Suddenly, It's Mother's Day

Suddenly, Last Summer. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 1959. 

Jesus, Joseph and especially Mary I love this movie... 

Mommy? Oh my... Katharine Hepburn as Violet Venable. Hepburn is at her most deliciously vicious here, playing a New Orleans widow unnaturally obsessed with her poet son Sebastian, who died (rather dramatically) while vacationing with her beautiful niece Catherine (a fantastically gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor -- that white bathing suit...). This Violet is a Blanche DuBois gone to demon seed. Ditching those fur pieces and lamps draped with scarves, Violet's a Southern Belle who faces aging by diving straight into Diabolatry. And with that, and with my love for Tennessee Williams, cinema and fascinating female characters, I can only shout out a Hell, Yes with a Bon Scott call of Hey, Satan! Violet is impeccably formal, insanely, yet, almost wonderfully eccentric if she weren't so rotten (she descends to greet people in a grand elevator and has a garden filled with creepy plants that she talks about... a lot) and then she's just downright depraved; her fixation on Sebastian (who, if you've not seen the movie, finds himself cannibalized) is a good ol' Oedipal situation. Or... is there an even more specific complex where the mother yearns to sleep with her homosexual son? Or at least procure for him? What was Joe Orton's mum like? I will research...

Memorable Quote: There are quite a few -- this is after all, Tennessee Williams, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal. I'm fond of Violet's little mommy chestnut, just what you want to hear when you bring her breakfast in bed on Mother's Day: "Most people's lives, what are they but trails of debris - each day more debris, more debris... long, long trails of debris, with nothing to clean it all up but death." But I get a head spinning thrill (and horror) from "Help!" -- Catherine's blood-curdling scream once her head doctor (a sad-eyed but down to business Montgomery Clift) gets to the root of what just happened suddenly last damn summer. Christ. 

Meanest Moment: There's many, but I'm going with forcing the distressed but clearly not insane Catherine as a candidate for a lobotomy just so she won't spill the beans over Violet's sick doings with her late son (who perhaps, just perhaps, could have enjoyed a nice time on holiday, picking up good looking fellas and indulging some romance had homosexuality not been such an issue). That aside, thank goodness pretty Catherine benefits from her supportive shrink (Oh, Monty...) to get to the bottom of this poisoned well. And diseased womb.

Maternal Comeuppance? Indeed. Catherine does not get the lobotomy, and Violet's weirdness goes beyond her passion for Venus flytraps, of course. Catherine and doctor walk off hand-in-hand. Things didn't end as well for son Sebastian, alas. But still. For Mama Hepburn, I clap my hands together like Sandy Dennis hollering for "Violence" in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? "Violet!"

So, again... Happy Mother's Day! 

Note: Young Guy Maddin played Montgomery Clift's Dr. Cukrowicz in Winnipeg's Black Hole Theater production of "Suddenly, Last Summer." This bit of history been a thrill for me, and an endless nightmare for him, especially when I start conversations with: "My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer."

P.S. I want Violet Venable's garden...

Comments

[Tony Dayoub]

Thank you, Kim, for spotlighting this perverse but nonetheless satisfying film. Sebastian's end, as Mankiewicz depicts it, is absurdly lurid. There's something about the way the cannibalism comes about that is sexual to a disturbingly horrific and quite repulsive degree.

[GregoryHoward]

I love this wonderfully disturbing film. I first saw it as a 3rd or 4th run at a Detroit area theater in 1960 or 1961. My mother took me to see it because she'd already discovered her preteen eldest son loved movies that make you think.

On the way out to the car afterward I made sure to open the driver's door for her so I could give her a quick hug and whisper "Thanks for being normal, mom."

My mother made use of that for the next 40+ years until she died, reminding me often "Don't forget son...at least I'm a 'normal' mom."

A Mother's Day film indeed.

[Kim Morgan]

Gregory: Thanks for that lovely memory -- it made me really happy to read.

You not only had a "normal" mom, but a really cool mom.

Thanks again,
Kim

[Shawn Gordon]

Hell, yeah; I have always been looking for the perfect mummy's day movie, and I must admit that I never would have thought of this perverse little gem. I first saw the movie a decade or so ago, alas after my mother had already passed away, but was blown away by the lurid nature of this well produced and performed movie.

[Erica David]

I've always loved this demented movie too. Violet and Sebastian, Sebastian and Violet!