The Long, Hot Summer

A film set in the American south. Ben Quick arrives in town. A rumour comes with him: his father was accused of burning barns and he carries the same name. Wherever he goes the story goes ahead of him. The town belongs to Will Varner. The shops, the fields, the bank, all of it; his family lives by his rules too. Varner has two children. His son is not enough in his eyes and hears it every day. His daughter Clara is a teacher; she has been seeing the same man for a long time and he never takes the step toward marriage. The old man hires Ben and soon trusts him. Then he says what he actually wants: he means to marry this man to his daughter. From there the film becomes a contest of power. Ben rises, the son shrinks, Clara stands against both of them, and the old rumour comes back into the town. What the narrative is interested in is not love but succession: the question of who will carry it on shapes every relationship, and the old man treats it as business. The source is William Faulkner; the screenplay was assembled from several of his works. Paul Newman plays Ben, Joanne Woodward plays Clara and Orson Welles plays Varner. Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury are in the cast. Newman and Woodward met on this film and married the same year; it is the first they made together. Martin Ritt directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic American melodrama and stories of the south. Who it is not for: anyone expecting fidelity; the adaptation softens Faulkner's bleakness and its ending is far too neat.