LIZ UNHINGED!
Unhinged plotlines, performances, & pret-a-porter featuring the iconic Elizabeth Taylor.
SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER 1959
Based on the 1958 play by Gore Vidal’s close friend Tennessee Williams, this was an adaptation Vidal wrote while under contract to MGM. The play was the third written by Williams in which he dealt with homosexuality, following A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Suddenly, Last Summer, however, broached the topic much more explicitly than the two earlier films. In the depiction of the gay Sebastian Venable—told through flashbacks—the Production Code Administration gave the filmmakers special dispensation declaring, "Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a lifestyle, it can be considered moral in theme even though it deals with sexual perversion."
Mankiewicz’ spellbinding drama featured top stars—including a luminous Elizabeth Taylor, an unhinged Katharine Hepburn and a post-accident Montgomery Clift—in a delirious unravelling of family trauma. Williams told The Village Voice in 1973 that the film ran too far afield from his original play and "made [him] throw up." Vidal criticized the climactic ending, which had been altered by the director, and Mankiewicz himself blamed the source material, describing the play as "badly constructed ... based on the most elementary Freudian psychology." (Harvard Film Archive)
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift
Runtime: 114 min.
Language: English
Sunday, June 7
Monday, June 8
Director: Joseph Losey
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum
Runtime: 109 min.
Language: English
SECRET CEREMONY 1968
Director Joseph Losey’s bizarre psychological thriller features Mia Farrow as a disturbed, orphaned young woman and Elizabeth Taylor as the prostitute who pretends to be her mother. At first, the two find only a superficial resemblance to lost loved ones (as Farrow also looks like Taylor’s daughter), but gradually the pair assume their roles for real. However, when Robert Mitchum as Farrow’s stepfather is stirred into the brew, things get considerably stranger. Everyday habits and household items gradually assume a ritual significance, and Taylor and Farrow’s weird relationship lurches toward a frightening and uncertain future. A creepy modern Gothic, impeccably fine-tuned by director Losey’s customary attention to character detail. With Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown.
Sunday, June 14
BOOM! 1968
“The best failed art film ever, so genuinely beautiful and awful that it’s perfect.” – John Waters
A brilliantly eccentric adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Losey's cult classic is considered one of the great examples of high camp cinema. Eager to continue her association with Williams after the screen versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer, Elizabeth Taylor agreed to star as a fabulously wealthy writer sequestered in her villa on Capri and visited by a mysterious man, played by her then husband Richard Burton, who may just be an angel of death. Noël Coward co-stars as a gossipy neighbor known as "the Witch of Capri," a role originally played onstage by a woman. (Harvard Film Archive)
Wednesday, June 17
Director: Joseph Losey
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Noel Coward
Runtime: 113 min.
Language: English & Italian w/ English subtitles
IDENTIKIT (AKA THE DRIVER'S SEAT) 1974
In what remains the most obscure, bizarre, and wildly misunderstood film of her entire career—and perhaps even 1970s Italian cinema—IDENTIKIT (aka THE DRIVER'S SEAT) stars Elizabeth Taylor as a disturbed woman who arrives in Rome to find a fragmented city. From there, Taylor navigates autocratic law, leftist violence, and her own increasingly unhinged mission to find the most dangerous liaison of all. Academy Award® nominee Ian Bannen (THE OFFENCE), Mona Washbourne (THE COLLECTOR) and Andy Warhol co-star in this hallucinatory neo-noir, which was photographed by three-time Oscar® winner Vittorio Storaro (APOCALYPSE NOW, THE LAST EMPEROR). New 4K restoration by Severin Films!
Thursday, June 25
Director: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Ian Bannen, Guido Mannari
Runtime: 102 min.
Language: English