The Long, Hot Sumthin, Sumthin

A Textual Approach to The Long, Hot Summer (1958)

[Content Warning: A whole lotta sexual and crude language]

Poster for The Long, Hot Summer (1958) via IMDb

The Long, Hot Summer (1958) - Textual

Cooling thoughts and chilly vibes to all my American readers at the tail end of this horrendous heatwave! This week, to match the sweltering heat, I thought we’d review Martin Ritt’s The Long, Hot Summer, but what I should have surmised by the porny ass title is that this film needs a cold shower for a different reason. As a film adaptation of various William Faulkner works with splashes of Tennessee Williams influences, I thought it would be more oppressive heat from the former, but it was really oppressive horniness from the latter.

Because my thumb is still in a brace, this review will also be a bit shorter like last week’s Marxist review of Weekend at Bernie’s (1989). The Review Roulette wheel landed on Textual as our approach, which, as a reminder, here means the literal text of the script. So, let’s cautiously step into the thinly veiled euphemisms and not-so-subtle double entendres of this late-Code era film that made me say “this woman needs a vibrator” more than once.

The Long, Hot Summer is about hottie with a body Ben Quick (Paul Newman) who’s new in town and willing to con and scheme his way into a comfortable living situation with the town’s benevolent dictator Will Varner (Orson Welles). Varner has two children: Jody (Anthony Franciosa) who is desperate to impress both his father and wife, Eula (Lee Remick) who herself is happy to impress both her father-in-law and the local boys who stalk her and howl for her like rabid cats in heat; and Clara (Joanne Woodward) who is desperate to both be her own person and have a well-deserved orgasm or twenty. Will, somewhat of a con man himself, sees potential in Quick to shadily run his businesses and masculinely continue his family line, so tries to sell his daughter’s hand to the newcomer. Ultimately, we learn that the only hard things about bad boy Ben Quick are his rock-hard abs when he comes to reject Will’s proposition in favor of Clara’s right to choose to be single. Unfortunately for the longevity of his feminist grandstand, this makes Clara’s ovaries explode so hard that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward got married later that year.

So, what I want to do with this slightly shorter review is different from our usual. Instead of a straightforward film analysis, I am going to just put some quotes in front of you, and we’ll marvel at them together.

Firstly, we have the opening credits song lyrics that should’ve been the first tip-off that this movie is about a long hot sumthin, sumthin:

The long hot summer
Seems to know every time you′re near.
And the touch of a breeze gently stirs all the trees
And a bird wants to please my ear.

The long hot summer
Seems to know what a flirt you are.
Seems to know your caress isn't mine to possess,
How could someone possess a star?

But you may long for me, long before the Fall.
Long before the winds announce that winter′s come to call.
And meanwhile I'll court you, and meanwhile I'll kiss you.
Meanwhile my lonely arms will hold you strong.

And meanwhile,
The long hot summer slowly moves along.
Oh so slowly moves along.

Next, we have the tone setting humor of the “old maid” friend of our “old maid” protagonist. Both are 23 years old and desperate for the kind of attention Eula gets from her father-in-law, husband, and local hooligans. Interestingly, this film uses witty humor and excellent jokes for the under-sexed characters in the film but giggling as its primary euphemism for sex happening somewhere in the house, normally Eula and Jody, but sometimes Orson Welles and Angela Lansbury (YES, ALSO ANGELA LANSBURY, the horniest maid in all of London in Gaslight (1944)). So Clara’s humor is dry and sharp and her best friend’s is a balance to hers as seen here.

Clara’s friend Agnes (Sarah Marshall) to Clara: "Bring a beau by." My phone rang just one time last week. Just one time. And this man with a deep, beautiful voice says… "Can I interest you in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica?"

Then we start getting direct flirtations between Quick and Clara that leave her absolutely gagged. Like trip over nothing, full Eminem lyrics gagged; palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, girl needs HELP gagged. My favorite example she doesn’t even respond to because she’s actively fighting for her life trying not to jump this man.

Quick to Clara: Life's very long and full of salesmanship, Miss Clara. You might buy something, yet.

A short while later, Clara has her long-time suitor, Agnes’s brother over for dinner. She’s mad about him, but Alan is either a closeted gay man or into some freaky incest shit. It’s the 1950s so the euphemisms that he’s close with his mother and sister could really just be ways of signalling homosexuality, but they’re also weirdly specific and suggestive because the whole film is weirdly specific and suggestive. But anyway, Alan is not interested in Clara and it’s killing our sexless heroine because she needs SOMETHING after talking to Paul Newman and staring into those baby blues. So, Clara and Alan have this conversation.

Clara to Alan: No, Alan, there's no sense in pretendin' that girls don't think about sex. They do. You oughta hear some of the conversations between Agnes and me.

Alan, AGNES’S BROTHER, like a freak: Uh, I'd like to. Well, there's nothing wrong with being anxious about your love life. I am about mine.

Clara: This is certainly not the way I expected this conversation to be going. I thought we were gonna sit here on the front porch and let the moon shine down on us… and, just like those boys in the bushes, let nature take its course.

Alan: Why, Clara, nature is taking its course. You're not the kind of girl to be howled at and dragged off the porch into the bushes. You're a nice, quiet, self-contained girl. You'll see. Everything you want's gonna happen to you.

I think Alan does fully understand how badly Clara needs to be dicked down but, my god can you feel her sexual frustration through the screen when he says she’s not “that kind of girl” after she told him very fully that she would very much like to be that kind of girl and she trusts him enough to be the one to make her into it. He is right, though, that everything she wants is gonna happen to her because what she really, really wants is to be completely ravaged by Quick. And it is a genuine relief to know that Woodward and Newman got married shortly after this film because she looks physically pained by her blue, blue ovaries.

Immediately after the exchange with Alan, Quick comes out to talk to her and this poor woman is really weighing up her principles in real time as he talks. She holds her own and errs on the side of respectability, but it is palpable how much she wants to be respectfully disrespected on her front porch.

Quick: Well, your friend left early, without even firing a shot.

Clara: I was kissed good night, Mr. Quick.

Quick: Kissed and left. That'd been me, I'd have stayed till sunup.

Clara: Aren't you reckless.

Quick: Aren't you?

Clara: No, I'm just skittish, Mr. Quick. Just plain skittish.

Quick: I have an answer for that. Let's go get in that old Lincoln car of yours and go plow up the countryside. Let's go holler off a bridge good and loud.

Clara: There's been enough commotion tonight.

Quick: You want quiet? Let's go find us a needle in a haystack.

Clara: Mr. Quick, those are all lovely, colorful suggestions, but I'm afraid if I started out to follow you, I would hear the starch in my petticoat begin to rustle, and I'd know I was out of character.

Quick: Get out of character, lady. Come on. Get way out.

Girl’s titanium moral framework is splitting at the joints with every come-on she has to reject.

I’m aware this isn’t really a review, but you had to know about it. It’s a great film, and the script is just exceptionally horny and weird and fun. Especially as a film from the late 50s when Hollywood, as mentioned, is still under the Hays Code, The Long, Hot Summer is an excellent example of how the Code was losing favor, support, and enforcement. Many films in this period, including Newman’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (also 1958), were becoming far more explicit than ever before under the Code, especially with depictions or discussions of sex. This film takes a smattering of Faulkner texts and Williams influences, throw’s Faulkner’s name above the title, and then delivers this beautifully sex-forward story under the guise of it being a literary adaptation almost as if saying “get as fucked as Clara would like to be” to the Production Code Administration. What a beautiful message to puritanical wanna be fascists.