After big success turning William Faulkner’s THE LONG, HOT SUMMER into faux-Tennessee Williams the previous year, producer Jerry Wald, composer Alex North, director Martin Ritt, writers Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr., and star Joanne Woodward went back for second helpings on this famously unfathomable Faulkner novel with a title out of MACBETH: ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.’ Well, they got the ‘signifying nothing’ part right. Here, the model is less Tennessee Williams than producer Wald’s earlier hit PEYTON PLACE (Yoknapatawpha Place?), and Jack Warden's ‘idiot’ doesn’t tell the tale, mostly hangs out on the porch. And just what is that tale? Something about a cursed Southern family, once prominent, now vaguely incestuous, with Woodward hunting up sexual possibilities off the decaying family grounds causing Step-Uncle Yul Brynner (sporting a fine head of hair) to lock her up for safe keeping. Perhaps traveling ‘carny’ man Stuart Whitman can offer a way out . . . but does Joanne want out? Meanwhile, Prodigal Daughter Margaret Leighton, Woodward’s mother, returns after years away to a shabby mansion largely run by no-nonsense Mammy-type Ethel Waters, trudging up & down the stairs, bringing tea & sandwiches to various interrelated semi-invalids, pipe dreamers and her own handsome grandchildren. And you thought the novel was tough to follow!
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with THE LONG, HOT SUMMER; at least it’s an entertaining mess. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-long-hot-summer-1958.html
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