Elizabeth Taylor starts off wooden and ends up overacting. Katharine Hepburn warbles her way through her lines and bites some heads off. Montgomery Clift just sort of stands there as the two divas (Kate and Liz) clash in a battle of overacting and melodramatics. Everyone else does an OK job.
I have read the play by Tennessee Williams a couple of times, but the movie is better. After Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Williams didn't really have any good plays. He had bled his formula of "in the hot, blistering south, all the women are nutjobs/narcotics/faded southern belles and all the men are homosexual/maybe homosexual drunken selfish brutes" pretty dry. But, to be fair, where do you go after The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire back to back?
Elizabeth Taylor is pretty good in her role, even if at the start she's a bit "I...am...mentally...ill..." and by the ends she's a bit "THEY TORE HIM TO PIECES AND THEY ATE HIM! ATE HIMMMMM!" . Reportedly she drew her emotions from the final scenes from the recent death of her third (of seven) husband Mike Todd, said to be the only one of the men she married that she truly loved (other than Richard Burton). The way she acts, even if it is is bit schizophrenic, makes you care for her character.
Katharine Hepburn plays an evil variation on Katharine Hepburn. I've always wondered why she didn't play more evil characters ("Let's lobotomize my niece so we can hide the fact that my son, the homosexual sexual predator, got eaten by cannibal Spanish children!"), but this film partly explains why. She makes Bette Davis in Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte look like a sane, sprightly philanthropist.
Montgomery Clift is good, despite not having much to do and coming across as rather wooden. He was a good actor (better than Brando, definitely), so he does the best he can. This film was after his car accident, so he is a bit disfigured, but not a lot. He's still quite handsome, actually.
Some of the acting is fairly campy, but the roles are written so they are that way. How else do you play a crazy old bean who likes to wear white and has an elevator (and a creepy garden) in her house? And wants to lobotomize her niece?!
A few plot points are outdated, including the treatment of the mentally ill (that scene where Elizabeth Taylor tries to commit suicide by leaping off the railing in the mental hospital is probably the scariest scene in the film.)
It's still a good, if flawed, film, but better view as a schlock horror versus as a serious drama (à la H...HSC).
Watch this one and Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte back-to-back. Good old schlocky fun!
I have read the play by Tennessee Williams a couple of times, but the movie is better. After Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Williams didn't really have any good plays. He had bled his formula of "in the hot, blistering south, all the women are nutjobs/narcotics/faded southern belles and all the men are homosexual/maybe homosexual drunken selfish brutes" pretty dry. But, to be fair, where do you go after The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire back to back?
Elizabeth Taylor is pretty good in her role, even if at the start she's a bit "I...am...mentally...ill..." and by the ends she's a bit "THEY TORE HIM TO PIECES AND THEY ATE HIM! ATE HIMMMMM!" . Reportedly she drew her emotions from the final scenes from the recent death of her third (of seven) husband Mike Todd, said to be the only one of the men she married that she truly loved (other than Richard Burton). The way she acts, even if it is is bit schizophrenic, makes you care for her character.
Katharine Hepburn plays an evil variation on Katharine Hepburn. I've always wondered why she didn't play more evil characters ("Let's lobotomize my niece so we can hide the fact that my son, the homosexual sexual predator, got eaten by cannibal Spanish children!"), but this film partly explains why. She makes Bette Davis in Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte look like a sane, sprightly philanthropist.
Montgomery Clift is good, despite not having much to do and coming across as rather wooden. He was a good actor (better than Brando, definitely), so he does the best he can. This film was after his car accident, so he is a bit disfigured, but not a lot. He's still quite handsome, actually.
Some of the acting is fairly campy, but the roles are written so they are that way. How else do you play a crazy old bean who likes to wear white and has an elevator (and a creepy garden) in her house? And wants to lobotomize her niece?!
A few plot points are outdated, including the treatment of the mentally ill (that scene where Elizabeth Taylor tries to commit suicide by leaping off the railing in the mental hospital is probably the scariest scene in the film.)
It's still a good, if flawed, film, but better view as a schlock horror versus as a serious drama (à la H...HSC).
Watch this one and Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte back-to-back. Good old schlocky fun!