Summertime

Movie Review: Summertime

Year of Release: 1955
Country of Origin: UK, USA
Director: David Lean
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi

Plot outline: A schoolteacher is surprised to find love on a Venetian vacation (IMDb).

David Lean secured his place in movie history with such grand epics as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, and his earlier, much more modest Brief Encounter. Nestled in between is a gem of a romantic drama, Summertime. The story of how a visit to Venice touches one woman's life, it's an intimate and sensitive portrait which Lean later declared to be his favourite movie, starring his favourite actress. Hepburn plays Jane Hudson, a confident and eager tourist on a long-awaited trip to Venice, who goes in search of a "wonderful, mystical, magical, miracle!" and incessantly captures every moment on camera. But being alone in such a romantic setting soon takes its toll as Jane finds herself surrounded by couples and begins to yearn for some passion of her own. Rossano Brazzi is Renato de Rossi, the smooth antiques dealer who sweeps the nervous Jane off her feet with all the amorous flourishes of your typical Italian lover. Initially shocked by his frank sexuality, Jane soon succumbs to Renato, who over the course of the movie makes her realise that Venice is a real place with real faults and complexities, not just the idealistic setting for her daydreams. Hepburn made a career out of playing vibrant heroines with a vulnerable side and it's her portrayal of Jane's insecurity and loneliness that give the movie its substance. Based on Arthur Laurents' play The Time of the Cuckoo, the movie is thinly plotted to give Hepburn the space to act and Lean - shooting entirely on location for the first time - the space to capture images of Venice. Summertime proved to be a critical and commercial triumph for Lean. Its success enabled Lean to leave British cinema to garner more lucrative projects in Hollywood. The sophisticated visual and contextual foundations for those later epics are evident throughout Summertime in its blend of expansive scenery mixed with subtle and often wordless interactions. Lean would cultivate other exotic stories featuring additional isolated outsiders in his later work, but with Summertime the acclaimed British filmmaker crafted a touching evocation of loneliness and an emotional realism rarely evident in similar melodramas of the period. (LB, GC)

My judgement: *** out of 4 stars