Suddenly, Last Summer (1993)

To me, this movie is perfection.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Those who have seen Tennessee Williams' play "Garden District" on stage will appreciate this probably more than the 1959 Katharine Hepburn/Elizabeth Taylor movie because this is obvious closer to the play than the more famous screen adaption. With just one setting (the grounds of Mrs. Violet Venable's eccentric southern plantation), everything that was fleshed out for the big screen is condensed into two seamless acts where every secret comes out over a short period of time rather than the extended time obviously played out in the movie. Catharine Holly (Natasha Richardson) is the institutionalized niece of Mrs. Venable (Maggie Smith), having suffered a breakdown after Mrs. Venable's son Sebastian was mysteriously killed while they were on vacation together. Obviously obsessively jealous over Catherine's replacement of her on the regular summer holiday she usually took with her son, Violet utilizes psychiatrist Rob Lowe to try and get the memory of what Catherine saw out of her mind so Sebastian's secrets will not be revealed. She utilizes her son's estate to manipulate Catherine's family into going along with the lobotomy, but Catherine is anything but willing to allow herself to become a guinea pig for her wealthy aunt's sake. This sets the drama up for some revealing secrets, already familiar to those who saw the original movie or a stage production, but possibly shocking to others. The usual usage of metaphors and symbolic images from the mind of Tennessee Williams may be convoluted for some, but still makes for powerful theater whether on stage or on screen.To see the legendary Maggie Smith with the wonderful Natasha Richardson (a member of one of England's royal theatrical families) is a treat in itself, and reminds us of the loss of this gem of a young actress way too soon. Richardson is far from Elizabeth Taylor's sex kitten performance from the movie, while Smith is more volatile than Katharine Hepburn's somewhat subdued but sometimes campy version. Like Montgomery Clift in the movie, Rob Lowe is caught between two tigresses, like a puppy among wildcats. The psychiatrist role is not as memorable as the women. The fact that the film does not utilize flashbacks (only a few still shots of what Sebastian looked like years before his death) makes it even more theatrical and increases the power of the drama. The usage of color makes Mrs. Venable's garden much scarier than the original.

I'm a fan of the original movie with Liz Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift and I knew that the 1959 film was very different from the stage version. This version with Natasha Richardson, Maggie Smith and Rob Lowe seems to stick closer to the original text. The three leads are amazing but the supporting cast seemed to lack direction, grasp the severity of the situation at hand or even know how to really REact to situations. The man playing George (Richard E. Grant) had two modes, loud and frantic and quiet and frantic. When mad he would make the same arm gestures over and over again and showed absolutely no character development. Several times during temper tantrums, he paid no attention to where he was going and almost fell over parts of the set. His mother Ms. Holly (played by Moira Redmond) came off as being not only a ditz, but a drunk one at that and stumbled over many lines. Ms. Foxhill played to absurdity by Gillian Raine was painful to watch. Richardson and Smith were fantastic playing off one another and Lowe was greatly underused. Tennessee Williams wrote many tragic figures into his plays and stories and Catherine, the one in Suddenly, Last Summer was based in part on events that led to his (Tennessee's) sisters lobotomy. It takes a special type of talent and adaptation to pull off Tennessee Williams and the supporting cast missed the mark by such a wide margin that it was difficult to focus on the fantastic performances of the three leads.

I have a copy of this version of "Suddenly Last Summer" that I taped (luckily) during the broadcast on "Great Performances" in 1993. The picture quality is very fuzzy, which seems to have been a part of the original broadcast. This is even more obvious in these days of DVD, where we are all so used to excellent visuals. I have tried to collect ALL filmed presentations and soundtracks of Tennessee Williams plays, and I don't like to compare the various versions due to the fact that the original film versions faced great restrictions because of censorship, given the stricter morals of those days. The older versions do the best that they were allowed to do, in the context of the prevailing morality under which they were produced. This PBS "Great Performances" version is wonderful- from the opening credits shots of Venus Fly Traps capturing insects in Sebastian's garden to the closing credits depicting the garden again. After the screening, there is a brief clip from a 1976 interview with Tennessee explaining how an incident between his sister and mother inspired the dialogue written for the play. There is no mention of an available video for the presentation, as is so common these days for most PBS productions, so I am assuming that this version has never been released on any home video format. The closing credits state that this is "A BBC co-production with Thirteen/WNET" and gives the date 1992. There is a chance that this was released on video in the UK, but I have not found any mention of such. There is no credit given for soundtrack music or any release as well.

I saw this movie on PBS several years ago by accident because I saw that Rob Lowe was in it. A good theatrical southern drama that takes place in the 30's I think. I would like to see it again as I think I might appreciate it more. Rob Lowe enters a family's lion's den as Dr. Sugar hoping to obtain funding for his project. He plays a southern doctor during the 30's very well, accent and all..Dr. Sugar does this delicate balancing act while the rest of the family members are being melodramatic in the old southern aristocracy way. He ends up hypnotizing Miss Foxhill and starts falling in love with her.I'm surprised this movie has not been on television more. It does bring out a different acting style to what we are used to seeing Rob Lowe do. If you get a chance to rent it, it is worth seeing just for the classical southern dramatics.