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Suddenly, Last Summer Movie Review

Suddenly, Last Summer is a 1959 mystery film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. It’s such an intriguing film.

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“Nature is not made in the image of man’s compassion“

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The story is as follows – a woman tries to commit her cousin to a hospital, and she arranges with the brain surgeon to lobotomize her. The girl is traumatized because of an incident that happened before with her cousin who’s a gay man who was eaten alive by cannibals on a beach.

Yes. Imagine this story and that it came out in 1959. How was this even possible?? Of course, they don’t explicitly state any of this, but they came extremely close to saying it, and it’s quite obvious. This it was a hugely provocative movie for its time period for dealing pretty openly with homosexuality and cannibalism, both portrayed of course sensationally, but still bravely.

The main problem this movie has is its definitely dated approach at intellectualism which is only pseudo-intellectualism. I am of course talking about the psychology in the film which is very dated, and very sensational, in the same vein as the one from Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’. The entire movie is very pretentious to its fault as that aggressive self-coolness factor really made it more dated than anything else.

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It’s a movie which is incredibly theatrical, but in my opinion that’s a positive. It features a huge amount of dialogue as literally the entirety of the film is a conversation after conversation with some even lasting for more than fifteen minutes. I personally love such an approach to storytelling, and some conversations, though sensational, were still very intriguing. And the entire mystery aspect to the film is exceptionally achieved leading to a successful mystery genre entry.

This movie has a killer cast with three great stars in it, all delivering a great performance. Montgomery Clift as the doctor is excellent, and he fits the role really well, and is quite memorable in it. However, the two women make this movie a true acting showcase.

Elizabeth Taylor is excellent in a very difficult role. Sometimes she struggled a bit, but for the most part she really managed to emote her feelings of tragedy and trauma well. But Katharine Hepburn is the highlight in my opinion as the movie makes her very mysterious, demanding and powerful. She demands the screen whenever she has her, usually very long, scenes. I loved both of them and they both deserved their Oscar nominations.

Suddenly, Last Summer is a very theatrical movie, there is no doubt about it. But as I said above, it’s positively theatrical as the dialogue opens up the story and develops the characters tremendously well. The mystery is phenomenally executed here, and I was fascinated with it through and through.

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The picture is also pretty cinematic for such a closed, one-setting story. The cinematography is strong for what I could see judging from a poor-quality version that I’ve watched, and the score is phenomenal and very atmospheric, accompanying its tone of danger, suspense and mystery very well. The direction from Mankiewicz is also reliably strong, and this is for sure one of his most underappreciated movies when all is said and done.

Suddenly, Last Summer surely is sensational and pretty dated in its pretentious psychology, but it’s still an underrated, very intriguing and constantly engaging movie which deals with some very provocative themes for this time period. The mystery is fascinating, the dialogue is tremendous and the cast is terrific with Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn in particular being the acting standouts. It’s also well directed, well scored and quite suspenseful in its tone.

My Rating – 4