There’s something about the plays of the legendary Tennessee Williams that translates immensely well to the screen - which is surprising, for a couple of reasons. For starters, in the translation from stage play to motion picture, much can get lost; sure, there have been many successful film adaptations of plays, but there have been even more failed attempts. Simply putting the play onto a sound stage and filming it is an approach that was used regularly in the earlier days of Hollywood, but as soon as it occurred to someone that actually moving the camera could be possible the filmed play started to take on a life of its own.

Of course, that life was stifled somewhat - especially in the case of Tennessee Williams’ work - by the stringent censorship imposed by the infamous Hays Office “code�, and like A Streetcar Named Desire before it, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was heavily modified (or “laundered�, as Leonard Maltin succinctly puts it in his review!) to suit the perceived morals and standards of the era. Thanks to some clever screen adaptation work by James Poe and director Richard Brooks, though, the essence of both the story and subtext remains largely intact.

The story is a straightforward one; an immensely rich plantation owner, known to audience and characters alike only as Big Daddy (Burl Ives), is about to celebrate his 65th birthday, and his family have gathered for the occasion. But Big Daddy has been seriously ill of late and unbeknownst to most of them, he has very little time left to live. They suspect the worst, though, and put on a nauseatingly blatant show of overblown affection in the hope that they’ll impress him enough to be found worthy of inheriting his land and assets. Big Daddy has a word for it - “mendacity�, which quite literally means lies and dishonesty. But one son, Brick (Paul Newman), wants none of this. Once a sports hero, he has long since descended into alcoholism and self-despair, taking out a vicious anger he himself does not understand on his long-suffering wife Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), who wants nothing more than for her husband to show her some semblance of affection. And as it turns out, Brick is just as good at the art of mendacity as the rest of his family. Over the course of a stormy evening at Big Daddy’s house, though, a great many truths come out for all concerned…

As acerbic, observant and bitingly relevant as the best of Tennessee Williams’ work (this particular play won him the Pulitzer Prize), the movie adaptation of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof features some utterly stunning performances - especially from the three leads. Taylor is perfect as Maggie, while Ives is utterly believable as Big Daddy (he also played the role in the Broadway stage production). But it’s Paul Newman who really sets the screen on fire here; he was nominated for an Oscar for his efforts (but never actually scored one until The Colour Of Money nearly 30 years later).

Directing with an affection for the source material but also a keen sense of how to translate it to the screen, Richard Brooks (who returned to Williams territory four years later with Sweet Bird Of Youth, also starring Paul Newman) keeps things moving at a fine pace; there are few locations, no big set-pieces and no showy special effects or fancy photography to divert the audience, but the film is utterly gripping for its entire running time. Brooks and his actors deserve a great deal of credit for that, but it’s really Tennessee Williams’ show - and anyone who’s ever seen or read his work will already be well aware that nobody gets to the core of a character like he does.

While it’s a “new release� in this country, this very same transfer (in NTSC, of course) of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was one of MGM’s earliest DVD releases in the US, appearing there over four years ago.

The dual-sided disc offers a 1.77:1 anamorphic transfer of the movie on one side (side B, strangely) with a panned-and-scanned full screen version on the other (which loses some detail from the sides of the picture, as well as offering noticeably inferior overall picture quality). The widescreen version looks remarkably good for a film that’s over 40 years old, transferred from what looks to have been an archived theatrical print, as the regular appearance of reel-change marks suggests. This is a remarkably clean film source, with only a few minor and very occasional film flaws to distract the viewer; none of them are overly troublesome. The MPEG compression job here shows its age, though; while generally good, the visual noise present throughout (which looks more like it came from the telecine process than from the film itself, though there is a degree of film grain here) occasionally seems to overwhelm the encoder, particularly on scenes containing a combination of fine background detail and sharp foreground objects; stairway banisters and shiny bedposts are major culprits in this department. But then during challenging-to-encode scenes like those set in driving rain, the image is absolutely flawless. Overall, though, most will be perfectly pleased with the picture quality on offer - it’s just not quite up to modern standards.

Audio is in the original mono, and represents the original film soundtrack well - in fact, you’ll hear it better than those who originally saw the film in cinemas did, as this track has been transferred from pristine magnetic masters (complete with just-audible analog “print-through�!) and is therefore free of the familiar distortion, crackle and pop of an optical soundtrack. You can actually make the comparison for yourself with this disc - one brief section of the soundtrack late in the movie drops into an optical version of the soundtrack, probably due to damage to the magnetic master at that point. The difference is very noticeable.

The only extra on the disc is the original theatrical trailer - overhyped (as was the style at the time - and come to think of it, still is!) and giving way too much away, it’s a curio, but little more.

Don’t be put off by the minor problems mentioned above, though - overall, considering the age of the film, this is a fine transfer on a perfectly acceptable DVD - and the dual aspect ratios on offer should appease those who like their TV the way it was at the time the film was made, without those pesky black bars getting in the way…!