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Suddenly, Last Summer

1959

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn, Albert Dekker ...

7.6

7,881

Drama. Mystery In 1937 New Orleans, Dr. John Cukrowicz, working at the state run Lion's View Mental Institution, is experimenting with a radical new treatment for hopeless cases of lunacy: lobotomy. Lion's View is woefully underfunded, but a supposed savior comes forth in the form of the wealthy and aging widowed Mrs. Violet Venable, the Venable name an institution in and of itself in New Orleans. Mrs. Venable had an extremely close bond with her poet ... [+]

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"Superbly adapted with blistering performances from Taylor and Hepburn."	POS
United States	Variety Staff Variety	"It has some very effective moments, but on the whole it fails to move."	NEU
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Tribune	"The cast packs enough sexual ambiguity to satisfy the most rabid Williams fan (not to mention a screenplay by Gore Vidal), but Mankiewicz leaves much of the innuendo unexplored"	NEU
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"The main trouble with this picture is that an idea that is good for not much more than a blackout is stretched to exhausting length and, for all its fine cast and big direction, it is badly, pretentiously played."	NEG
United States	Lawrence O'Toole Entertainment Weekly	"A deliciously bad film"	NEU

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