SUMMER AND SMOKE (1961) Screening May 5th as Part of ‘Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis’

“The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned with a vengeance! You’ve come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell!”

The 1961 classic SUMMER AND SMOKE, based on the Tennessee Williams play and starring Geraldine Page and Lawrence Harvey screens in a continuous loop Friday, May 5 in the Public Media Commons in Grand Center in St. Louis as part of this year’s Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. This is a free screening (actually, continuous loop of screenings). Geraldine Page’s daughter and actress, Angelica Page, will be in town for the festival and part of a dramatic reading of ‘ensemble 2.0’ , a play based on Francesca Williams’s collection of family letters. For more details of the ‘ensemble 2.0’ event, go HERE

SUMMER AND SMOKE is set in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, from the “turn of the century through 1916”. Geraldine Page received an Oscar nomination for her sterling portrayal of Alma, a small town spinster and minister’s daughter hoping to kindle a spark with John Buchanan, Jr., the ne’er-do-well doctor’s son who has lived next door since they were kids. This adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play (in which Page scored a personal success off-Broadway some nine years before the film) is brightly-painted and full of nervous, fluttery life (it’s like a neurotic Disney movie–Pollyanna herself might just live down the street). Laurence Harvey is somewhat mild-mannered as Page’s leading man (one can’t imagine this guy getting too wild), and the supporting players are a variable lot, ranging from Una Merkel’s dotty mother to Rita Moreno’s strutting flooze. Page is the one to watch; with the tiniest sparkle of dementia in her alert eyes, and the quiver of her uncertain mouth, she nearly transforms this material, an amalgamation of Tennessee Williams and Hollywood in 1961

Join Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis for screenings of this timeless classic.  

For more information about the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis go HERE