‘Most people’s lives, what are they but trails of debris…’
Now, this is a film shot through with Hollywood royalty. Joseph ‘Mank‘ Mankiewicz in the director’s chair. Gore Vidal adapting a Tennessee Williams play. Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift in front of the camera. The result, inevitably, is a film that showcases the absolute best of Hays Code era Hollywood…
Following the death of an elusive man named Sebastian, his cousin Catherine (Taylor) is committed to a mental health facility and slated for a lobotomy at the behest of Sebastian’s conceited mother Violet (Hepburn). Dr. Cukrowicz (Clift) attempts to make sense of Sebastian’s dark secrets.
Other Williams adaptations sometimes end up feeling too stagey, too conspicuously based on a play, Suddenly, Last Summer is all cinema. A film cinematic in both its visual scope and its editing, Mankiewicz captures the same energy and performance levels that he showcased so successfully with All About Eve.
Elizabeth Taylor, an actress I’ve only come to fairly recently, is utterly astonishing here. Vulnerable, troubled and dangerous. Elsewhere, Hepburn’s Aunt Violet is a vile cinematic creation in the classic tradition and the iconic actress throws herself into the role with gusto. Montgomery Clift, an actor I mostly know as the guy from the Clash song, acts as the anchor for the two incendiary performances juxtaposed alongside him. The three of them together, along with the wonderful script and Mankiewicz’s steady hand behind the camera, combine to create a compelling and captivating film that deserves to be remembered far more fondly than it is.
The Golden Age of Hollywood was coming to an end by the time Suddenly, Last Summer was released in 1959, indeed, Mankiewicz and Taylor would arguably hammer the final nail into that particular coffin just a year after the release of this film with the legendarily catastrophic release of Cleopatra, but there is no doubting the power of Taylor’s performance here and Mank’s stellar direction. A true classic.