Part of Senior Cinema
Fri, May 18, 2012 at 10am
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift.
(1959) 114min
Tennessee William’s provocative one-act gets an appropriately sensational screen adaptation (by Gore Vidal, no less) in this “outrageous, melodramatic shocker” (Time OutLondon). Katharine Hepburn gives a deliciously perverse performance as a malevolent matriarch trying to convince brain surgeon Montgomery Clift to lobotomize troubled niece Elizabeth Taylor. Controversial for its lurid intimations of homosexuality and cannibalism, this Southern gothic melodramatic still packs a punch.
