1958: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958) 7/10

"Big Daddy...What is it that makes him so big? His big heart? His big belly? Or his big money? (Brick Pollitt)

The theatre of Tennessee Williams is one of liars and failures, conniving creatures and tortured customers. Perhaps no other work in his oeuvre better represented and quantified these diverse characteristics than Williams' 1955 Pulitzer Prize winning play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: a tawdry story built around the falsehoods of its characters and the complex socio-cultural environment they operate within.

Set in southern Mississippi, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof focuses on the destructive crises affecting the affluent Pollitt family and their divulgence over a tumultuous weekend. The film specifically centers on the fractious relationship between former athlete Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman) and his alluring wife Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor). Escaping a lifetime of poverty through marriage to the youngest member of the Pollitt clan, Maggie is perturbed by their failing marriage. Sexless and fraught with altercations, the couple's relationship reaches a nadir when they travel to Brick's family plantation to celebrate the birthday of his father known as Big Daddy (Burl Ives).

Rather than a celebratory event, Big Daddy's birthday quickly unravels into a specter of violence, drunkenness and collusion. Partially stemming from the rumour that Big Daddy is possibly dying of colon cancer, the party sours from a festival of life into a gala of connivance. Leading this scheming are Brick's solicitor brother Gooper (Jack Carson) and his acquisitive wife Mae (Madeleine Sherwood). Spawning five hellish brats, Gooper and Mae are eager to secure Big Daddy's illustrious fortune through any means possible; even through coercing Gooper's emotionally unstable mother Big Mama (Judith Anderson) into signing a series of contracts to ensure their ownership of Big Daddy's properties.

Holed up in his room with a broken ankle, the alcoholic Brick stews about the culture of lies, the family have structured itself upon. Guilt-ridden by the death of his "best friend" Skipper and distrustful toward materialism, Brick spirals into an inebriated stupor that threatens to tear apart not only his childless marriage to Maggie, but also his status in the Pollitt household.

Throughout Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, the theme of mendacity emerges as a key idea. Structuring their lives on false images and dreams, the Pollitt family sees the undoing of their individual acts of subterfuge during Big Daddy's birthday celebrations. During a stormy weekend, family members such as Brick and Big Daddy begin to see the unravelling of these lies through an earnest attempt to reconcile truth into their relationships. Big Daddy's curmudgeonly approach to others reveals a volatile desire to truly express his repressed contempt toward his wife, his ill-behaved grandchildren and Brick's wallowing into an alcohol-induced world of self-pity.

In contrast to his family's boisterous patriarch, Brick prefers to drown his resentment in liquor. His inability to express his pain and sorrow pushes him further away from his estranged wife and isolated family. Brick's anger is both recent and long-term. He virulently detests his father's idealization of love through the form of material transactions, but Brick also despises both his wife and himself for their role in Skipper's suicide. While Brick rancorously objects to his family's culture of lies, he neglects his own aggressive and frequent participation in this realm.

Brick and Skipper's past friendship is presented throughout Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in ambiguous terms, yet their is an underlying sense their relationship probably held homosexual qualities. As the recipient of a homosexual advance or perhaps a repressed homosexual himself, Brick vigorously attempts to deny the true extent of his emotionally intense bond to Skipper. In doing so, he creates voluminous fissures in his marriage to Maggie and isolates his feelings from others with disastrous consequences.

The distancing effects brought on by the repression of these feelings is smartly addressed by director Richard Brooks throughout much of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Frequently, Brooks places characters in stark opposition to one another, often shooting characters talking to one another faced in opposite directions. This particularly works well in several of the film's key speeches involving the emotionally cold Brick. Notably, much of the play's homosexual content was muted by the censors at the time. In spite of the enforced revisions, Brooks manages to admirably maintain the sense of equivocal uncertainty fermenting in Brick's soul.

Originally earmarked for the openly gay director George Cukor, the film was instead given to Richard Brooks after Cukor turned the film down. While Cukor would have more likely given the film a greater visual eloquence, the more action-orientated Brooks offered the film a biting, steamy flavour that ultimately won over critics and audiences. The film's success aided not only the careers of Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, but also Richard Brooks who would later go onto adapt another Tennessee Williams' play (Sweet Bird of Youth) also starring Newman and Madeleine Sherwood.

Brooding and snarling, Newman carved a niche for himself as a serious actor capable of skillfully playing the arrogant/angry young man: an archetype he would frequently revisit throughout the early stages of his career in films such as The Hustler, Hud, Sweet Bird of Youth and The Young Philadelphians. Despite losing her then third husband Mike Todd in a fiery plane crash during filming, Elizabeth Taylor continued working and produced one of the most sultry and dynamic performances of her career. Yet, the film's true show stopper was neither Newman or Taylor, but Burl Ives who reprised his Broadway role as the cranky larger-than-life patriarch Big Daddy. Played with cantankerous verve, Ives' performance provides the film's strong moral core, as well as the centre of much of its anger and sorrow.

Director Richard Brooks' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof remains one of the most enduring cinematic adaptations of Williams' work. Constructed with a moody mis-en-scene, Brooks gave Cat On A Hot Tin Roof the type of scorching, sultry atmosphere that has defined Williams work for audiences and critics alike. Unlike his second Williams' adaptation Sweet Bird of Youth, Brooks' first attempt at translating the Southern playwright was not as fatally destabilized by the censorship of the era. Rather, the film's tedious pacing is its only truly detrimental attribute; a factor that is nevertheless ultimately redeemed by its acute performances and evocative visual ornamentation.

* Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is released on DVD by Warner Home Video and is available in their excellent Tennessee Williams Film Collection box set

Other Richard Brooks films reviewed:
Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) 6/10

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque