1958 - THE LONG HOT SUMMER, half baked southern family drama

Take a couple of William Faulkner stories about the old South and rewrite them to focus on everyone's favorite 50's movie couple, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and you end up with this mediocre film.  We're in Mississippi (although shot in Louisiana) where the problems of the rich Varner family seem to be of monumental importance.  Daughter Clara played by Joanne Woodward has been "keeping company" with repressed homosexual  Alan Stewart.  Into Clara's life comes virile Ben Quick who walks around with his shirt off a whole lot.

The head of the Varner family is played by Orson Welles giving one of his over the top performances in someone else's film.  Angela Lansbury is his long time mistress who wants to get married.  Tony Franciosa is his wimpy son who is married to "hot to trot" Lee Remick.  In this cast there is not a southerner in the bunch.  The main plot seems to be will independent and spirited southern belle Clara see the light and end up with Ben Quick, a tough guy on the outside but in reality a very sensitive soul or will she continue to purse the repressed gay guy.  I wonder how it will all come out?

 

This film does have widescreen on location photography to recommend it.  Orson Welles is really the whole show with his glorious hammy performance  and all these young method actors are at the beginnings of their career.  The director Martin Ritt was a New York guy who had trained at the Actors Studio with all of these performers so he knew how to work with them.  Welles was his usual bad boy self on the film but apparently Ritt was able to tame him.

 

There is really nothing all that remarkable about this film.  If anything it’s full of lots of good Hollywood liberals who probably didn’t have a clue about southern culture.  The writers Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. pasted together a screenplay which was really just a watered down version of Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  Newman and Woodward were good east coast Democrats and director Martin Ritt was also a left winger. Probably the farthest south any of these Hollywood guys ever got was Mailibu California.

The running time is 115 minutes.