The Long, Hot Summer

There's a long hot movie at the Brattle. Mellow music, vibrant color, and a steamy setting all push up the thermometer, so don't dress too warmly.

That's the first prerequisite. The second involves not letting the name William Faulkner cross your mind during the show, for it will only evoke sympathy for Mr. Faulkner and antipathy for Jerry Wald, of Peyton Place fame, who lovingly identified Faulkner with his film, but who cunningly ripped up The Hamlet into many pieces, tossed them into the air, and caught mostly his own chaff.

Occasionally one senses the Faulknerian miasma of decay, of gutted ruins of people and places; but the hints are few, and the meaning of the Faulknerian tragedy--the triumph of Snopesism and vulgarity--is non-existent.

As Will Varner, an old, ugly, rednecked, cigar-chomping, big daddy, who likes life too much to bother dying, Orson Welles is the quality part of an only fair production. Welles is Welles, and one is willing to sit through the film two or three times, just to hear him talk like an inebriated bullfrog and act like a bulldog in heat.

In fact everything is pretty much in heat throughout the whole film. Orson Welles stirs the ashes, and Lee Remick as Eula, the wife of Varner's lazy son Jody, (Anthony Franciosa) casts a warm glow over the theatre by performing some marvelous romping in and out of bed (with the phonograph playing dixieland full blast). One gets the feeling, consequently, that Jody, who is being pushed out of his father's favor by the stranger Ben Quick (Paul Newman), does not have it so rough.

The film is downright healthy. There are no suicides, incests, miscegenations, divorces, or even race prejudices. In the end three or four recognition scenes suddenly blossom out of a fertile but rather parched story, and all is saved. Will Varner recognizes what a real chip off the old chopping block his son Jody is, when Jody tries to burn him to death; Clara, Varner's daughter, played in a vaguely disappointing way by Joanne Woodward, finds out that the guy she's loved for five years doesn't have any desire to crawl into bed with her, married or unmarried; and she suddenly recognizes her love for Ben Quick.

The Long Hot Summer ends as it begins--with Eula and her husband romping off to bed; but now everyone's happy, for similar sounds of merriment come from the two adjoining bedrooms, Clara's and Will Varner's (oh yes, he got a new bed-mate also).

This is a good bed-time story, unless you have something more worthwhile to do, such as reading William Faulkner.