A Tennessee Williams’ potboiler as emotions run high in the 1950s Mississippi cotton plantation as Big Daddy Pollitt awaits his test results.
Former sports star and favoured son Brick (Paul Newman – Hud, The Hustler) and wife Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor – Cleopatra, Suddenly Last Summer) are not getting on too well, not helped by his love of the bottle. As tensions rise in the heat, older brother Gooper (Jack Carson – A Star Is Born, Mildred Pierce) uses this to his advantage as far as positioning himself in his father’s favour – more than helped by his deeply unpleasant wife, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood – Sweet Bird of Youth, The Changeling) and their six young children.
In the course of one night, the Pollitt family are rent apart by the ambitions of various members of the family with Big Dady (Burl Ives – The Big Country, Our Man in Havana) a towering force responding to each and every one of them. The tension crackles in director Richard Brooks’ (Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood) adaptation of a humid and suffocating southern birthday celebration.
Nominated for 6 Oscars in 1959 – best film, director, actor, actress, adapted screenplay, cinematography.
Rating: 79%
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