Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams’ study of a crumbling Southern patriarchy is riveting stuff. Although the word homosexuality is never uttered, this Hollywood reworking brings a certain understanding of the son’s latent “immaturity” and his wife’s childlessness. Bolstered by extraordinary performances, this tale’s a summer sizzler. Read full review

The material has been bowdlerized to the point of abstraction, which makes Richard Brooks's sweaty, emphatic direction look a little silly—there just isn't that much to get worked up about. But Burl Ives and Judith Anderson are highly entertaining as the nightmare parents, Big Daddy and Big Mama, and Jack Carson has one of his last good roles as Newman's competitive older brother. Read full review

A searing portrait of the human condition. [12 Oct 2007, p.B6]

Two of cinema's most iconic stars on top form make this worth a good look. Read full review

The manipulative Maggie, irritated by the heat and by Gooper and Sister Woman’s ”no-neck monsters,” is among Taylor’s most accomplished creations and earned her a second Oscar nod; the performance has an inner coil in it, as if something were ready to spring at any second. Read full review

The performances are sweltering...This isn’t a good thing. Yes, it’s fitting for the setting – a humid, suffocating Louisiana mansion where the family of an ailing tycoon (Burl Ives) connives to inherit his fortune – but the overall result is like watching a melodrama in a sauna. It’s just too much. Read full review

Richard Brooks adapted and directed this superbly acted though watered-down -- all references to homosexuality were deleted -- 1958 version of Williams' popular 1955 play. [30 Apr 2006, p.E14]

An intense drama of 12 harrowing hours in the life of a voracious Southern family in conflict. [10 June 1990, p.4]

Burl Ives, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson and two or three more almost work and yell themselves to pieces making this drama of strife within a new-rich Southern family a ferocious and fascinating show. And what a pack of trashy people these accomplished actors perform! Read full review

Taylor looks very desirable, and the cast is full of actors whooping it up with Southern Accents.

Strongly scripted and deliciously acted, full of riveting confrontations as the emotionally intense events unfold. Though a feline Elizabeth Taylor overplays her role, Paul Newman is excellent as her brooding husband, but it's Burl Ives as dying patriarch 'Big Daddy' who's the ultimate revelation. [13 Aug 2006, p.10]

In his four earlier films, Williams seemed to need a warmup of two backward steps before he could take one step forward, but at least the movement was visible and real. This time, Adapter-Director Richard Brooks has been able to put very little motion in his motion picture. His Cat is a formaldehyded tabby that sits static while layer after layer of its skin is peeled off, life after life of its nine lives unsentimentally destroyed. But in Williams, Brooks has a rare playwright who can make his static electric, and a blinkered grope toward the past as suspenseful as a headlong crash into the future. Read full review

As so often with adaptations of Williams, it frequently errs on the side of overstatement and pretension, but still remains immensely enjoyable as a piece of cod-Freudian codswallop. Read full review

The performances are the thing in this film version of the Tennessee Williams stage triumph, led by Ives, repeating his stage role like a force of nature. Read full review

Taylor has a major credit with her portrayal of Maggie. The frustrations and desires, both as a person and a woman, the warmth and understanding she molds, the loveliness that is more than a well-turned nose – all these are part of a well-accented, perceptive interpretation. Read full review

The 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not a good adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play of the same name. But as a portrayal of the depths of loneliness we create for ourselves, and an example of the power of star performance, it’s a great film. Read full review