Suddenly Last Summer
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
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Suddenly Last Summer
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift.
US, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 114 min.
Print source: HFA
Based on the Tennessee Williams one-act play, this film is rife with the playwright's favorite themes of obsession and madness. Director Mankiewicz was known for his ability to draw effective and highly theatrical performances from his actors. Mankiewicz intercuts cinematographer Jack Hildyard's high contrast hallucinogenic flashback sequences with this story of incest, homosexuality and madness. Critic Arthur Knight called it "a wholly admirable rendering into film of a work at once fascinating and nauseating, brilliant and immoral."
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The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Directed by Josè Quintero.
With With Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Lotte Lenya.
UK, 1961, 35mm, color, 103 min.
Print source: HFA
Celebrated theater director Josè Quintero crossed over into film in order to adapt this Tennessee Williams novel for the screen. Vivien Leigh (already known for her portrayal of a Williams heroine a decade earlier in A Streetcar Named Desire) plays the title character, an American widow who has abandoned a waning career on the New York stage and come to Rome to assuage her spirits. Ready to assist Mrs. Stone is the legendary stage actress Lotte Lenya, cast as a procuress, and a very young Warren Beatty, the gigolo who attracts her attentions. The real star of this film, however, is the Eternal City itself, captured here in its various moods, glimmering and textured, gauzed and misty, by cinematographer Harry Waxman.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Ballad of a Soldier / The Forty-First
Nightfall / Great Day in the Morning
Verboten! / Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name / The Jokers
Hearts of the World / True Heart Susie
Anna Christie / The Long Voyage Home
Suddenly Last Summer / The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Quiet Days in Clichy / Henry and June
The Freshman / The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
The Sheep Has Five Legs / The Law is the Law
Hobson's Choice / Sidewalks of London
I Know Where I'm Going / Outcast of the Islands
An Inspector Calls / The Belles of St. Trinian's
Mother Joan of the Angels / Thérèse
Dawn of the Dead / Strange Behavior
