Doctor John Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) is a talented and empathetic neurosurgeon working in a deeply under-funded southern hospital just before the outbreak of world war II. A wealthy local widow Violet Venable (Kathrine Hepburn) offers to fund an expansion of the hospital, but she wants her niece Katherine (Elizabeth Taylor), currently confined to a Catholic asylum, treated by Cukrowicz’s lobotomy technique. However, when he examines Katherine, he

Columbia Pictures

suspects that Venable is more interested in suppressing the truth of her son’s death while vacationing with Katherine than in her niece’s wellbeing. With the future of the hospital at stake and relatives pressing for the procedure to please the family’s matriarch Cukrowicz is in a race against time to discover the truth that has unbalanced and disturbed Katherine before another specialist, one not so constrained ethically as himself, is brought in to lobotomize the young woman.

Suddenly, Last Summer is actually my fist encounter with the works of celebrated playwright Tennessee Williams, though the screenplay was adapted by Gore Vidal. The film is an example of Southern Gothic replete with eccentric characters, mystery, and a dark heart. The driving mystery of the film is the death of Mrs. Venable’s son, Sebastian, a poet, and charming person adored by all who knew him and portrayed in the film to preserve the illusion of a person uniquely different from the rest of his family and society. While the official cause of Sebastian death is reported as heart attack it is clear that this is a cover story and the doctor’s attempts to uncover the truth and help Katherine confront the terrible memory lay at the story’s emotional heart.

I must admit that my enjoyment of this film was somewhat depressed by the fact that I was already aware of the truth of Sebastian’s demise from the documentary that sparked interest in this film, but I will neither reveal the mystery nor the documentary instead suggesting that you see this film blind and unspoiled for its full effect.

Elizabeth Taylor was 27 when she made Suddenly, Last Summer and, having drawn on personal tragedy to power her performance, was reportedly inconsolable after filming Katherine’s emotionally fraught recounting of the tragic death at the film’s climax. Hepburn dominates every scene she speaks in with a patrician’s command and turns in a stunning performance as the cold matriarch hiding a dark secret.

Suddenly, Last Summer is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel but leaves at the end of May.