The Passion of Montgomery Clift

by Amy Lawrence

From his 1948 film debut in Red River through such classics as The Heiress, A Place in the Sun , and From Here to Eternity , Montgomery Clift exemplified a new masculinity and―leading the way for a generation of actors, including Marlon Brando and James Dean―epitomized the new naturalistic style of acting. Clift’s impact was such that, both during his troubled life and after his untimely death, fans described the actor in religious terms, characterizing Clift as a vision, acolyte, and martyr. In The Passion of Montgomery Clift , Amy Lawrence challenges the myth of Clift as tragic victim by examining Clift’s participation in the manipulation of his image, his collaborations with directors, his relationships with costars, and his interactions with writers.

Genres: Film, Biography

344 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Amy Lawrence is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Dartmouth College and is the author of Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema (UC Press), and The Films of Peter Greenaway.

Reviews

[Bob May · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Passion of Montgomery Clift" by Amy Lawrence is both a weird and interesting book: a bit of a mess, especially early on. It is not a biography, per se, though it tracks Clift's chronology and includes interesting biographical tidbits. Mostly, it is a consideration of Clift's films, in chronological order from his beginning as a singular exemplar of male beauty to his tragic end as a damaged shell of his former self. Lawrence's analyses of Clift's evolving acting style and individual scenes are especially good. (She is a film studies professor and historian.) It is when she considers the films' themes that her analysis toggles abruptly into long semi-related historical and social digressions and finally attempts to compare Clift's career insecurities and his battles with his demons (the painful disfigurement and trauma from his famous mid-career car crash, then alcohol and drugs, his closeted sexuality and the homophobia of the film industry) to Christ-like or saintly passion. This is where the book get weird. But interesting. Finally, Lawrence's appreciation of Clift's ethos and gifts is heartfelt and Clift's story is itself moving and informative.

[Kathryn Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like a nerdy guilty pleasure - which I really enjoyed

[Patrick10132002yahoo.Com]

There are some good insights here into Clift's acting choices, the way he worked on his scripts, reshaping (often shortening) his lines until he felt they were most appropriate for the character.

That said, I have to say I found most of the book annoying. The author is a college professor and approaches Clift as a "phenomenon" that resonated with a lot of moviegoers in different ways. I almost have the impression she would've been just as happy writing a book about some other celebrated figure (Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse) whose status as a "legendary" culture hero/heroine who "burned out" early is thought to be more interesting than their talent. In vacuuming up seemingly nearly all the printed material about Clift, she gives undue emphasis to the usually egregious headlines and stories in movie fan magazines. This mainly tells you what they felt was likely to interest the adolescent girls who read these magazines. The author does interview one Clift fan from his era (her mother), whose rather vague recollections are not very interesting.

Dr. Lawrence seems obsessively interested in any possible homosexual connection in relation to Clift. This may actually be there in a few instances, such as Clift's scenes with the older German character actor O.E. Haase in The Big Lift (though few would've noticed if they weren't given the extra-diegetic "inside" information that Haase was gay), but it seems the author is determined to find it everywhere she can. For instance, in discussing Suddenly Last Summer she expounds lengthily the play's homosexual subtext involving Violet Venable's deceased son Sebastian. Since Clift never interacts with Sebastian, who is only seen fleetingly in Catherine's flashbacks, there seems no reason to bring him up in relation to Clift, who plays a seemingly straight surgeon who's fascinated by both Violet Venable (Kate Hepburn) and Catherine (Liz Taylor). However, since Clift has been "appropriated" by a segment of the gay community, I suppose some of that had to be addressed.

She gives short shrift to Clift's theater career. As far as she is concerned the theater scarcely exists other than as a launching pad to a movie career. I assume the reason for her disinterest is that even charismatic theater performances are presumed not to evoke spectators' fantasies the way movie star performances do. (Or if they do, theatergoers do not seem to commit them to print.) Only two plays that Clift appeared in are mentioned by name: The Skin of Our Teeth, because it was directed by Elia Kazan, and You Touched Me! (1945) because in it Clift played a soldier, anticipating his performances in several of films as a wartime soldier. Clift's performance as Kostya in Chekov's The Seagull is mentioned only in a one-sentence footnote. (A lengthy footnote is devoted to a short-lived 1959 off-Broadway play, Single Man at the Party, said to be vaguely based on the relationship between Clift and Libby Holman. Seemingly, no scandalous occurrence touching on Clift must be unremarked on.)

It seems to me that if Dr. Lawrence could find space for quotes from movie fan mags (by hack journalists who probably never met him) and for the musings of a later generation of "queer theorists," she should have been able to dredge up some quotes from contemporary reviews of his theater performances, which I, for one, think would have considerable interest--even if the plays he was in were never "validated" by being turned into movies.

Having set forth these reservations, I'll say that the book is worth a read by anyone interested in Montgomery Clift.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book that sort of rescues Montgomery Clift from the eternal victim role he's usually cast in. Amy Lawrence comments on how other people have portrayed him in the media and in his past biographies, but more than that she delves into his own choices as an actor to prove that he was a meticulous working artist who thought out every second of his characters' time on screen and then made each action look natural and believable. (And his own marked-up scripts which Lawrence was able to find, prove that he did this throughout his career - not just in the early, successful days.)

Although Lawrence pretty much dismisses Wild River (one of Elia Kazan's and Montgomery Clift's most interesting films), most of the rest is on the money.

[Randy Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

too academic at times but so what monty and joni Mitchell are the only people that I venerate.