Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (DVD)

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Brick and Maggie are the center posts of the film. Their relationship represents the "mendacity" that Williams mentions maybe a half dozen times in the story, a relationship currently built on lies, falsehoods, and deception. What are the real motives behind Brick's decline into alcoholism and despondency? Is he simply a spoiled, limp, indecisive jellyfish, governed entirely by his overbearing father? Does his hatred of his wife have anything to do with his best friend Skipper's suicide several years before? Or does he hate himself for Skipper's death, and is he now playing out a long, agonized guilt, which he blames on everybody else?

The characters all lie and connive (more of that "mendacity" business), and all of them appear not to be able to stand each other. Big Daddy doesn't seem to like either of his sons and plans to outlive them both just so neither of them will inherit his estate. Can any of these folks stop lying and hating for a moment to see the love around them?

The film is virtually all talk and takes place almost exclusively in Big Daddy's house. In those respects, the film betrays its stage origins more than do most film adaptations of plays. Yet, the dialogue is so absorbing and the acting so intense, we hardly notice that 108 minutes go by or that there is a whole lot less to the plot than meets the eye.

Video:
The film's original 1.85:1 aspect ratio nicely fills out a 16x9 widescreen television, and WB's high-bit-rate transfer presents a brightly lit picture, with fairly natural colors. Overall, I'd judge it a tad soft on detail, but it is, nevertheless, quite realistic. There is no grain to speak of, and there are no moiré effects. If I had to fault the video at all, it is for being perhaps a shade too colorful for the story it has to tell. Black-and-white might have suited it better.

Audio:
The audio engineers render the sound via Dolby Digital 1.0 mono, and while it has little to do but reproduce midrange dialogue, it has an odd, strained, nasal quality about it. This was most noticeable to me at the beginning of the film, and either the problem disappeared before long or I simply got used to it; I'm not sure which. In any case, expect nothing out of the ordinary here.

Extras:
There are two primary extras in this "Deluxe Edition": The first is an audio commentary by biographer Donald Spoto, author of "The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams." He tells us up front that he will try to make his commentary as entertaining for the listener as possible, and he delivers enough analysis, background information, and trivia to fulfill that ambition. The second item is a ten-minute featurette, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roff: Playing Cat and Mouse," which is mostly promotional but contains a fair amount of useful information as well.

The extras conclude with twenty-six scene selections, but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English and French spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Thoughts:
"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was probably the most melodramatic thing Tennessee Williams ever wrote, but its characters are so fascinating and the acting in the movie so good that it makes up for any lack of intellectual complexity. Taylor and Newman are expectedly good, of course, but it's Ives who steals the show.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated the movie for six Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor (Newman), Best Actress (Taylor), Best Director (Brooks), Best Color Cinematography (William H. Daniels), and Best Screenplay Based on Another Medium (Richard Brooks and James Poe). The movie went away empty-handed, but not for lack of trying. It made up for its shortage of Oscars by being one of the most-popular films of the year.

Warner Bros. have made the Deluxe Edition of "A Streetcar Named Desire" available individually or in a six-movie box set, "The Tennessee Williams Film Collection," which also includes "Baby Doll," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "The Night of the Iguana," "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone," and "Sweet Bird of Youth."

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