Tennessee Williams, author of The cat on the hot zinc roof (the Franco regime censored "hot" so that we would not all burn in hell) wanted Vivien Leigh in the role of Maggie, which was taken by Elizabeth Taylor. During filming, after having their first daughter, Liz Taylor's husband died in a plane crash. Thus came that huge character, wounded ad nauseam, which drives Paul Newman crazy, this yes desired by Williams, who said: "I will never have the perfect orgasm without feeling the smell of Brando's sweat in A Streetcar Named Desire, or penetrating Newman when he stares at Maggie at the end of The Cat on the Hot Zinc Roof. It's as if the three of us swayed to a Southern tune under the innocent eyes of Baby Doll." It is one of those phrases that make you want to penetrate Newman in turn and stay the three of us looking at Maggie. Let's see what temperature the zinc had then and if there was any brave man in Spain who censored the title.
It is impressive how there are people to whom tragedies, more than joys, draw from them the art or strength they need to drive others crazy. "My life is full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened," Montaigne said. Better that way. Boredom creates monsters: it forces couples to talk, often to say stupid things that, if so innocuous, degenerate into an argument until they end up with relationships of 20 years. My favorite scene on trains occurs when a couple asks someone to please change their place to go together; They spend the journey quietly and without looking at each other, they arrive at the station and leave. Other times the marriage arrives frankly broken at the height of the seats, but they insist on staying glued: "Excuse me, could you change my place and so this asshole and I go together?"
Tennessee Williams did not like the film because that play of his lost in the cinema, crushed by censorship, the evidence of the torment of Brick, Newman's character: the pain of the loss of his best friend was not friendship but love. Williams even showed up in movie theater queues to encourage people to go home. Over time he softened his opinion. The cat on the hot zinc roof is one of my favorite films perhaps precisely because censorship leaves loose a very delicate end: for a best friend you want to stop living a few days, for the love of your life you want to stop living forever. If Newman had really lost a great friend, he would be in a forced duel; when he loses the love of his life, he decides to kill himself in pajamas and crutches before a stupefied Maggie who, surely encouraged by Francoism, seeks to take him with her to heterosexuality.
Newman's self-destruction leaves a wonderful phrase, perfect summary of alcoholism. "If you hate your life so much, why don't you disappear all at once?" asks Taylor. "Because dead I couldn't drink." Taylor's character, Maggie, also tells Brick, "It was so nice to know you loved me." But Pavese in his diaries wrote it best: "It is beautiful when a young man—eighteen, twenty years old—stops to contemplate his own tumult and tries to grasp reality and clenches his fists. But less beautiful is to do it at thirty as if nothing had happened. And don't you get cold to think you'll do it at forty, and even after?"
75% discount
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber