Steve Hayes reviews the not-so-subtly gay-themed 1959 film:
Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift take a walk on the wild side in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER. Taken from a Tennessee Williams' one-act play and adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal, but with Williams taking credit for the screenplay, this film was so controversial Cardinal Spellman himself publicly banned it. This, of course, brought the audiences out in droves and made it one of the highest grossing pictures of the year. The plot deals with homosexuality, murder, madness, lobotomies, greed and revenge with casual references to, incest, nymphomania, suicide and various Oedipal complexes. In short, it's classic Williams done to perfection by a star-studded cast at the top of their game. Provocative, disturbing and fascinating, SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER is ultimately unforgettable.
2 comments:
Oh, the days when movies were made from stage plays so that those of us all over america could see them. There was real acting, drama, dialogue, innuendo. I remember well the homoerotic under currents of Suddenly Last Summer and wanted to know more about Sebastian and his escapades.
Yes, they don't make them like that anymore. Pity.
Post a Comment
Comments are welcome, but please note: this is not a public forum but my personal blog, which nobody is forced to read. You don't like what I write, go find a blog you do like; there are millions of others to choose from. Or write your own.
Polite disagreement is one thing, but rudeness will be deleted without hesitation.