The Long Hot Summer

A candy-covered, technicolor "Tennessee-Williams Lite" movie about a southern con-man/barn burner (Paul Newman) who visits a small southern town and impresses the town patriarch (Orson Welles) and his spinster daughter (Joanne Woodward).  Enjoyable on its on terms, this silly movie has something from everyone.  There's  the Newman-Woodward romance for the ladies,  Lee Remick (who deserved more screen time) for the men, and Welles and Angela Landsbury for those who care about acting.  As for the  story,  its set in the mythical Hollywood Deep South (home of crude cigar chomping patriarchs, Greek column mansions, and hot steamy southern sex) and  bears little relationship to Faulkner or  reality. But if you want to see Paul Newman with his shirt off or Orson Welles playing Burl Ives playing Big Daddy its OK.  Rating **1/2

Other Views:

Manny Farber:  "The fooler in the peepshow is that the jolts are conspicuous waste effects: the beguilement comes from a certain chicanery and crochet like precision.  A counterfeit graphic-ness - that fact that Orson Welles storms a plantation on a jeep, talks fast in clogged-mattress Southernese and carries a lapel-pocket filled with Japanese garden of choice Ever sharps - is obvious in every scene of the likable precious "The Long hot Summer".  The fantastic note is not in the hokey naturalism, but in the exquisite  speed-writing that arranges the spots and collides them with steel writing clarity."

Bosley Crowther:  "There are those who would like to rate this picture, produced by Jerry Wald for Twentieth Century-Fox, alongside that same producer's (and studio's) "Peyton Place." Both of them tell stories of tensions in American towns. There is one noticeable difference. "Peyton Place" started weakly and got strong. "The Long, Hot Summer" starts superbly and ends in a senseless, flabby heap."