Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

John Chard

7.0

Sep 25, 2014

Talk is never cheap when sourced from Tennessee Williams. Millionairess, Violet Venable is obsessed with her now dead son, Sebastian. Sebastian met his untimely end whilst on vacation with his cousin Catharine, an end that has sent Catharine almost to the edge of insanity. Violet, very concerned about Catharine and her hurtful ramblings, enlists brain surgeon Dr. Cukrowicz to see if he will perform a lobotomy on the poor girl, but as Cukrowicz digs deeper, motives and facts come crashing together to reveal something far more worrying. As one expects from a Tennessee Williams adaptation,…

Howard Hawks defined a good film as “three good scenes and no bad ones.” Suddenly, Last Summer has four very good scenes dominated by one of the two great great actresses who play the leads – or, in one instance, both. These are long scenes but never boring, and we are at all times bolted to our seats, our eyes glued to the screen; Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor give different, even contrasting performances – the one as a crazy, rich, old lady who feigns sanity, the other as a traumatized yet sane young woman who is “classified as violent” –, but the result is in either case nothing…

CinemaSerf

7.0

Nov 15, 2025

Simone Signoret pipped both of these women to the Oscar but Liz Taylor did take a Donatello for her powerful performance in this controversial psychological drama. She is the young “Miss Catherine” who looks like she is destined to go under the scalpel for a lobotomy. Why? Well her ostensibly well-meaning and very wealthy aunt “Violet” (Katharine Hepburn) is convinced that she is a danger to herself and those around her, and so is promising the ground-breaking young doctor “Cukrowicz” (Montgomery Clift) a million dollars for a new hospital building in return for him evaluating and then putting…