The Long, Hot Summer
September 2003 Reviewed by: Wes Phillips Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The Long, Hot Summer is based on several short stories and a novella by William Faulkner. It is the tale of Ben Quick (Paul Newman), a drifter who comes to Frenchman's Bend, a one-man town owned by Will Varner (Orson Welles), upsetting the seemingly calm, yet actually seething languor of the film's title.

Varner's children, daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) and son Jody (Anthony Franciosa) both suspect Quick's motives and distrust him. Daughter-in-law Eula (Lee Remick) seems simply to want him. Will Varner seems to find him threatening and, Machiavelli-like, determines to keep him close, if only to acquire the grandchildren he so fervently desires from this "prize bull."

Get the picture? We're talking a hotbed of repressed, and not so repressed, desire. Surprisingly, it doesn't play as heavy-handed as this sounds. Part of that is due to the superb cast: Newman, Woodward, Remick, Angela Lansbury, and Welles may well have had off days in their careers, but not here. Their characters are fully fleshed and believable.

Credit for this movie’s success must also go to the superb screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who managed to streamline Faulkner's signature repression and sublimation without descending into self-referential parody. There are long passages of conversation -- the film's equivalent of Faulkner's unrelenting narrative style -- but the conversation is fascinating, as well as surprisingly light and witty.

Perhaps most astonishing in this age of "anything goes" is how much sexual tension and heat are generated in a film that barely shows any undraped limbs, much less any nudity or physical contact. The Long, Hot Summer simmers without ever being obvious. How refreshing.

Also welcome is the DVD's big extra: an episode of the American Movie Channel's Backstory, which highlights a series of contemporary reminiscences with Newman and Woodward. It is better, in my opinion, than the voice-over style of commentary so often employed.

The video transfer is superb, although it is not perfect. Some of the colors seem faded -- which may add to the film's sense of deep summer enervation -- and the focus occasionally falters, but for a film approaching 50 years old, it looks pretty darn good. The sound quality of the DVD is also good, considering its age. Welles may have been over-projecting, since his voice comes off as harsh, almost shrill, but the score and sound effects are quite effective.

Blessed with a stellar cast, sensitive writing, and surprisingly robust sound and video, The Long, Hot Summer is a throwback to an era when story and characterization were enough to make a film stand out. That hasn't changed a bit in the last 45 years. It still plays as compelling storytelling at its finest.

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