I've stated on a couple of occasions before that I'm not the biggest fan of the work of Tennessee Williams, which I tend to find annoyingly overheated. However, the movie version of his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a fairly prominent film, and I haven't blogged about it before. So when it showed up on TCM recently, I made it a point to record it so I could watch it at some point and do a post on it here.
Paul Newman plays Brick Pollitt, a man who was a successful athlete in high school and college, enough to become locally famous in the part of Mississippi where he grew up, but not enough to go pro. He'd like to live off that former glory, however, and tries to run the hurdles one more time, tripping over one of the hurdles and breaking his foot, requiring a cast.
Meanwhile, Brick is returning home for his unsuccessful athletic career because it's the 65th birthday of his father, "Big Daddy" Pollitt (Burl Ives). Pollitt runs a successful cotton empire, one that owns thousands of acres and enables him to use a private plane to get around. In fact, Big Daddy and Big Mama (Judith Anderson) are just returning from Memphis, where Big Daddy was going to get expert medical attention for his "spastic colon". Of coruse, a phrase like "spastic colon" is a fairly obvious euphemism to modern viewers, but in times of greater medical ignorance like the 1950s, where doctors wouldn't necessarily inform patients that they had terminal cancer, people are willing to put on a public face of acceding to the illusion that the "spastic colon" is in fact harmless.
The doctor, however, relatively soon informs Brick of the real truth, which is that Big Daddy has terminal cancer and only has about a year to live. Brick tells his wife Maggie, nicknamed "The Cat" (Elizabeth Taylor). The two of them are in a difficult marriage, because Maggie has no children yet and there are rumors that Brick is gay and does not sleep with Maggie. In the play, this is apparently made rather more explicit, but in the movie there's only references made to Brick's football "friend" Skipper, and the fact that on the one hand Maggie tried to seduce Skipper and on the other Skipper committed suicide.
Also being told about Big Daddy's condition is Brick's elder brother Gooper (Jack Carson), an oleaginous lawyer who would like to get Big Daddy to agree to a will that would benefit him. He's got a wife nicknamed "Sister Woman" (Madeleine Sherwood) by Big Daddy, who has already borne Gooper five children, with a sixth on the way. These kids are universally obnoxious, to the point that it's easy to see why Big Daddy so greatly favored Brick.
Over the course of one night, with a whole lot of shouting and florid language, secrets are revealed and a resolution of sorts is reached regarding what Big Daddy is going to do with the cotton empire. Whether or not it's a happy ending is up to the viewer; it'll probably be reasonably happy for Big Mama who hasn't wanted to face the truth, but not for anybody else.
Whether or not you like this version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is probably going to be dependent on whether or not you like Tennessee Williams' work in general. That makes it a bit tough for me to review, since I've never really been a fan of Williams. I can't deny that the movie is well-acted, particularly by Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. It also has the very good production values that were the hallmark of MGM. On the other hand, all of these characters have to shout a whole bunch of ridiculous and unrealistic dialogue. It's also easy to dislike all of these characters.
If you like Tennessee Williams, you'll probably love Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But then, if you like Tennessee Williams, you've probably seen it already.
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