. The relationship between the two is freakishly close as they spend all their summers together in exotic locales soaking up the son and hardly ever leaving each other?s side. Violet claims her son is a virgin and that he only has eyes for her; she is everything he could possibly need as possible mates fail to live up to his exacting specifications. Violet still pines for her dead son much like a lover would and she tends to his garden of flesh eating plants with strict devotion stirred up by terrible memories when they were together. Violet?s niece Catherine (Taylor), who was with Sebastian when he died, is in an insane asylum seemingly having gone mad after witnessing what happened to Sebastian. The film keeps the actual events of his death secret to the end and the result is a building up of tension that is stripped bare by Catherine in a primal, gutteral release born aloft by pure terror.

Dr. Cukrowicz (Clift) is a prized neurosurgeon who has a meeting with Violet who is exceedingly wealthy and has offered to erect a building for the clinic dedicated to her lost son. However, she also wants Dr. Cukrowicz to perform a lobotomy on Catherine to stop her incessant ?jabbering? and outbreaks of violence. The nature of Violet?s attitude toward Catherine becomes increasingly clear as the film progresses and it is slowly proven that Catherine is not insane and merely trapped in a system that cares not for making legitimate claims against a patient?s sanity. Dr. Cukrowicz drags his heels because he has fallen in love with Catherine and goes to great lengths to protect her against the tyranny of her Aunt. Violet becomes disgruntled and threatens to build the addition in another city. A tug of war ensues that swivels on the lobotomy surgery.

Every summer, except the proceeding one, Violet and Sebastian would scurry off someplace to be seen together. This last summer, however, Violet was left behind and Catherine took her place. Sebastian is demonstrated to be a homosexual pedophile who uses Violet, and later Catherine to lure young boys so that he might have his way with them. It?s subtly handled with nary a mention of overt homosexuality. Instead the film alludes to it through the dialog of Catherine who verbally attacks Violet in the hospital causing the older woman to faint. These are not words she wants to hear because they reveal a side of her son she has long determined to suppress; she would rather possess more prosaic memories of Sebastian because it is much easier to believe in his perpetual innocence in such matters.

The relationship between Violet and Sebastian is tinged with oedipal confusions and creepy smothering aspects that render Sebastian in a state of perpetual adolescence. He is unable to reach maturity because he must first please his mother above all else and his repressed sexuality is brought forth in the pursuit of young boys who satisfy his intense longings in ways his mother never could. Violet behaves as if her only son was a saint without flaw or any deterministic aspects; Catherine portrays him as unwilling to put his neck out for any purpose whatsoever. She says he simply would not attempt to stop anything from happening no matter how uncomfortable it made him feel. The essentially unseen Sebastian becomes a haunted figure who achieves mythical status through his absence from the film. He becomes a terrible icon of lost, beautiful youth who dies young thereby establishing his status as something to be forever adored.

Catherine has first been locked up in a Catholic hospital but is quickly moved to the clinic where Dr. Cukrowicz works. She receives privileges not allowed for the other patients/inmates and is kept out of the general population. She is also allowed to smoke and wear her own clothing. When Catherine finally gets a chance to smoke it?s a singularly desperate moment that results in a brief instance of true bliss which flashes across her face. Smoking becomes her lifeline to normality and very rarely does the act obtain this level of poignancy. Once, Catherine tries to escape and inadvertently steps into the men?s dining area where all the faces of the scruffy, crazed patients are glued on her. Some try to reach her through the bars and these moments are truly terrifying as she tries to break away. Finally she escapes through another door and crashes into the waiting arms of Dr. Cukrowicz. On another occasion, deliberately this time, she ends up in the woman?s social area and as before immediately draws attention to herself in her designer dress and new hairdo. These women begin laughing hysterically at her as she climbs over the edge seemingly to kill herself. She is rescued just before she can jump and is dragged away by a male nurse.

The tone of this film is exceedingly melancholy and there is no room to escape as the camera remains static, betraying the film?s origins as a play. Still, the claustrophobic atmosphere attained by the film is accentuated by the use of closeups and tight shots that reveal much about the emotional lives of the characters. Indeed, this is a film of supreme subtlety that requires several viewings in order to grasp all the effort being put forth by the actors to convey the troubling aspects of their characters. The urgency of each scene builds up to a fever pitch that results in a seismic spasm of raging regret and deep sadness. The end is catastrophic and truly horrible in all of its aspects and the film expresses Catherine?s longing for intimate contact which Dr. Cukrowicz provides with both his caring attitude toward her and his love. Catherine is an example of a perfectly healthy young woman whose attitude is such that she inevitably comes up against forces that want to destroy her. This film offers a glimpse into the early days of pre frontal lobotomy and argues that they should not be administered willy-nilly. Of course the film is set in 1937 and released in 1959 so that its warnings were not heeded and many patients over the ensuing years were subject to the surgery, more than a few of them treated unnecessarily.

The sexual nature of Violet and Sebastian?s relationship is one of repression and projection. Violet does not strike the viewer as a woman who has ever been in touch with a healthy sexuality. As Hepburn portrays her she is rigid, cut off from life, and living out a nightmarish existence utterly bereft of legitimate human contact. She has an elevator chair that she sits in and descends like some Greek God from the heavens; she even portrays herself as such and the sight at first is rather comical but later it becomes tragic. Sebastian is said to be chaste, having only eyes for his mother; at least according to her memories which are all she has to live on now that her only son is dead. Sebastian and Violet view some sea turtles laying their eggs and decide to return for the birth of the babies. When they arrive the vicious predatory birds circle overhead. The little turtles rush to make it to the ocean but nearly all are devoured before they make it. It is this event that causes Sebastian to claim that he?s seen the face of god; God is a terrible thing that eats his prey (mankind) with no conscience. There is the sense of cruel, unrelenting nature throughout this film; humans are perceived to be but petty things who are not considered special in the over all scheme of the cycle of life and death.

Order is a necessary component of this film. Sebastian has developed an antipathy to most humans who are not his mother. He?s devised a system within which he is able to determine which persons are worth keeping around and which ones he will cast from his sight. Violet lives an entirely organized life as she cannot bear to have a single thing out of place. Her world is totally proscribed until Sebastian is taken from her and a huge gap is left where her heart used to be. As the film progresses it becomes apparent that everything Violet had to live for was taken from her when Sebastian was struck down. She?s become bitter and cold and this is best realized in her posture.

The performances in this film are certainly vital and necessary. Elizabeth Taylor plays a wide range of emotional states ranging from near catatonia to outright hysteria. Yet she controls her outbursts with consummate skill so that they never seem over the top. She gives a subtle yet erotically charged performance playing a misunderstood girl who is initially unable to recall what happened on the day that Sebastian died. Taylor conveys an internal struggle where trauma has frustrated her character, a situation that is exacerbated by the fact that she is forced to reside in a state hospital with all the loonies. There is something quite poetic in the way Taylor moves in this film; it?s worth watching many times just to dwell on her movements. Montgomery Clift?s character is decisive and possesses a tremendous amount of integrity in this film. Clift is steady and grounded throughout and resonates as a character of solidity and capability. Clift establishes Dr. Cukrowicz?s gentle yet forceful nature straight away. We sense that this is a man who knows what he is doing and is essentially uncompromising when it comes to his work. This is all done by Clift subtly and without fanfare; it?s just a strong, masculine performance that proves to be a fine counterbalance to the two female characters.

Katherine Hepburn is totemic in this film and gives a powerful turn as a lost and confused woman who hardly knows what to do with herself. Hepburn gives Violet an striking intensity that is established immediately. Violet is clearly not a dominating personality and is only used to getting her own way because she has money. Still, Hepburn gives Violet a certain seductiveness that comes through in the way she speaks and holds her hands. Mercedes McCambridge has a peculiarly shrill way of speaking in this film as if she can hardly wait to get all the words out. She gives her character a dynamism that is related whenever she bursts into a room, chattering away. In may regards, McCambridge is a force of nature in this film, livening up every scene she?s in.

Overall, this is a devastating portrait of the cruelties inherent in the possession of love. In this film, there is the loved and the lover and the balance is not equal. Violet loves Sebastian more than he loves her because all her love is focused entirely on him and his love is diffused. She still clings to it because it is the only thing that she has left of that love and she refuses to let it go lest it die. Sebastian possesses a strong pull on everyone he meets and Violet is merely one of many who have been seduced by Sebastian due to his magnetic personality. People simply can not get enough of him and this creates situations where he projects his love toward someone who is emphatically not his mother. Sebastian is cloaked in his mother?s love and perhaps in the end it becomes stifling and he is forced to escape from her, to leave her to herself in the hopes that she?ll find another outlet for her intense, smothering love. He is but a young man in search of adventure which from time to time includes sexual conquests. His mother is in full denial of this aspect of his personality and cannot bear to face the clear fact that he takes his pleasure wherever he finds it and that certainly doesn?t include her in any way.