Tennessee 100: "The Fugitive Kind"

Michael C. here from Serious Film to join in the Tennessee Williams festivities. When I picked a film to write about I jumped at The Fugitive Kind because

A) I'm a big Sidney Lumet fan and
B) I was curious how a second Brando/Williams collaboration could fly so far below my radar. I got my answer and then some.

The Fugitive Kind (1960) directed by Sidney Lumet based on Tennessee Williams’ play Orpheus Descending is one of the most fascinating messes I’ve ever seen. There is no getting around the fact that it just doesn’t work, yet I think I’d recommend it more readily than a lot of successful movies I’ve seen. Of all its flaws being dull is not one of them.

Williams writing was as inescapable in the fifties as Jane Austen’s was in the nineties. After burning through his major works Hollywood decided to take one of his rare unsuccessful productions and give it the full feature length treatment. Thus Opheus Descending, the story of a musician named Snakeskin with a questionable past who strikes up a relationship with a trapped middle-aged woman while lying low in a tiny southern town, hit the big screen under the title The Fugitive Kind.

This film represents Brando’s return to Tennessee Williams for the first and only time following his iconic work as Stanley Kowalski, and Anna Magnani’s second Williams project after winning the Best Actress Oscar for the movie of his play The Rose Tattoo. This was Sidney Lumet’s first encounter with Tennessee but his success with the adaptation of Broadway’s 12 Angry Men made him a natural choice. With such a collection of talent it can leave one wondering why so few still talk about The Fugitive Kind.

Brando and Magnani: Tennessee Williams Sophomore Slump

Until one actually watches the movie that is.

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Tennessee 100: "Suddenly Last Summer"

Robert A. here (of Distant Relatives). When Nathaniel asked us to pick a Tennessee Williams based film and write about it, my first instinct was the pick something I’d seen again and again and thus could write with authority. Unfortunately all of those films were quickly scooped up and I thought, why not take the opportunity to explore one I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to. Why did I want to see Suddenly, Last Summer?

Well...

Of course, Tennessee Williams films are often saturated in dripping sexuality.

Cue the crotchety old man in me saying “In my day, when films couldn’t show two people hopping in the sack, they were sexier.”  But in the case of Williams, it’s true. Consider shirtless desperate Marlon Brando shouting out for his lover in Streetcar or Eli Wallach seducing Carrol Baker in Baby Doll. This wasn’t every day sexuality winkingly eluded to to get past the censors. This was dangerous stuff.

Which finally brings me to Suddenly, Last Summer which stars Montgomery Clift as a psychiatrist hired by Katharine Hepburn to analyze, diagnose (and lobotomize) Elizabeth Taylor who has been hopelessly manic since witnessing the sudden death of her cousin Sebastian (Hepburn’s loving son) "last summer".

death haunts those conversations about last summer.

Made just a year after Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had every suggestion of Brick’s homosexuality purged, and knowing writer Gore Vidal claimed the studios made him do much of the same I went in expecting no less. Perhaps the innocence of the 50’s was still in full swing but from Taylor’s blunt declaration that Sebastian used she and his mother as “decoys” to attract desperate men, to the production design which covered Sebastian’s study with pictures and sculptures of naked men, the “undertones” seemed more like overtones.

To be gay would be shocking enough for audiences in 1959. But Sebastian’s predatory nature and the details of his grizzly murder add up to a kind of vampire sexuality where characters are at the complete whims of their urges, easily seduced, uncontrollably impassioned, set in a world explicitly characterized as one where the chaos of nature has free reign and we’re all victims in the making waiting to be devoured. My introduction to Suddenly, Last Summer was also my initiation into the most shocking of Tennessee Williams.

not the kind of action Sebastian was looking for

Suddenly Last Summer is actually a one-act play and, as such was not a Broadway outing for Tennessee in it's original run, double billed with another one-act. The film version won 3 Oscar nominations (art direction and a double Best Actress for Taylor and Hepburn. They lost to Simone Signoret in Room at the Top) There are no other feature film versions though there was a televised BBC production in the 90s with Maggie Smith (Emmy nominated), Rob Lowe, Richard E Grant and Natasha Richardson. 

Tennessee 100: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958)

Robert G from Sketchy Details here to discuss the real star of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for this Tennessee Williams Centennial Week. The beauty of the fifties screen adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not in the quality of the performances, set design, or cinematography. It comes from the tightly-wound dialog and plot structure adapted from Tennessee Williams' stage play.

Elizabeth Taylor and a No Neck Monster

For this one-day tale of adults acting as foolish as children, the true nature of the story is revealed when the characters pull away from the lines they learned by heart. The dialog is a mask used by the characters to hide their true feelings about everyone else. Even something as ridiculous as Maggie's (Oscar nominated Elizabeth Taylor) constant put-downs of the "no-neck monsters" is nothing but an act of misdirection.

Brick has major emotional hurdles to leap.Every major character in the film, regardless of age, is no more mature than the parade of children singing and dancing throughout the estate. The adults fire off sharp words at each other to draw attention away from their own insecurities. They all play into the roles defined for them by the family. If Brick (Oscar nominated Paul Newman) can't be the football star he once was, he will be the most dedicated alcoholic the family has ever gossiped about. The same goes for Big Daddy (Burl Ives) as the no-nonsense patriarch of an empire, Big Momma (Judith Anderson) as the unyielding caregiver, and even Mae and Maggie as the manipulative money-hungry wives. Talking about the roles they're playing only encourages each of them to act out the roles with more energy and commitment.

It is only when the constant talk of "Big Daddy," "cats," and "Skipper" gives way to the overbearing discussion of "mendacity" that the film comes into focus. Brick isn't the only person trying to escape the lies of the Pollitt Empire; they all are. Every single member of the family is sick of the roles, game play, and war of kind facades with bitter tongues. They don't want to play into it but they don't know how to escape it. Even the doctor plays into the game of lies when he tells everyone except for Big Momma and Big Daddy that Big Daddy's dying from cancer.

The constant repetition in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an effective device: Brick always plays with his glass in a certain way, Maggie wipes her hands and arms, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood) always conducts the children's songs in the same way, Big Daddy dismisses everyone with the same tone and arm wave. The repeated discussions of child rearing, marriage, Big Daddy's health, and the titular cat metaphor are just extra tools used to keep each member of the family in their respective role.

These words and actions are choreographed to create an artificial sense of normalcy that will eventually give way to more believable mannerisms, speaking patterns, and interactions when the lies stop.

The only thing that can break the pattern is to discuss the environment of lies itself: mendacity. Brick blames it for his drinking, but Big Daddy won't accept that as an answer because Brick is expected to play the role of a drunk. One by one, the lies that support the clan are torn apart until only the true nature of each character is left standing. There is no more glass spinning or arm waving; there is only a family transitioning into better fitting roles.


Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It lost the Tony Award to The Diary of Anne Frank in 1956. The film version was nominated for 6 Oscars losing Best Picture to Gigi. Burl Ives won the Supporting Actor that year but for The Big Country instead. "Big Daddy" surely had something to do with that.

Tennessee 100

Starting Monday... it's Tennessee Williams Week! The great American playwright's centennial is on March 26th and since his stage work has had such crucial impact on the big screen especially for actors, since Nicole Kidman and James Franco will soon attempt to revive Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway, and since his writing has influenced other legendary writers or filmmakers like John Waters, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner and Pedro Almodóvar, why not a whole week?

For those of you who haven't seen any of the movies based on his work, why not rent a couple? On Wednesday night we'll celebrate A Streetcar Named Desire with "hit me with your best shot" but other films we hope to touch on include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Fugitive Kind, The Rose Tattoo, Baby Doll, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth and Night of the Iguana. If you have a blog, tumblr or whatnot and you do anything to honor him this week... make sure to let us know and we'll check it out.

Netflix has Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Summer and Smoke and The Glass Menagerie (TV version) available on Instant Watch. TCM is showing A Streetcar Named Desire (Tues at 3:45) though strangely they have no centennial programming this month for one of the artistic giants of the 20th century.

'Crimes of the Heart': The Other 'Steel Magnolias'

Kurt here from Your Movie Buddy. 

Crimes of the Heart is for people who love Steel Magnolias, who can't bring themselves to change the channel when The First Wives Club plays on cable, and who can't resist a small handful of emotive, big-name actresses playing off each other courtesy of a witty, womanly text. Now that I have the attention of what I'll dare to guess is about 89 percent of you, allow me to resurrect this twangy, dysfunctional black comedy, which turns 25 this year. Directed by Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy), it's one of those films whose title is so generic you'd swear you've seen it a dozen times, and yet its drop into the proverbial cracks has all but erased your knowledge/memory of it.

The film's official release-date birthday isn't until Dec. 12, but it's fresh in my mind because I just caught a fine stage rendition of playwright/screenwriter Beth Henley's source material – a Pulitzer Prize-winning work that draws its power from Henley's keen ability to mash the comic and the tragic with the frequent spikes and dips of a heart monitor (think Rachel Getting Married with more irony and fewer shattering tears). The story takes place in Hazlehurst, Miss., where the MaGrath sisters – Babe, Lenny and Meg – are reuniting at their childhood home under characteristically eccentric circumstances. Babe, the youngest, just got out of jail for shooting her husband in the stomach (she “didn't like his stinkin' looks”). Lenny, the melancholic eldest, just turned 30 and is nursing her pent-up sexual frustration with cookies and self pity (a shrunken-ovary problem makes her think she's useless to men). Meg, the rebel, has returned from L.A. with nothing to show for her singing-career ambitions but the after-effects of a nervous breakdown.

What's more, Lenny's horse was just struck dead by lightning, nosy and pushy cousin Chick is nagging outside the screen door, the girls' granddaddy/surrogate father is ailing in the hospital, and then there's the memory of the suicide of their mother, who, years ago, hung herself along with the family cat. You get the picture.

At first, it seems this movie – which is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube, btw – doesn't have much to offer in regards to justifying the play being committed to film. Despite its undeniable retro charm, the Plain-Jane opening is super indicative of the film's subsequent obscurity, from its credits (which could make a Power Point presentation look masterful) to its score (best described as low-rent Kenny G.). It doesn't take long, however, for the hooks to dig in. Turns out Crimes is quite the watchable little gem, thanks mainly to its four lead stars: Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and a marvelous, neglected old Victorian that serves as the tack-tacular setting.

Diane Keaton as Lenny

The actress who portrayed Lenny in the stage version I saw was by far the funniest cast member because she was able to nail her character's emotional volatility and spastic, hysterical neuroses. Naturally, this is a role for Diane Keaton...

Keaton, Lange and Sissy's Oscar-nominated work after the jump.

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