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Suddenly Last Summer - Tennessee Williams BOOK REVIEW (Spoilers)

Better Than Food

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SOURCES:
1. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suddenl...
2. Vidolatry: Vidalotry: #6 Tennessee and Truman
3. Waiting for Gateau: https://www.waiting-for-gateau.com/Cu...
4. Center for Hellenic Studies: Video
5. Tennessee meets Hemingway: Medium: ernest-hemingway-meets-tennessee-williams-1959

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20 Comments

@Ben-O25 3 years ago

One of my favorite Tennessee Williams plays and film adaptations. Haunting.

@JohnCavendish-ql4jc 2 years ago

This play is about two Worldviews. Sebastian's and his mother (Katherine Hepburn). Sebastian thinks that our world is bad, unfair and cruel whereas her mother sees it through rose tinted glasses. He wants her to see the World as it is and stop harbouring unrealistic expectations. Tennessee Williams characters are ofren trapped without any way out, any consolation.Both in " Suddenly..." and " The glass menagerie" the mothers don't get it. They are enthusiastic. They have projects. And that's what creates that horrible sadness when children fail to live up to their mother's expectations.

@MR._OMAR_KING 3 years ago

Kate Hepburn and Liz Taylor performance in Suddenly Last Summer are transfixing.

@LustUnlust-Sabrina 2 years ago

Reading suddenly last summer and the glass menagerie in freshman year of high school is what made me fall back in love with reading fiction - two of my favorite plays to get films as well

@kingfisher9553 3 years ago

I'm always surprised to find someone who enjoys Tennessee Williams. Williams is my literary god . . . but probably not for the same reasons as most fans. Anyhoo, my fav (as a film) is Night of the Iguana. Highly recommend "The Unknown Tennessee Williams" by Lyle Leverich.

@kingsley129 3 years ago

Just went to a production of it here in Sydney. And, despite the distractions of the actor playing the dr being a last minute replacement and having to use a small notebook as cover for not knowing his lines in combination with my wife, needing to pee and the theatre too small to escape unnoticed, checking the time on her phone next to me every 5mins - thought it was f’ing great!
Streetcar being one of the greatest films ever made I figured I was always going to love it. Still. Nice to see it pop up here for review so recently after seeing it performed.

@AgrippaPetronius1903 3 years ago

Sublime as ever, just watched the movie, Montgomery cliff was sublime, it’s the nuances in his portrayals that can go unnoticed.

@dinkpress4214 2 years ago

Paul Bowles actually wrote the scores for many of Tennessee’s plays. Very interesting music, even when you disregard the composer’s later (brilliant) writings.

@chriscarbone2466 3 years ago

Please review more plays!

@matthewjaco847 3 years ago

You always have killer recommendations. I can’t wait to check this one out.

@mungoslade 3 years ago

I've been watching your videos for months and what I love the most is the variety of work you find that all seems to have dark themes running through them. Your videos are super effective at inflating my TBR, man

@George15732 3 years ago

It’s crazy how many of the books I love you’ve reviewed. Keep up the good work, man. A book that I want to recommend to you is a classic of Romanian literature. It’s called “Rakes of the Old Court” by Mateiu Caragiale, translated by Sean Cotter who translated Cartarescu. It’s quite short, around 150 pages.

The book was voted by romanian critics as the best of the 20th century. It follows four characters as they drink and gamble their way through the bars and brothels of Bucharest. It’s probably the best written book in Romanian that I’ve read and I’m glad it got translated.

@PhilipWeisman-dl4ik 2 years ago

Always thought with Sebastian getting the idea to go to Cabasa del Lobo, House of the Wolf, in a garden above Amalfi, that it was located in Sardinia. The word picture of Sebastian changes as the play progresses, from Violet's effete intellectual, to Catherine first describing a sweet gentle, passive Cousin to seeing a cynical vicious person who wanted control but wasn't able to coordinate it although he had the potential. "That was how Sebastian described people, as if they were items on a menu. Because l think he was half starved from living on salads. That one is delicious looking. And that one is appetizing, or that one is not appetizing. Fed up with the dark ones, famished for the light ones. All the travel brochures were for blond northern countries. Blonds were next on the menu. Fed up with the dark ones; famished for the light ones. Well, he never got to walk under those cold northern lights. I never saw the Aurora Borealis. Who was it who said we are all of us children, in the vast kindergarten of Life, trying to spell God's name, with the wrong alphabet blocks?

@schumanhuman 3 years ago

Taylor, Burton and Noel Coward (seeminly drunk out of his mind) are in a crazy film flop called 'Boom!' adapted by Williams from his own play 'The milk train doesn't stop here anymore'. It's frankly dreadful pretentious guff, yet so bizarre as to be a fascinating (milk) train wreck.
According to John Waters, Divine took great inspiration from Taylor's OTT performance here and when they met told her as much, but far from being flattered Taylor was apparently somewhat offended having already pretty much disowned the film.

@estebanroussel1618 2 years ago

This film was made after Montgomery Clift’s car accident, which disfigured his face and left one side (his left) practically paralyzed. This made it difficult for him to make facial expressions, and the camera often favors his right side since his left side barely moves. His best post-accident role was Justice at Nuremburg. But if you really want to see what all the fuss was about regard Clift, check put A Place in the Sun, which was pre-accident. He and Taylor are off the charts in that one.

@modernoverman 3 years ago

I'm glad you did this review. I've needed an excuse to pick up Williams. I've always felt a strong connection to him, as he was my grandmother's cousin.

@ellelala39 3 years ago

You tell a great story, Cliff; even one as brutal- sounding as this one. There is cruelty in the animal kingdom, a fact I sometimes forget when thinking about how cruel humans can be.

@zenape619 3 years ago

Love this one!
The turtles on the beach scene is burned into my memory.
Beautiful and haunting and terribly sad.

@ryanmacfarlane1831 3 years ago

Just bought and read this today based off your review, what a read

@sophiawarrilow 3 years ago

I saw a production of Suddenly Last Summer in London in 1999 with Rachel Weisz as Catherine (before she was famous). I must have been about 14 and it really stuck with me. RW was exceptional. The best actress I've ever seen perform live.