Thursday, July 24, 6:00 p.m. | This bruising melodrama follows Tom Lee (John Kerr), a keen but shy student with unusual sensitivities and “feminine” skills (love of poetry, ability to sew and cook) that immediately mark him as an outcast among his brutish male peers at their all-boy prep school. Tom takes solace in the friendship of a fellow lonely soul, the neglected wife (Deborah Kerr) of the school’s head coach (Leif Erickson), further inflaming the suspicions and insecurities of the men who surround him. Kerr, Kerr, and Erickson all reprised their roles from the 1953 hit Broadway play by Robert Anderson, while Vincente Minnelli took over the directing reins from Elia Kazan.
The play was an explicit indictment of homophobia and rigid masculine ideals, but Hollywood was still far from ready to directly grapple with queer themes. Predictably, the Production Code forced Anderson (who also adapted the screenplay) to make considerable concessions, resulting in what writer Michael Koresky describes as a film that “plunges in and recoils from its own subject matter, resulting in a still- strange, heavily coded experience that’s neither here nor there—but which, thanks to Minnelli’s singular sensitivity and visually expressive style, remains a remarkable, compromised work of mainstream American filmmaking.” If you peer deeply into the resulting murkiness, TEA AND SYMPATHY is still a tender portrayal of deep loneliness and moral courage, with the visual language of cinematographer John Alton’s lush and moody CinemaScope imagery replacing some of what was censored from the written word. Preceded by WISCONSIN WILDFLOWERS (1959, dir. Staber Reese, 10 min / 16mm) (CFS)
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Most Promising Newcomer (John Kerr), Golden Globes
Nominee - Best British Actress (Deborah Kerr), BAFTA Awards
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu