The Long, Hot Summer
by Martin Ritt
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Franciosa, Joanne Woodward, Lee Remick, Orson Welles, Paul NewmanDirector: Martin Ritt
Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
Cinematographer: Joseph LaShelle
Editor: Louis R. Loeffler
Producer: Jerry Wald
Writer: Harriet Frank Jr.
Writer: Irving Ravetch
Writer: William Faulkner
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Long, Hot Summer
Movie Review: Mumbles of a summer's night
Summary: 3 Stars
Martin Ritt's famous 1958 film enjoys a somewhat bewildering reputation mostly because this was the film where Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward got together before their marriage. The story has always been that their desire for each other is very much visible on the screen, but in actuality this isn't really the best work either of them has done, and they seem more like old friends than hot for one another's pants (although this film really does show Newman off at the height of his physical beauty). Neither of them seems to have mastered the Mississippi accent believably, and instead they mumble in a very stagy Southern-fried way, although they are somewhat eclipsed in this by the bizarre performance of Orson Welles as Woodward's father that just about overwhelms everything else on the screen. As Will Varner, the no-account redneck millionaire who owns the largest house in Frenchman's bend as well as the hotel, general store, and just about everything else, Welles (by this time gigantic in girth) wears a hilariously unconvincing rubber nose and a terrible fake tan (which doesn't even match the color of the nose in some shots). Bellowing and chewing the scenery, he tried to out-Method the Method actors on the screen by mumbling so incomprehensively almost all his dialogue had to be re-dubbed. It's a fascinating trainwreck of a performance. Joor Tony Franciosa has to play the unplayable role of Varner's nervous son Jodie who finds the only relief from his father's emasculating browbeatings by (literally!) whooping it up with his hot-to-trot wife, Eula (Lee Remick). The film builds to an unbelievable climax and an even less believable redemption for Jodie, which seems to be announced rather than enacted. It would be foolish to deny that the film's is quite entertaining, but it's not very good, either: despite the fact that the screenplay was cobbled together from multiple stories and novels by William Faulkner (particularly THE HAMLET), it clearly owes much more in texture and characters to the recent Broadway success CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. And the performances are not very good, even though they're quite enjoyable;you'd be hard pressed to believe the actors in this were among the most famous of the 20th century if you hadn't seen elsewhere films like THE HUSTLER, RACHEL, RACHEL, CITIZEN KANE, and DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES.
Summary of The Long, Hot Summer
Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Orson Welles, Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury co-star in this riveting tale of life in the Deep South. Provocative and compelling, it simmers with sexual tension, bawdy humor and a powerful clash of personalities. When Ben Quick (Newman), a suspected barnburner drifts into town, he catches the eye of Will Varner, a tyrannical, intimidating patriarch (Welles) who decides Quick is the ideal husband for his spinsterish daughter (Woodward). But once the loner moves in, the two men lock horns, drawing Varner's family into a complex web of emotions and actions that leaves all of them changed forever.Paul Newman has his glorious youthful swagger in this southern-fried melodrama, which marked his first picture with Joanne Woodward (they married after shooting ended). The script is a melange of William Faulkner stories, although it appears more under the influence of Tennessee Williams and Picnic than the Nobel Prize winner. Drifter Newman catches the eye of schoolmarm Woodward and her father, a rural Mississippi bigshot (Orson Welles). This is not one of Welles's better moments; he appears to be conducting make-up experiments. There is some enjoyable flapdoodle along the way, in the Freud-meets-Gone with the Wind manner of '50s southern cooking, but the ending is embarrassingly compromised. The same production team would leave out the box-office concessions a few years later on Hud. A studly Newman justifies this description of his character: "I wish I was Ben Quick. He's got the whole state of Mississippi to graze on." --Robert Horton
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