Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an Oscar-nominated 1958 film made by MGM and directed by Richard Brooks. It was based on the Tony-nominated play of the same name by Tennessee Williams.
The film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Jack Carson, Judith Anderson and Madeleine Sherwood. The movie was adapted by Richard Brooks and James Poe, and directed by Brooks.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role, (Paul Newman), Best Actress in a Leading Role, (Elizabeth Taylor), Best Cinematography, Color, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
Bowing to the tenor of the times, suggestion of Brick's homosexuality and the circumstances of Skipper's suicide were toned down. Tennessee Williams detested this bowdlerized adaptation of the play, and advised people not to see it.
Elizabeth Taylor proceeded with filming even though her husband Michael Todd was killed in a plane crash a little over a week into shooting.
Plot Synopsis: Wealthy Mississippi plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt, unaware that he's dying of cancer and disturbed by the strained and childless marriage of his favored alcoholic son Brick and his other son, Gooper, whose wife is about to bring forth another in the endless line of little "no-neck monsters," celebrates his sixty-fifth birthday with his family. Brick's wife, Maggie, beautiful and desirable, tries unsuccessfully to coax her husband away from the bottle, while alternately enticing him and taunting him about his obsession with his deceased best friend and the guilt about their relationship. The seamy tensions reach a climax when the truth of Big Daddy's health is revealed, and he and Brick manage to resolve their differences.
Brick, the former football star turned alcoholic, is the portrayal of wounded masculinity -- poor Maggie has to listen to snickering from his sister-in-law about the two's lack of any offspring or an heir. Of course an important element in Southern culture at this time.
The scene in the basement between Brick and Big Daddy is one of my favorites. But the best, and perhaps the most climactic scene of the film is when Brick, in the presence of Big Daddy, (who serves a moderator of sorts for the couple in between he and Brick's own roaring exchanges) angrily accuses Maggie of having gotten his best friend Skipper drunk to sleep with him and demands to know what happened the night that Skipper committed suicide.
Brick and Maggie's tumultuous relationship--a result of his drinking, lack of sexual desire (i.e failure to produce an heir) and her alleged infidelity and jealously involving his best friend--is made even more emotional and fiery for the audience b/c in the backdrop there is the death of Taylor's real life husband. And perhaps no other actor/actress in history has experienced or been connected with more tragedy than Elizabeth Taylor. This is certainly one of her more powerful and captivating performances, perhaps motivated and enhanced by the sadness and sense of loss she was feeling at the time....Just powerful, powerful acting in this film by all involved.
