In New Orleans in 1937, wealthy matriarch Mrs. Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn) will fund a hospital if Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) will perform a lobotomy on her niece Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor). Debutante Catherine had a nervous breakdown after the death of Sebastian Venable, Violet's poet son, while the two were vacationing in Europe. Mrs. Venable wants the lobotomy performed to stop Catherine from revealing the horrible truth about Sebastian's death. Dr. Cukrowicz knows Catherine is sane and helps her remember the circumstances of Sebastian's death.
Mrs. Venable explains: "Strictly speaking, his life was his occupation. Yes, yes, Sebastian was a poet. That's what I meant when I said his life was his work because the work of a poet is the life of a poet, and vice versa, the life of a poet is the work of a poet. I mean, you can't separate them. I mean, a poet's life is his work, and his work is his life in a special sense."
Catherine Holly asks, "Is that what love is? Using people? And maybe that's what hate is--not being able to use people."
The film ends with Catherine explaining at length the bizarre murder of homosexual Sebastian. While at a Spanish coastal resort the previous summer, he used her to lure young boys just as his mother used to do. But the boys turned on Sebastian and murdered him. Catherine watched his body being cannibalized by the boys and hysterically explains, "He...he was lying naked on the broken stones...and this you won't believe! Nobody, nobody, nobody could believe it! It looked as if...as if they had devoured him!...As if they'd torn or cut parts of him away with their hands, or with knives, or those jagged cans they made music with. As if they'd torn bits of him away in strips!"
Mrs. Venable completely cracks up and takes her antique elevator upstairs, cheerfully in her own demented fantasy world. Catherine is cured and speaks the film's last lines, "She's here, Doctor, Miss Catherine's here."
The cast also includes: Albert Dekker (Dr. Lawrence J. Hockstader), Mercedes McCambridge (Mrs. Grace Holly), Gary Raymond (George Holly), Mavis Villiers (Miss Foxhill), Patricia Marmont (Nurse Benson), Joan Young (Sister Felicity), Maria Britneva (Lucy), Sheila Robbins (Dr. Hockstader's secretary), Eddie Fisher (street urchin), David Cameron, Frank Marlo, Beatrice Shaw, Gore Vidal, Ian Wilson, and Roberta Wooley. Music is by Malcolm Arnold and Buxton Orr. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed.
This movie is a shocking, lurid, and talky cleaned-up adaptation of Tennessee Williams 1957 one-act play, scripted by Williams and Gore Vidal. Williams was undergoing anti-gay psychiatric "therapy" when he wrote the play, and it certainly shows in the movie. The overall tone is neurotic, almost hysterical, regarding the inferred and ambiguous homosexuality of Sebastian. Cannibalism, prostitution, incest, and paedophilia are toned down in the film version. It's a creepy melodrama/thriller, somewhat of a murder mystery that is compelling and fascinating, but sometimes tedious. The movie takes too long to reach its revelation. Hepburn, Taylor, and Clift give excellent performances.
Two years previously Montgomery Clift had a near-fatal car accident and Elizabeth Taylor saved his life. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz treated Clift very badly during the filming of SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER. When the movie was finished, Katharine Hepburn asked Mankiewicz for confirmation that the film was indeed completed, then she spat in his face.
SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1992) is a TV movie produced for PBS. Maggie Smith plays Violet Venable, Rob Lowe is very good as the psychiatrist, and Natasha Richardson plays Catherine. This one is simply an accurate film version of Tennessee Williams' one-act play.
