Suddenly, Last Summer

Title: Suddenly, Last Summer
Year: 1959
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Albert Dekker, Mercedes McCambridge, Gary Raymond, Mavis Villiers, Patricia Marmont
Genre: Drama, tajemnica, Thriller
Country: UK, USA

Why in Database: Turtles appear in this film only in the form of a story that protagonist tells (with slight inclusions of her interlocutor), quite long and extremely vivid. Below is full quote:


– We saw the sea turtles crawl out of the sea for their annual egg-laying. Once a year, the female of the sea turtles crawls out of the sea onto the blazing sand beach of a volcanic island to dig a pit in the sand and deposit her eggs there. It’s a long and dreadful thing, the depositing of the eggs in the sand. And when it’s finished the exhausted female turtle crawls back to the sea half-dead. She never sees her offspring. But we did. Sebastian knew exactly when the sea turtle eggs would be hatched. We returned in time for it.
– You went back?
– In time to witness the hatching and their desperate flight to the sea. The narrow beach, the color of caviar, was all in motion. The sky was in motion, full of flesh-eating birds. And the noise of the birds their savage cries as they circled over the beach of the Encantadas while the new sea turtles scrambled out and started their race to the sea.
– Race to the sea?
– To escape the flesh-eating birds that made the sky almost black. And I said, “Sebastian, no. No, it’s not like that.” But he made me look. He made me see that terrible sight.
– What was not like that?
– Life. I said, “No. No! That’s not true!” But he said it is. He said, “Look, Violet. Look, there on the shore.” And I looked and saw the sand all alive, all alive as the new-hatched sea turtles dashed to the sea while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and swooped to attack. They were diving down on the sea turtles turning them over to expose their soft undersides tearing their undersides open and rending and eating their flesh. Sebastian guessed that possibly only a hundredth of one percent of their number would escape to the sea. Nature isn’t created in the image of man’s compassion. Nature is cruel! Sebastian knew it all along, was born knowing it, but not I. I said, “No, no, those are
only birds, turtles, not us.” I didn’t know then it was us. That we are all of us trapped by this devouring creation. I couldn’t, wouldn’t face the Horror of the truth…

Author: XYuriTT

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