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"Steamy Tennessee":The films of Tennessee Williams


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I recently saw the final of a retrospective of films based on Tennessee Williams works. Hence we had A Streetcar.., "The Rose Tattoo", "Baby Doll"-(one of my favorites, BTW)-and for the grand finale they had "Suddenly Last Summer". I had never seen SLS in a big screen before. In fact, the last time I saw it was many, MANY years ago, in Cuba, in a bad copy on TV. Here we had a completely restored copy in a movie theater. I usually try to avoid watching films on DVD, as I'm a true believer on the magic of the cinema. Wow, I had forgotten how STRIKINGLY BEAUTIFUL Elizabeth Taylor looks here...(There is this GIANT close up of her at one point that is just surreal)

Aside from the disturbing story....

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Wow, I had forgotten how STRIKINGLY BEAUTIFUL Elizabeth Taylor looks here...

Aside from the disturbing story....

Liz great in Tennesse Williams, and Kate Hepburn amazing. 'Baby Doll' one of the best, Williams wrote the screenplay, and even his severe and somewhat unforgiving father told him it was a fine film. My favourites are two you didn't see in this retrospective, 'The Night of the Iguana', which has almost the greatest cast ever assembled, and 'The Fugitive Kind', which Williams also wrote the screenplay for. Magnani, Brando are great, and Joanne Woodward is fantastical over-the-top at the end, doing this business about 'bein' faithful to the FUGITIVE KAH-ND!' I just looked up 'Suddenly Last Summer', Gore Vidal wrote the screeplay, yes, that was a good one. 'Summer and Smoke' has great moments, but a ruined ending, but 'Sweet Bird of Youth' was Paul Newman's best for me.

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Liz great in Tennesse Williams, and Kate Hepburn amazing.

Patrick...that first sequence of Hepburn's voice aparently coming out of nowhere and a second later her grand entrance descending in that baroque elevator is just priceless! I was amazed on how risque Taylor's white bathing suit was. That final monologue telling Sebastian's final moments with Taylor almost lowered to the floor underneath a table in the verge of a nervous breakdown...wow.

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'The Night of the Iguana', which has almost the greatest cast ever assembled

The film's great, but it sure differs a lot from the text. I suppose that's not unusual.

And I think that the play itself may differ from the short story, which I think was the first version of this, but under a different name. I read it only a few years ago, but can't remember it. I'll try to find it when I have time, although I think someone else may know it, and possibly also have read or seen the play as you have (I've done neither.) Yes, we're always finding out how film is so different when a theatrical or book adaptation takes place (it's usually lesser, but not always--the film of 'The Shining' is the most extreme example of a major improvement over the oruiginal that I can think of), but there's nothing like when Deborah Kerr and her old father Nonno the poet walk up and Ava Gardner says to Richard Burton something like 'No, I'm not going to rent it to them. I'm not going to rent it unless it's someone special' and Burton replies 'If they're not special, tnen who is?'

I'm glad you pointed this out, though, because not knowing myself and thinking this is such a great and authoritative film, it hadn't occurred to me. If you have time, kfw, would you tell us something of what was changed (if radically)?

Cristian, you've probably seen 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', and Liz is heaven in that too, especially when she talks about her in-laws' children as 'no-neck mon-stahs'. She is just a natural, and one of her best if 'Butterfield 8', for which she supposedly got a sympathy Oscar (but I think it's a great performance). She herself describes it as 'trash', but I think her talent and beauty have always been greater than her masterful critical judgments...

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I recently saw the final of a retrospective of films based on Tennessee Williams works. Hence we had A Streetcar.., "The Rose Tattoo", "Baby Doll"-(one of my favorites, BTW)-and for the grand finale they had "Suddenly Last Summer". I had never seen SLS in a big screen before. In fact, the last time I saw it was many, MANY years ago, in Cuba, in a bad copy on TV. Here we had a completely restored copy in a movie theater. I usually try to avoid watching films on DVD, as I'm a true believer on the magic of the cinema. Wow, I had forgotten how STRIKINGLY BEAUTIFUL Elizabeth Taylor looks here...(There is this GIANT close up of her at one point that is just surreal)

Aside from the disturbing story....

Thanks for reporting, cubanmiamiboy. I am unable to take Suddenly Last Summer seriously but I do enjoy it as camp. But a lot of Williams' later work is good theater, as they say, but doesn't necessarily go much deeper. Taylor is indeed beautiful and her acting is pretty good, a step forward from much of her previous work to that date. Clift is so wrecked here that it's hard for me to watch him and he is not aided by the fact that the endless tapdancing (aboout two and a half hours, from a one-acter) around Sebastian's homosexuality means that Clift's allegedly brilliant surgeon has to be awfully clueless to maintain any kind of suspense and keep the story going. Hepburn sweeps in and cleans everybody's clock. Still, it's entertaining. It shows up regularly on cable and I generally wind up watching.

Baby Doll is a charmer, maybe my favorite adaptation of Williams to film.

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Interesting topic, especially since I've had the chance to attend several well-performed staged readings of Williams this season. (Not Suddenly Last Summer, however.) I've come to appreciate how well the words and development of Williams plays come across in live performance performance (even without stars but assuming that you have really good, classically trained actors).

Williams on screen is fascinating to compare with the plays on stage, not least because of the extensive rewriting imposed by Hollywood. There's something about the size of the images on the screen, those iconic stars, everything beautifully lighted in the black-and-white films at least, the exaggerated camera angles, etc., that moves the original play into something quite other. It says something for Williams that his work transfers to screen so well, despite being -- in some cases -- almost unrecognizable in content and form.

Suddenly Last Summer started out as a one-act, consisting primarily of two long monologues (opera-like scenas, really), so I guess the screenwriter has much more lattitude with this than with some of the other works I agree with cristian about Taylor's beauty in this. It's almsot unimaginable. Unfortunately, the Taylor package includes the voice, which grates even more than usual during the long monologue (mostl -- or all? -- voice-over) describing what might or might not have happened to Sebastian "last summer." What a great actress she would have been in silent films (and still can be on television if you mute the volume).

Re: Hepburn. I've always experienced this as a fascinating star turn in the ham-on-gothic genre, and love it. Hepburn seem to known what a remarkable instrument she possesses (especially her face and voice). She used them wonderfully, never going TOO far and always in control.

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Unfortunately, the Taylor package includes the voice, which grates even more than usual during the long monologue (mostl -- or all? -- voice-over) describing what might or might not have happened to Sebastian "last summer." What a great actress she would have been in silent films (and still can be on television if you mute the volume).

I doubt she would have been a great actress in any medium, although she did improve. It is hard to understand why nobody at MGM in her early years thought to do anything about the voice. Later on I suppose she was too big a star to stoop to voice lessons and I imagine Burton was tactful enough never to bring up the subject. :clapping:

Love when she feeds her carnivorous plant with bugs...

“The Venus Flytrap, aptly named after the goddess of love.”

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kfw- I now remember that I did read the play a year or two after seeing the film of The Night of the Iguana, and hadn't noticed that much difference, but that was probably at least 35 years ago, so I might not rememberl. I used to do that with plays-become-film when I was in high school. It only came back to me when I remembered that (I think, but not sure), the play ends with Nonno's finished poem about 'the orange branch, observe the sky begin to blanch', but not sure if that's the literal end or not. I know that in the movie Deborah Kerr says 'Oh, it's a beautiful poem, Nonno'. and then he dies, which may be followed with a bit of dialogue between Gardner and Burton. I think the story I'm remembering focusses on the Deborah Kerr character and the Burton character. I don't know if Ava Gardner, here known as 'Mrs. Falk', was in the play with her 'beach boys' or not, though. that does sound sort of 'cinematic-expnasion', and might have just been mentioned or implied in the original text.

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kfw- I now remember that I did read the play a year or two after seeing the film of The Night of the Iguana, and hadn't noticed that much difference, but that was probably at least 35 years ago, so I might not rememberl. I used to do that with plays-become-film when I was in high school. It only came back to me when I remembered that (I think, but not sure), the play ends with Nonno's finished poem about 'the orange branch, observe the sky begin to blanch', but not sure if that's the literal end or not. I know that in the movie Deborah Kerr says 'Oh, it's a beautiful poem, Nonno'. and then he dies, which may be followed with a bit of dialogue between Gardner and Burton. I think the story I'm remembering focusses on the Deborah Kerr character and the Burton character. I don't know if Ava Gardner, here known as 'Mrs. Falk', was in the play with her 'beach boys' or not, though. that does sound sort of 'cinematic-expnasion', and might have just been mentioned or implied in the original text.

Patrick, if you remember that much thirty-five years ago, you're memory puts mine to shame. :) I do remember that Nonno's poem is very near the end of the film and, yes, the beach boys are in the play, although the scene in the film where the matron sports with them is not in the text, not in anything like that detail.

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Unfortunately, the Taylor package includes the voice, which grates even more than usual during the long monologue (mostl -- or all? -- voice-over) describing what might or might not have happened to Sebastian "last summer." What a great actress she would have been in silent films (and still can be on television if you mute the volume).

I doubt she would have been a great actress in any medium, although she did improve. It is hard to understand why nobody at MGM in her early years thought to do anything about the voice. Later on I suppose she was too big a star to stoop to voice lessons and I imagine Burton was tactful enough never to bring up the subject. :)

I think Liz's voice is perfect for her young-girl roles, as in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', 'Last Time I Saw Paris', and later in 'Butterfield 8', as long as it's not too deep a character. It runs into trouble with 'Cleopatra' (I;m not aware of that ever being done that superlatively, even by Claudette Colbert, who really is a fine actress, and Edith Evans talked about the Shakespeare play being nearly impossible to get right, it was not one of her successes on stage, maybe it's been done somewhere and I just don't know about it) and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' (arguably), and some others. But even after that, the voice is exactly right for 'Reflections in a Golden Eye' (her best performance IMO) and 'Secret Ceremony'. She did very little stage work, but Catherine DeNeuve did none at all, and she's become a great film actress, which is interesting proof that they just aren't the same things; although I wouldn't say that it follows that Liz ever became a 'great actress' (neither did Joan Crawford, good a couple of times, but no artist). The voice doesn't bother me until she gets into mature parts, and that might be why she became this big personality, and the acting stopped (among other reasons.). But it hadn't bothered me until she began to get into middle age. Same with Lana Turner, who was only good at youthful roles, or later frivolous ones, as 'Imitation of Life'. I don't really think she would have been good in silent films, though, as that was a technique all its own, as Lillian Gish is peerless, and Garbo's silent work still shows in her later talkie roles. Also actors like Joseph Schilldkraut and Bobby Harron. Liz just not capable of that kind of subtlety of gesture and facial expression.

I'll take another look at 'Suiddenly Last Summer' though, because these are interesting perceptions about that film. I do think that may have been Kate Hepburn's best period of film, if you included 'Lion in Winter', because her Ms. Venable has something of the quality she brought to 'Long Day's Journey into Night', doesn't it? although nowhere near as great (but then, if I had to choose a single greatest actress performance, it would probably be that one. She was in good form during those years, even though she lost her beauty rather early on, to my mind, you just have to look at 'morning glory' to know how ravishing she had been.)

Cristian, definitely watch 'Sweet Bird of Youth' if you haven't. Not only Newman, but Page is stupendous as Princess Kosmonopoulos in it too. But 'Fugitive Kind' is a must-see.

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Williams on screen is fascinating to compare with the plays on stage, not least because of the extensive rewriting imposed by Hollywood.

I wouldn't say "imposed" in the sense that sacral text was violated by Hollywood goons, although censorship did hurt Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. (And frankly I don't think it was a bad idea to tidy up Sweet Bird of Youth.)

'The Night of the Iguana', which has almost the greatest cast ever assembled

The film's great, but it sure differs a lot from the text. I suppose that's not unusual.

Tell us more about that, kfw, please. I've never compared and contrasted.

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Well, I've gotten ahold of a copy of the play and skimmed it, so a few differences are coming back to me.

The film condenses or omits much of what's in the play, dialogue especially, without, at least in my cursory rereading, significantly changing the characters or the relations between them. The film begins with the Reverend Shannon delivering the sermon that got him defrocked. In the play, Shannon only recounts the scene, in Act II.

In the film we see the tour group in the bus, with Miss Faulk leading them in singing, then Shannon driving wildly and feverishly as they reach Maxine's Hotel Costa Verde. None of this is dramatized in the play, although Shannon tells Maxine about the singing.

The crush that Miss Fellowes has on Charlotte which is hinted at in the play is more brought out in the film. In the play, Charlotte begs to be let into Shannon's room to hide from Miss Fellowes, who is looking for her. Charlotte and Shannon have apparently slept together already, or had some illicit contact, and Fellowes has found out. In the film, as in the play, Shannon only reluctantly lets her in, begging her to leave. But here I think we get the sense there that they have not yet spent the night together, though I could be misremembering. Meanwhile in any case, Miss Fellowes apologizes to Charlotte, or at least asks for her understanding for her anger. They are in their room together that same night -- or rather Miss Fellowes is, before she realizes Charlotte is gone, and gets up out of bed in a rage to look for her, finding her in Shannon's room. In the play she's found in Hannah's cubicle, having heard Miss Fellowes coming.

In the film Charlotte eventually turns on Shannon, tells him she hates him, and takes up with Hank the bus driver. Not so in the play.

As I said earlier, the rather erotic scene in which Maxine goes "night-swimming" with her two Mexican beach boy helpers is only suggested in the play, when Maxine mentions that her late husband didn't care.

I remember a minor scene with the Chinese chef in the film that I don't think is in the play.

Does the German family that provides some comic relief in the play appear in the film at all? I don't remember them. Does Shannon talk about "the spook" that bedevils him? Does Hannah describe her two sexual encounters, the first with the guy who tried to molest her, the second in the sampan which Shannon thinks sordid but she calls "a love experience" ("nothing disgusts me unless it's unkind, violent")?

Anyhow, for anyone who knows and loves only one, the play or the film, I do recommend the other.

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Never having seen the play, I got curious and looked up the Times review of the original 1961 production (Bette Davis, Margaret Leighton, Patrick O'Neal, etc.)

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/spec...n%22&st=cse

The topic of how film differs from play, and vice versa, is always interesting. I wondered, for instance, how they handled the tropical setting and ambience.

Oliver Smith has designed a set s realistic that one can feel the heat of the tropics. When a storm breaks, water actually falls through the gaps in the veranda roof.
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Does the German family that provides some comic relief in the play appear in the film at all? I don't remember them.

Think so, not sure.

'Does Shannon talk about "the spook" that bedevils him? '

I'm pretty sure he does go on about that, although don't remember the term 'spook' as such.

Does Hannah describe her two sexual encounters, the first with the guy who tried to molest her, the second in the sampan which Shannon thinks sordid but she calls "a love experience" ("nothing disgusts me unless it's unkind, violent")?

I only remember the second one, the guy who asks her to take off a piece of her clothing and hand ti to him, so he could 'hold it, just hold it'. Always very touching, because Kerr is so fantastic in this part, and can pull it off. I doubt anyone else could have, and even so, I must say I think of those lines with some amusement.

Yes, I too had looked up the B'way version with Bette Davis, and I've never heard of anybody saying anything about it, but Davis specialists can surely tell us something.

Kfw, that was terrific, thanks for the extra labour. So they did do some of what I called 'cinematic expansion', and the beach boys with Maxine was superb, and Ava just marvelous all the way through that film. I also remember liking Hannah telling Shannon that 'are you so SURE?' [that 'Maxine is so tough'] after he's been cruel to her whom he cares deeply about, and been forgiving of the horrid Miss Fellowes (and that is some perf. too, by Grayson Hall.) I think the movie is great, and I'm going to try to find the name of the story. Yes, it's the same title, I don't know why I didn't remember, but that I don't remember too well, even though I read it about 2001. Some of his short stories are wonderful, 'Desire and the Black Masseur' may be the most famous, and God knows it's harrowing and even very upsetting, but profound. There was a French film based on this latter story. Yes, it was called 'Noir et Blanc', from 1986, and is nearly impossible to find, I don't even know how I saw it.

Cristian: if interested, here is a long study of both 'Suddenly Last Summer' and 'Desire and the Black Masseur', both concerned with 'devouring' and, in the latter, cannibalism. I found the movie upsetting, but somehow Williams's story I thought even more so: http://www.rtjournal.org/vol_4/no_2/4_2_pdf/bak.pdf

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Williams on screen is fascinating to compare with the plays on stage, not least because of the extensive rewriting imposed by Hollywood.

I wouldn't say "imposed" in the sense that sacral text was violated by Hollywood goons, although censorship did hurt Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. (And frankly I don't think it was a bad idea to tidy up Sweet Bird of Youth.)

I agree completely and must apologize if my statement suggested in anyway that I, or indeed Williams himself, believed that these texts were sacral -- or that those who altered them were goons. That was not my intention. The process of altering the plays for filming -- as well as Williams' fixed feelings about the results -- was a complicated one and has been well documented.
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I think the movie is great, and I'm going to try to find the name of the story. Yes, it's the same title, I don't know why I didn't remember, but that I don't remember too well, even though I read it about 2001.

Great, I look forward to reading your thoughts!

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Thanks for your posts on Iguana, kfw. Interesting.

I agree completely and must apologize if my statement suggested in anyway that I, or indeed Williams himself, believed that these texts were sacral -- or that those who altered them were goons. That was not my intention. The process of altering the plays for filming -- as well as Williams' fixed feelings about the results -- was a complicated one and has been well documented.

I was indulging in hyperbole, bart. Sorry if it sounded like anything else. I tend not to feel terribly sorry for the writer in such circumstances. You cash the check and take your chances. It is a tricky business transferring from stage to screen, though.

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I remember now another beach scene in the film that's not in the play, the one where Charlotte is in the water with Shannon, and Miss Fellowes just about has a breakdown trying to command her out of it. Also, the 1962 New Directions copy of the play includes a sketch of the stage setting. Sketch and setting are both by Oliver Smith.

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I remember now another beach scene in the film that's not in the play, the one where Charlotte is in the water with Shannon, and Miss Fellowes just about has a breakdown trying to command her out of it. Also, the 1962 New Directions copy of the play includes a sketch of the stage setting. Sketch and setting are both by Oliver Smith.

Yes, I'd momentarily forgotten that, Miss Fellowes says something like 'What have you been doing, spawning?' And she was not pleased with Shannon's 'couture'. :)

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bart--finally read the old NYT review, thanks for linking. Odd review, wasn't it? Said so little about the actors. I can imagine Margaret Leighton was superb, though, she always was in everything, and Hannah would be as ideal for her as for Kerr. Almost nothing about Bette Davis, could hardly believe it (even spelled it 'David'). Interesting also that Patrick O'Neal had such an early important part, since we usually think of him as a smaller actor as time went by, although often good in some of the pulp he did, and attractive. The 'non-explosiveness' was interesting, though, because there really is some in the movie.

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I took a look at Suddenly Last Summer last night for the first time in years and did enjoy it. It seemed like the well made MGM film of the 1960s, with the exception of the Expressionist ending of the manikin-Sebastian running up the hill. This falls far short of Williams' lush and descriptive narrative and doesn't really pull its weight as a visual equivalent. But the scenes between Taylor and Clift are very good (though Clift's face no longer can express subtle variations) and yes Hepburn is good too ... The review of the stage Iguana says that Davis (I, too, was intrigued about the mysterious "Bette David") was excellent but she tended to look to the audience between her lines, a bad habit from making films. It would have been great if Margaret Leighton could have been in the film.

The way that Tennessee Williams films are watered down isn't by censorship but by fleshing them out with off-stage filmic context, to naturalize them. It's all filler and and a waste and the parts that work seem to me to be the same, small scale one-on-one parts that worked on stage. It's Williams words and all his old themes and stories and how he stretches them out and reworks them that are at the heart of the films -- no more, perhaps less, than what Bart says he hears in the bare stage direct readings.

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The review of the stage Iguana says that Davis (I, too, was intrigued about the mysterious "Bette David") was excellent but she tended to look to the audience between her lines, a bad habit from making films.

Quiggin, this is not in the review that I found from bart's link. Are you somehow accessing a more lengthy version? or talking about another review? It speaks of her 'flaming red hair' and ''unbuttoned blouse', but I don't see the part about looking at the audience. I am sure she was fascinating no matter what she did, but that was the age when she was also doing 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane', so the emphasis would be all on the 'maternal matronly', and make it a different character from what Gardner did, because however obviously middle-aged, was still beautiful. Davis is pretty IMO only in her 30s/40s movies (and beautiful in a way in 'All About Eve'), not that that's important to my appreciation of her, but rather that Gardner still had sensuality that was more than just maternal (she had both maternal and 'same-age').

Can't say I agree that the cinematic expansions in these films are nearly all 'filler and waste'. In some cases, surely, but I like very much those beach scenes in 'Iguana', and think they're very potent, and the Maxine/beach boy one even rather musical.

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The way that Tennessee Williams films are watered down isn't by censorship but by fleshing them out with off-stage filmic context, to naturalize them. It's all filler and and a waste and the parts that work seem to me to be the same, small scale one-on-one parts that worked on stage.

The moviemakers are between a rock and a hard place, because what worked on stage won’t necessarily work on screen even if transferred over with minimal changes. You can get away with stuff in the theater that the camera won’t let pass. I thought Vidal did as good a job as could be expected of opening up Suddenly Last Summer even if it is too long and too talky. (Kazan was smart in electing not to open up Streetcar, though. The movie suffers from a certain staginess, but on the other hand retains a lot of power it would not have had with the addition of the naturalistic filler you rightly mention.)

And censorship certainly did hurt. There are some things in Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that make considerably less dramatic sense with the cuts demanded by the censors of the time, and I’ve already mentioned the shillyshallying about Sebastian’s sex life. Especially amusing for this viewer are the scenes where Taylor is using everything but semaphore to convey to Clift that Sebastian was gay, and poor Monty has to blink his eyes and pretend he doesn’t understand what she’s getting at.....

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