Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Montgomery Clift: Dr. Cukrowicz

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Quotes 

• Dr. Lawrence J. Hockstader : She burnt a nun with a cigarette.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Yes she did, I was there, I saw it, she was provoked!

  Dr. Lawrence J. Hockstader : Provoked? Whover would provoke a mentally disturbed person?

  Dr. Cukrowicz : You'd be surprised.

• Dr. Cukrowicz : May I sit here?

  Mrs. Venable : Sebastian's seat.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Oh! Well...

  Mrs. Venable : Oh, no no please, please. It's a court jester's chair, a rare one, five-hundred years old. Please, sit on it. Say something funny; make me stop wanting to cry.

• Dr. Cukrowicz : Mrs. Venable, loving your neice as you do, you must know there's great risk in this operation. Whenever you enter the brain with a foreign object...

  Mrs. Venable : Yes.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Even a needle thin knife.

  Mrs. Venable : Yes.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : In the hands of the most skilled surgeon...

  Mrs. Venable : Yes, yes.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : There is a great deal of risk.

  Mrs. Venable : But it does pacify them, I've read that, it quiets them down. It suddenly makes them peaceful.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Yes that that it does do, but...

  Mrs. Venable : But what?

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Well it will be years before we know if the immediate benefits of the operation are lasting or maybe just passing or perhaps... there's a strong possibility that the patient will always be limited. Relieved of acute anxiety yes, but limited.

  Mrs. Venable : But what a blessing Dr. to be just peaceful. To be just suddenly peaceful. After all that horror. After those nightmares. Just to be able to lift up their eyes to a sky not black with savage devouring birds.

• Dr. Cukrowicz : Insane is such a meaningless term.

  Catherine Holly : But lobotomy has a precising meaning to it, doesn't it?

• Dr. Cukrowicz : Nature is not made in the image of man's compassion.

• Dr. Cukrowicz : Bait? For what? What were the better fish?

  Catherine Holly : We procured for him.

• Mrs. Venable : Sebastian always said, 'Mother when you descend it's like the Goddess from the Machine. You look just like angel coming to earth' as I float, float into view. Sebastian, my son Sebastian was very interested in the Byzantine. Are you interested in the Byzantine Doctor...?

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Cukrowicz. I don't know very much about the Byzantine.

  Mrs. Venable : It seems that the Emperor of Byzantium - when he received people in audience - had a throne which, during the conversation, would rise mysteriously into the air to the consternation of his visitors. But as we are living in a democracy, I reverse the procedure. I don't rise, I come down.

• Dr. Cukrowicz : Why did you try to kill yourself?

  Catherine Holly : Isn't that what everybody wants? Me out of the way... Mama and George get their money, and Aunt Vi...

• Mrs. Venable : She suffers from something called dementia praecox.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Dementia praecox?

  Mrs. Venable : Which is say, she's mad as a hatter, poor child.