SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)

 

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)

 

This is a Classic Film of undeniable power and will never be forgotten, but it’s also indefensible trash. A non-Genre Horror film it wallows in perversions in a manner that few operating in more conventionally Exploitation cinema would ever dare. It was also the work of undeniable American Masters.

 

First and foremost is Tennessee Williams; there’s little controversy in calling Tennessee Williams among the greatest USA Playwrights of the 20thc. He was well-traveled across the World and lived in a wide-scattering of places across the USA, but all his work, no matter where set, and even his stage name (he was born Thomas Lanier Williams III), bore the stamp of his Southern USA Roots.

 

His Characters were diverse, but his Biographers always saw in them mutated versions of three of his most intimate family members, himself, his domineering mother, and his fragile sister. There was also notable lack of a father figures in most his Family Dramas even though his own, often-absent, father was still alive even when the play, basis of this film, was written. Williams’ life was Tortured by Family Tragedy, Shifting Fortunes, profound Guilt over his own Transgressive Sexuality and difficult Romantic Relations, and most of this while he was suffering under the yoke of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. His plays were often, on the surface, naturalistic, but full of Fantasy-influenced Symbolism and unrestrained Luridness.

 

He spoke bluntly about Homosexuality before it was really allowed, as well as a large catalogue of other Taboo subjects, but his main Theme was Decay. Mental and Spiritual Decay were first and foremost. Spiritual Decay was reflected in a decaying, or fear-of-decaying, of a family’s Economic and/or Physical Environment, usually the loss of Dignity Southerners faced in an advancing World. And he saw the Decay of the South as a reflection of the Decay of the American Dream. He seemed to have little interest in the Confederate “Lost Cause Myth” and when it did pop up, it was an oblique, self-inflicted, wound by Characters who couldn’t see the cage they’ve trapped themselves within.

 

He was entranced by the Southern Gothic tradition, but it’s hard to call him a Horror writer, though generations of Horror-Genre Authors since have taken their cues from Williams and his fellow non-Genre Southerners like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

 

The one-act-play, “Suddenly, Last Summer” (1957) is the most Lurid of William’s works that I am familiar with. The film version expanded upon it with new Characters and sub-plots through co-Scripter Gore Vidal, another Author of great renown known for his early boldness regarding the issue of Homosexuality. Vidal is likely the primary Author of the film version; Williams eventually tried to distance himself from the film, and most biographers agree that by that point in time, Williams was losing control of himself.

 

Williams had been mostly out-of-the-closet about his own Homosexuality since the 1930s. His success came after that, with the play, “The Glass Menagerie” (1944), but even with success he remained unhappy in his Relationships. His downfall is often linked to the Mental Illness of his beloved sister, diagnosed with Schizophrenia and then, in 1943, while “The Glass Menagerie” was being Written, and under the insistence of their mother, the sister was subjected to a Lobotomy. The procedure only accomplished in his sister being Institutionalized for the rest of her life. Though Williams was from an Alcoholic family, most Biographers consider his sister’s fate the main trigger of his own Chemical Addictions, and within a decade his work was in obvious decline. This decline of Artistry, though, did not completely deny his Audience of entertainment. This lesser work of his moves away from the traditions of the Southern Gothic into the full-blown Grand Guignol.

 

Lobotomies were a Monstrous Medical Fad in the 1930s, when the play was set, but by the time the play was written the procedure was finally falling into ill-repute.  In 1948 Norbert Wiener wrote, "Prefrontal lobotomy... has recently been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier."

 

The film opens with a Skilled and Idealistic Doctor from Chicago, John Cukrowicz (Mongomery Cliff, and “Cukrowicz” means sugar in Polish), growing increasingly disgusted with the crumbling and underfunded State Psychiatric Hospital in New Orleans that has recently employed him. Important plot-point is that Dr. John is an expert in Lobotomies.

 

Dr. John is no Villain here, and when the play was written, Lobotomies were not wholly condemned yet, so his Nobility was not in his rejection of it, but in his restraint in use. The first of the play and film’s many conflicts is Dr. John being pressured to preform one on an Inappropriate Patient, diagnosed with “Dementia Precox," which Dr. John views as a meaningless phrase. This not only echoes Wiener’s concerns, but in the plot carries the stink of Conspiracy.

 

The Patient in question is Catherine "Cathy" Holly (Elizabeth Tayor) who has been Incarcerated in an Asylum (not Dr. John’s own State-run Snake Pit, but a much nicer one run by mean Nuns) ever since the Trauma of the Death of her cousin Sebastian (barely in the film, played by an uncredited Julián Ugarte in flashback who, though faceless, uncoincidentally looks a bit like Actor Clift). In Dr. John’s care, she’s transferred to the State Hospital, but receives special care, separate from the other Patients. There’s abundant evidence of how badly the place is run in general because Cathy roams the halls improbably freely and sees the Inhuman Conditions that all but she suffer.

 

The film takes its own sweet time introducing Cathy, first we meet her wonderfully Weird and Sinister aunt Violet "Vi" Venable (Katherine Hepburn), mother of Sebastian and the Matriarch of the richest local family.

 

Though the film expands upon the play, it keeps some structural elements, like linking everything together with four long dialogues, all of which slip into near monologues by the Lead females. The first of these is set in dead Sebastian's garden and is between Dr. John and Vi. It’s a magnificently large and detailed set (Art Director Oliver Messel received an Oscar Nomination). Its elaborateness is a bit extraordinary given that it is important for only one scene near the beginning and we only return to it only in the end when it is far-less utilized. But this garden is an extension of dead Sebastian and Vi, grandly, metaphorically, poisonous. Those two garden scenes are the Heart of the Film, and most of the in-between stuff is mediocre, 1950s-style, Melodrama.

 

As Vi guides Dr. John through the garden, she goes back-and-forth between her perverse Philosophizing and her disingenuous pleas that her niece be saved. Sebastian allegedly died of natural causes, an obvious lie, and the Lobotomy is clearly more about avoiding Family Embarrassment than True Care. Pulling directly from the play, Vi calls Sebastian’s place a "jungle-garden" full of "violent" colors (it’s actually a B&W film, beautifully shot by Jack Hildyard) and noises are of "beasts, serpents, and birds ... of savage nature."

 

Vi pampers Venus Fly traps (the ones in the film looked more like North American Pitcher Plants), speaks of flesh-eating birds devouring baby turtles, of Dinosaurs losing their Mastery of the Earth because they were Vegetarians. “The ones who eat flesh, the killers, inherited the earth. But then, they always do, don’t they?”

 

Dr. John interjects into this, “Nature is not created in the image of man’s compassion.”

 

Vi also convinces us she had an Incestuous relationship with Sebastian that led directly to her own husband’s suicide. Vi deeply resents Cathy because on Sebastian’s last summer vacation in Spain he chose Cathy, not Vi, to travel with him, which suggested another Incestuous relationship. When the truth is eventually revealed it is, if possible, even uglier.

 

Both Hepburn and Taylor were Hollywood Royality, and both were Honored for their performances here, a rare case where two Actresses were nominated for the same Award in the same film (they both lost to Simone Signoret for “Room at the Top”). Of the two, Hepburn offers the stronger performance, though only marginally.

 

Our first picture of Vi is her Queen-like decent on a customized elevator, but that elevator is also a cage, so its symbolism changes in the film’s last scenes, when she’s broken, and locks herself into it as she retreats. This was borrowed soon after in “Lady in a Cage” (1964) a less Sordid tale, but not for lack of trying. “Lady in a …” received the greater Critical condemnation of the two, perhaps because its Screenwriter, Luther Davis, wasn’t so recognized among the USA’s Literally Pantheon.

 

Actress Hepburn’s signature Mid-Atlantic Accent was as professionally practiced as Vincent Price’s Silky Menace and Barry Fitzgerald’s Stage Irish. Though it might seem absurd to cast that voice as an aging Southern Belle, it’s artificiality, here a bit more exaggerated over most her other roles, worked well. Vi is easily the vilest Character that Actress Hepburn ever played, and everything about her, including her Cultured Civility, is fake, so why not the voice? Hepburn is having an absolute ball with all the thinly disguised Lies, Bribes, Threats, Perversities, and her Fetishizing of Nature’s Cruelties.

 

Finally, we are introduced to Cathy. She has a with a veneer of Control, but is really a Hysteric, and the veneer is easily cracked. She’s accepting of her own Insanity, but suffering from Amnesia from her Trauma, and any approach to the events of last summer sets her off. Notably, though Cathy as a couple of loathsome blood relatives (her mother is played by Mercedes McCambridge and brother by Gary Raymond) she lacks a father-figure, just like dead Sebastian.

 

We quickly learn she was a Public Scandal even before Sebastian took her under his wing. She was Raped by a locally prominent and married man at a party (reflecting the Censorship of the day, when Cathy confesses that she was Raped, what she actually said was, “I got lost”), then she was blamed for being indiscrete about it. We eventually we learn Sebastian protected her only for his own manipulative goals.

 

Taylor’s performance was more demanding Hepburn, Hysterics always are. Hysterics are fun but communicate little Humanity, and Characters falling apart are juicy, but no one is falling apart every second of the day, and if they are, they’re boring. Playing Cathy was akin to the challenging part of Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev in Anton Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” (1896), he’s Tortured young man spiraling towards Suicide, but if he were Tortured every second of the play, he’d have nothing of real value to say, and as a result, his death would been nothing to us (I’ve seen both really good, and really bad, versions of Konstantin). Here, Taylor rode the pendulum between false Strength and honest Hysteria quite well, so when she regains near strength in the end, most of us could believe her (note: not everyone, many have mocked the suddenness of her regaining her sense of self).

 

When the film was made, Taylor was at the absolute peak of her beauty, talent, and Stardom. She was also devoted to Williams’ work; her immediately preceding role was in the film version of William’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958) and that was part of her Super-Stardom. Sadly though, the Actress was in personal torment that was much a mess as any of William’s Heroines.

 

Taylor ultimately, was married eight times to seven different men, at this juncture she was on her fourth marriage, still suffering from the Trauma of the untimely death of husband number three (1958). That fourth marriage was a public Scandal, she faced potential career destruction because that relationship that was the product of her getting involved with an already married man (marriage 1959, so only a year after her widowhood and the same year as this film). Then that marriage would end in divorce (1964).

 

She was close with Actor Clift and had insisted on his casting over the objections of Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (a multiple Oscar Nominee and Winner). Clift and Taylor were often Romantically linked, but he was, in fact, a closeted Homosexual, had several female attachments who were knowingly or unknowingly his beards. Moreover, he was deeply guilt-ridden and in Psychotherapy to get some “cure” for being gay. All of this adds ironies to his role in this film.

 

Director Mankiewicz objections were related to Clit’s career being in free-fall at the time because of his Substance Abuse issues. Producer Sam Spiegel (multiple Oscar Winner) did manipulate some of the Insurance issues of this major production to secure Clift’s employ even though he couldn’t pass a simple Doctor’s exam at the time. After that intervention, Clift proved extremely difficult to work with.

 

The film was all-but-entirely set-bound, this steamy tale of New Orleans was filmed at Shepperton Studios, fifteen miles southwest of London, so at least the Cast and Crew were relieved of the actual setting’s oppressive heat -- except they weren’t. England was cursed with a heat wave that summer and things got Hellish in the indoor spaces. During the filming Actor Clift cooled himself with fruit punch from the thermos. Screenwriter Edward Anhalt made the mistake of pouring himself a drink from it.

 

Anhalt: “What the hell is this?”

Clift: “Bourbon, crushed Demerol, and fruit juice.”

 

Clift struggled with lines and embarrassed himself at group dinners. Despite this outrageous behavior, Actress Hepburn apparently had the same compassion for Clift as Taylor. Hepburn was suffering to, she had to leave the bedside of her critically-ill partner Actor Spencer Tracy, so there were then-obvious parallels between her and Taylor’s strife. She also thought Mankiewicz favored Taylor and disrespected her. Hepburn developed a strong animosity towards Mankiewicz over how he bullied Clift. According to Clift’s Biographer Robert Laguardia, on the day that Hepburn completed her scenes, she walked up to Mankiewicz and faced him. “‘Are you quite sure we’re finished?” she asked him, three times over.’” When Mankiewicz assured her that they did not need her for retakes or looping, she spat in his face.

 

And just to make Mankiewicz’s difficulties even worse, he was in physical agony during the whole production, suffering from a skin disease.

 

Though Dr. John is the Hero, whenever the female Leads speak, he takes a back seat. I’ve already stated Hepburn didn’t affect a Southern accent, but Taylor mostly didn’t either. One must conclude they studied each other; they share the syntax and rhythm. That was in the script of course, but carried deeper in the performances, so more a conscious choice than that, and I further I say that must have been meant to represent the Ghost of all-Powerful Sebastian still dominating both.

 

Critic Erich Kuersten, “Through Sebastian, these two ladies have felt the caustic touch of god, the endless ever-amplifying agonies of drug (or sex addiction) withdrawal, the sense of disaster ever-looming, only a lack of funds or availability away. The horrible pain of being ripped apart by wild animals stretched infinitely. Withdrawal is the check for the meal so large and expensive we don't dare finish it. We linger at the bar, the needle, the bathhouse, hoping that blank page will somehow write itself.”

 

The second garden scene is notable for how Character Cathy, so weak through much of the film, completely crushed Character Vi with the terrifying power of the Confession that Vi had spent the whole film conniving to suppress.

 

And the whole of this film’s power is in the two garden scenes. In the middle there’s an argument made more forcibly in the film than the original play, making it one of the era’s “Social Message” tales, here regarding the inadequacy of Public Health in the USA and a complete disregard for Mental Health.

 

As I said, Lobotomies were falling into disrepute, slowly being pushing aside by Sigmund-Freud-influenced Talk-Therapies, and these eventually save Cathy. Playwright Williams was, himself, was undergoing Psychotherapy as he wrote the play.

 

Hypnotic Regression is implied, even though both play and film oddly skip Cathy being Hypnotized, instead she was given a “truth serum” to unleash the blocked memories. True, such approaches were less barbaric than the Psychosurgeries that came before, but they were, in the Real-World, similarly dangerous when clung to as absolute balms. Only a few decades later would provide their own Hell upon the USA. The film, unconsciously, propagandizes in favor of that Hell.

 

As the film clumsily addresses the inadequacies of Mental Health interventions, it exposes its own petty shallow Contemporary Prejudices. Dr. John is the Hero, the Savior, but his Sexual Intents towards Cathy are undisguised. Psychiatry was (is?) often abusively Domineering with a powerful Authority the God-Doctor is molding a vulnerable Patient to his Will. The Real-World Freud had Unethical Financial Arrangements with Patients. His rival Carl Jung took Patient Sabina Spielrein as a Mistress, and he was a married man. The casual acceptance of Hero Psychiatrists crossing these lines was becoming a bit of a Hollywood cliché even back then, best demonstrated in Director Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945).

 

Short decades after this film’s release, Real-World Dr. Lawrence Pazder similarly took Patient Michelle Smith as his Mistress, destroying two marriages, and used the suggestibly of Hypnotic Regression to implant wild, wholly false, but widely believed, stories of Satanic Ritual Abuse into Smith’s head. This became the runaway Best-Seller they co-Authored, “Michelle Remembers” (1980) which was followed a ridiculous publicity tour with the two joined at the hip. In these essays I do write about the Horrors of the Real-World Satanic Panic of the 1980s, and as the essays are about film, their influence is my focus, but I admit that could be a bit misleading: “Mischelle Remembers” was really the match and the fuse of a lot of terrible abuses of Law Enforcement power and Political Extremism that dragged on for a decade.

 

Most Critics suggest dead Sebastian is a stand-in for Playwright Williams himself, and by the end, as Sebastian is revealed as having been wholly irredeemable (tagline of the film "...suddenly last summer Cathy knew she was being used for something evil!") so we can’t help but conclude that this story is not only Sordid, but reflected something deeply Self-Loathing. It is undeniably powerful, but also the most deranged piece of Homophobic claptrap of its not-especially enlightened decade, blunter and more hostile than any of the decade’s other William’s adaptations, which were all less toned-down for cinema, likely because they were less overtly hostile to Homosexuals and other Transgressives in their original form than this one.

        

So, how did Williams’ sleaziest play prove to be among the least censored in film?  Critic Pauline Kael observed, “I assumed the youngest child in the audience would get the point.” In part we can thank the uber-Censorious National League of Decency (NLD), run by the Catholic Church; at the time the NLD was seemingly more powerful than the Motion Picture Association and both, unsurprisingly, Condemned the film as “degenerate. Its main themes included death, madness, and savage behavior.” But the movie was also offered a Special Dispensation because, "Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a [Homosexual] lifestyle, it can be considered moral in theme even though it deals with sexual perversion.” Even as this Special Dispensation was being offered, the Catholic Church was actively campaigning to destroy the career of Actress Taylor because of the circumstances of her fourth marriage.

 

This is a tale of one vile secret revealed after another: Corrupt Abuse of Power, Incest, Rape, Homosexuality, Pedophila, Racism, Cannibalism, and a few other things too. In analyzing this film, the Homosexuality, Racism, and Cannibalism are especially important and deranged.

 

Monster Sebastian is a closeted Gay who first used his mother, then his cousin, to help precure young men for himself on his vacation trips, the only time he could write his all-important poetry. Co-Scripter Vidal was by then, and like Williams, half-out-of-the-closet as Gay, or at least Bisexual, so that this is over-the-top Homophobia was being propagandized by these two made the proceedings wholly bizarre. Vidal would later pen the script for the sadistic Art-Porn film “Caligula” (1979) and, later still, prove shockingly hostile to Rape Victims (in 2009, regarding Director Roman Polanski’s conviction for Child Rape in 1978, Vidal infamously said, "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?").

 

Context is hugely important here. Though Homosexuality was never broadly Criminalized in the USA as it was in England, it was punishable by Law Enforcement in a myriad of ways, and condemned even more harshly outside any act outside of the powers of Official-dom. It was still official classified as a Mental Illness (this would not end until 1973) and at the time influential groups were arguing to increase the criminal penalties while those trying to decriminalize it were largely shut out of the conversation. The Mattachine Society, maybe the first fully public Gay Rights group in the USA, was less than a decade old in 1959.

 

Then there was a Racism, told in the Climatic, powerful, fever-dream, flashbacks. Sebatian meets is fate at the hands of the primitive, dark-skinned, young men he’d used as toys. In a scene of near-unsurpassed intensity they hunt him through the beggar-lined streets and ruins of an un-Civilized world, herding him to a hilltop, and then shredding and consuming his flesh rituality, Paganisticly, in a manner that proper, lighter-skinned, person of more proper-European-stock would never think of.

 

That came out during a ten-minute-long near-monologue by Taylor, who entered the scene so completely she was sobbing uncontrollably even after the cameras stopped. Coworkers moved to comfort and congratulate her but she pushed them away and ran to her dressing room.

 

So, this is a work of real Emotional Force, but also sickly Depraved, far more degenerate than Marget Mitchell’s excuse-making for Slavey, the “Lost Cause Myth,” and Klu Klux Klan, in her legendary novel, “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Williams would distance himself from the film version, once going as far as saying it made him want to “throw up,” but really, the adaptation was pretty faithful to the source. Over time repeatedly challenged on this because it really isn’t all that much different from the play. He responded to these criticisms several times and here’s one example:

 

“Man devours man in a metaphorical sense. He feeds upon his fellow creatures, without the excuse of animals. Animals actually do it for survival, out of hunger ... I use that metaphor [of cannibalism] to express my repulsion with this characteristic of man, the way people use each other without conscience ... people devour each other.”

 

And all of this in a film usually not categorized as Horror and released the year before Director Alfred Hitchcock’s Landmark of Depravity, “Psycho” (1960).

 

The reviews were mostly positive, but didn’t ignore the Taboo-breaking. Critic Robert Hatch said the Director Mankiewicz, “has turned out a polished film, and one that deals boldly with the ugly theme, but he has certainly not wasted any subtlety on the job…. this bizarre homosexual nightmare becomes the one artistically persuasive section in an otherwise coldly fabricated melodrama.” Variety called it “the most bizarre motion picture ever made by a major American company.” The Saturday Review of Literature, "The box office reception of this film will unquestionably have an important bearing on the future of adult films in this country" (keep in mind that an “X” rating hadn’t been invented yet, so “adult” still meant “grown up”).

 

It was not like it was universally praised though. Critic Bosley Crowther wrote an exceptionally scathing review denouncing the Taboo content to which Vidal responded had helped greatly in the movie’s financial success. Legendary Actor, and by then powerful Producer, John Wayne denounced it as “poison polluting Hollywood’s moral bloodstream.”

 

It was eventually remade, ironically in England again, in 1992. Again, with an all-star Cast. I haven’t seen it, but was well received, but then disappeared into obscurity.

 

Trailer:

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) ORIGINAL TRAILER (youtube.com)