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0 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 DON'T WATCH THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nov 17, 2009
This isn't one of those movies that it takes maturity in age to appreciate and understand. No one, no matter what age is ready for such a gruesome and downright disgusting film that depicts cannibalism. I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor, and when I picked up this movie, I envisioned a sweet beach romance due to the lighthearted-sounding and very misleading title: Suddenly, Last Summer. I couldn't have been more wrong. People are only attracted to this movie because they find it is different (obviously) and therefore feel they should embrace it because of its controversiality. I guess that's what sells these days-the more horrific, the better. Doesn't any one care about morals? Why should people pay to see the lowest animal instinct come out in humans? Leave that in the jungles of Africa. Don't you think we have improved enough as a society since then that we can reflect a better side of life?
 A rich meal for the eyes! Jul 17, 2009
I watch this film so much it seems like I have no other dvds and I also am afraid that I've might scratched up by now because the constant viewings.The point is I am insane over anything having to do with Tennesee Williams. I love films about rich southern families dark secrets or any rich families dark secrets,insanty,closeted gay men,.Suddenly Last Summer is like a fatting meal you its bad for you but its sooooooooo good!
great film Jun 09, 2009
as you would expect with a cast like this is a great film good story cathrin hepburn on top form and taylor is great ,a must see ,brian
 Suddenly, it hits you like a ton of bricks... Feb 23, 2009
I've recently become a huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor. It all happened while I was investing my time into Paul Newman's filmography. Once I saw her steal scene after scene in `Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' I knew that I had to know this woman more intimately. So next I watched her 1963 epic `Cleopatra' (review to come, I promise) and I knew that this woman was special. So I jumped at this one, since it was adapted from a Tennessee Williams play (and I had just rewatched `A Streetcar Named Desire', and had adored the aforementioned `Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', so you do the math).
`Suddenly Last Summer' is a very unique, very disturbing look at the lengths we will go to in order to protect the ones we love. Shame and rage calculate into this deeply revolutionary tale of a woman desperate to protect her sons honor following his mysterious death.
The film opens with famed Dr. Cukowicz being summoned to the home of Mrs. Violet Venable; an older distinguished woman who is prepared to ask a very odd request of the young doctor. Violet has recently lost her son Sebastian and the only witness to his death was his cousin Catherine. What she witnessed was so extreme and frightening that she has gone insane. Violet wishes to have this girl lobotomized, supposedly to end her pain but it is apparent that Violet's reasons are much more complicated than that. The Dr. is hesitant, especially after he meets Catherine and realizes that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
The film really boils down to its shocking and tragic finale, which is delivered with violent fervor by Elizabeth Taylor as she recounts the truth behind Sebastian's death. Without this vital piece of information the film may have fallen apart, and what's so nice about this conclusion and the way that it is handled is that it is ambiguous enough to almost remain a mystery. Due to censorship back in the early years of cinema certain subjects were untouchable to-to-speak and so the real reasons behind Sebastian's death are somewhat guarded; but the way that Vidal adapted Williams' play and the way that Mankiewicz directs the flashbacks helps paint the true story for those willing to read between the lines. It's expertly done; thinly veiled and completely effective.
In a word; shocking.
Both Elizabeth Taylor and Katherine Hepburn received Oscar nominations for their performances here, and both of them are very effective. When portraying a character that was written for the stage on the screen an actor can fall easily into overacting, but at times that overacting becomes almost neccisary in order to really portray that character correctly. Elizabeth Taylor is always endearing and intriguing, and her ending monologue is ferocious to say the least, but I must say that I found myself constantly drawn to Katherine Hepburn, and that is not something I expected. I've always found this particular Hepburn to be vastly overrated, but here she is beyond stunning. She has the villionas role of the overprotective mother down to a T and she crisply and sublimely allows herself to filter through the very real and very sharp emotions of this woman. Even during Taylor's staggering recounting of the tragedy that befell Sebastian I found myself glued to Hepburn's every facial glitch.
She was mesmerizing.
I must say that I was a little put-off by the supporting cast, and even by Montgomery Clift. He just seemed very out of it throughout the film. Mercedes McCambridge and Gary Raymond came off like clichéd caricatures, but it's not enough to really gripe about. Had Clift at the very least performed a richer performance than this could have been a brilliant, A+ film. Instead it gets knocked down a peg, resting at an easy B+. The real heat here comes from the blisteringly realized script and the dueling of two very accomplished and very courageous actresses who buried deep into these roles ands into themselves to deliver something that will render us speechless.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry Jan 05, 2009
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
"Suddenly Last Summer is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character Sebastian seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her "genius" son from the world even after his `untimely' death ......last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian's beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian's appetites is to be permanently taken out of the picture in order to keep this world 'beautiful'. Nobody wants to believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the `hope' that there may actually be someone to believe the girl's story before she becomes one more sacrifice to `beauty' in the world.
In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian's mother and `keeper of the flame'. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor is the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ....some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn't he?
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