A formaldehyded tabby that sits static while layer after layer of its skin is peeled off, life after life of its nine lives unsentimentally destroyed.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
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Reviews Counted: 31
Fresh: 31
Rotten:0
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Runtime: 1 hr 49 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: This is the classic cinematic version of Tennessee Williams's breathtaking play about a crazed southern family torn apart by greed. Larger-than-life patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives) lays dying, and... This is the classic cinematic version of Tennessee Williams's breathtaking play about a crazed southern family torn apart by greed. Larger-than-life patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives) lays dying, and the members of his brood clamor for the inheritance. Paul Newman is Brick, the alcoholic son struggling in the shadow of his powerful father, and Elizabeth Taylor is Maggie, Brick's lingerie-clad temptress of a wife who will do anything for the love of her cold husband. Brick's younger brother, Gooper (Jack Carson), and his wife, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood), strive for Big Daddy's approval, but even though they have children and a successful marriage, Big Daddy is dedicated to Brick, a former football star with his own personal demons. Tensions mount as the family is forced together under one roof, where secrets are revealed and relationships are lost and found. Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman's performances serve as cinematic icons; the heat and hatred between them ignites the screen, fueled by Tennessee Williams's insightful and brilliant dialogue. [More]
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Judith Anderson
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson, Madeleine Sherwood, Larry Gates, Vaughn Taylor
Director: Richard Brooks
Director: Richard Brooks
Screenwriter: James Poe, Richard Brooks
Producer: Lawrence Weingarten
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Reviews for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The performances are the thing in this film version of the Tennessee Williams stage triumph, led by Ives, repeating his stage role like a force of nature.
Director Brooks skilfully elicits the best from his performers and script with the result that there were Oscars nominations for all concerned.
Burl Ives and Judith Anderson are highly entertaining as the nightmare parents, Big Daddy and Big Mama, and Jack Carson has one of his last good roles as Newman's competitive older brother.
Thematically, Richard Brooks' screen version of Williams' play is compromised (no mention of homosexuality), but it's well directed and deftly acted by Paul Newman and Liz Taylor (both at their sexiest), and especially Burl Ives as Big Daddy.
A mousetrap with teeth that grip and a musky atmosphere of frustrated sex and milky desperation that serves as poisoned bait.
As so often with adaptations of Williams, it frequently errs on the side of overstatement and pretension, but still remains immensely enjoyable as a piece of cod-Freudian codswallop.
...the dialogue is so absorbing and the acting so intense, we hardly notice that 108 minutes go by or that there is a whole lot less to the plot than meets the eye.
Still, this potentially over-scrubbed production kept enough of Williams' energy and poetic Americana intact, fleshing it up with an ensemble of career-imprinting performances and MGM production lavishness.
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