Suddenly, Last Summer

The shoot ended with someone spitting on set. On her last day, having confirmed her work was genuinely finished, Katharine Hepburn spat in director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's face. The reason was the treatment of Montgomery Clift, who was then still recovering from a severe accident. The text comes from a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, expanded into a screenplay by Gore Vidal. The Production Code forbade explicit homosexuality and violence, so subplots were added, dialogue softened and the climactic cannibalism altered. The Legion of Decency eventually passed it with a striking justification: since the film illustrates the horrors of such a life, it could be considered moral in theme. The story: a wealthy woman who refuses to hear what her dead son was doing tries to have the only witness, her niece, lobotomised. Elizabeth Taylor plays the niece, Hepburn the aunt and Clift the surgeon. Who it is for: viewers who like melodrama that speaks around a censor, where what is said outweighs what is shown. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. Its origins are theatrical, it runs on long monologues, and the final section is handed over entirely to one account.