The first of five collaborations between Martin Ritt and Paul Newman (the others being Paris Blues, Hud, The Outrage, and Hombre... hmm.. must watch these again), a melodramatic adaptation of various works by William Faulkner. Ritt had been an assistant to Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio where most of the cast came from; Newman received Best Actor at Cannes. This is where he and Joanne Woodward were reunited (they had met on a Broadway production of Picnic). (Ritt next did another Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, again with Woodward, opposite Yul Brynner.)
I enjoyed it, from a distance. Alex North's score is fine, Joe LaShelle's Deluxe Cinemascope photography fine. Rest of cast: Orson Welles, Lee Remick, Anthony Franciosa (Career), Angela Lansbury, Richard Anderson (The Six Million Dollar Man and lots of TV). It has kind of a weird ending in which Welles' patriarch suddenly develops some soul and everything ends up OK - not what I was expecting at all (thought at least one person would be killed).
I've just gone down a Paul Newman rabbit hole.
I liked it when he suggests to Woodward that as a kid she probably had a doll with no head. I rather like that line and wondered if it was Faulkner's.
PB: What was Martin Ritt like directing The Long, Hot Summer?
OW: Well. he's the one who said to me, "I want you to relate to the windows," and I said, "Marty, you mean you want me to look at them?" But I enjoyed very much working with Joanne Woodward - we had nice scenes together - and Angela Lansbury. I love her. But I wasn't very happy, although the picture was an enormous success. That's the one where the critic of the New York Times [Bosley Crowther] wrote "Orson Welles, believe it or not, was quite good" (laughs).
'This Is Orson Welles' (1992).
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