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David Lean: Summertime (GB/IT/US 1955). Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn) and Renato De Rossi (Rossano Brazzi) with the red glass goblet. |
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David Lean: Summertime (GB/IT/US 1955). Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn) and Renato De Rossi (Rossano Brazzi). |
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David Lean: Summertime (GB/IT/US 1955). Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn) on the piazza San Marco, Venice. |
Tempo d'estate / Summer Madness (GB) / Kesäinen romanssi / Sommarens dårskap / Vacances à Venise.
GB/IT/US © 1955 Lopert Films Incorporated. Prod.: Ilya Lopert, Norman Spencer for London Films.
Director: David Lean. Sog.: based on the pièce The Time of the Cuckoo (1952) by Arthur Laurents. Scen.: David Lean, H. E. Bates. F.: Jack Hildyard – Technicolor – 1.85:1. M.: Peter Taylor. Scgf.: Vincent Korda. Mus.: Alessandro Cicognini. Int.: Katharine Hepburn (Jane Hudson), Rossano Brazzi (Renato De Rossi), Isa Miranda (Mrs Fiorini), Darren McGavin (Eddie Yaeger), Mari Aldon (Phyl Yaeger), Jane Rose (Edith McIlhenny), MacDonald Parke (Lloyd McIlhenny), Gaetano Autiero (Mauro), Jeremy Spenser (Vito De Rossi).
Soundtrack: "Sul mare luccica (Santa Lucia)".
Theme song: "Summertime in Venice" (comp. Icini = Alessandro Cicognini), English lyr. Carl Sigman, Italian lyr. Pinchi.
Overture to "La gazza ladra" / "The Thieving Magpie" (1817) by Gioachino Rossini.
Loc: Venice.
Studio: Scalera Studios, Venice.
Language: English and some Italian.
100 min
Festival premiere: 29 May 1955 Venice
US premiere: 21 June 1955
Finnish premiere: 7 Sep 1956
Restored in 2003 by the Academy Film Archive and the British Film Institute with the support of the David Lean Foundation.
35 mm print from Academy Film Archive.
Courtesy Tigon Film Distributors and Hollywood Classics International.
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Katharine Hepburn: Feminist, Acrobat and Lover.
Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra, 29 June 2025.
Molly Haskell (Bologna 2025): "At an age when most actresses are playing character parts rather than romantic leads, Hepburn’s longevity was an anomaly. Hollywood then as now was a town that equates female power with youth and beauty. But she had staked her career on intelligence and determination, not the glamor and beauty of a prima donna, and she won by outliving them all. (She wasn’t entirely alone: Hollywood in the 1950 was more receptive to aging stars. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford also had late-life romances in films such as Now Voyager and Sudden Fear.)"
"Like so many of her parts, this one originated in a play (Arthur Laurents) and went through various possible actresses before she won it and made it her own. Here she’s shorn not just of youth and glamor but of her brash confidence and imperious manners. She’s an Ugly American of all things, a spinster from Akron, Ohio, but she’s in Venice! And never has it looked more beautiful on the screen than in this film directed by David Lean and shot on location."
"In a way Hepburn turns age into an asset; she can make fun of herself, can be irritating and likable at the same time. She can even fall into the canal without completely smashing her amour-propre. Or her romantic prospects, which reside in the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Rossano Brazzi as an antiques dealer she sees first (where else?) on the piazza San Marco."
"She was a risk-taker, on screen and off, and in this case her recklessness got her into trouble: she insisted on doing the canal scene herself rather than turning it over to a stuntwoman. As a consequence, she developed an eye infection that lasted for the rest of her life."
"Yet she recalled working with Lean as one of the most challenging experiences of her career, as he pushed and goaded her into places she hadn’t chosen. Emotionally, too, she allowed herself to be fearlessly exposed in all her loneliness and insecurity, this may be one of her bravest and most moving performances." Molly Haskell (Bologna 2025)
...
BFI SCREENONLINE
SYNOPSIS
"Jane Hudson, a single American woman in her late thirties, visits Venice for the first time. Upon arrival, by train, she is clearly a little overwhelmed by the crowds and bustle which greet her. She is whisked away by water-bus down the Grand Canal to her hotel, photographing everything she sees. On board are the McIlhennys, a middle-aged American couple who are also staying at the Pensione Fioria.
The hotel owner, Signora Fioria, shows Jane to her rooms. Jane meets some other American guests, Eddie, an artist, and his girlfriend Phyl. As evening approaches, everyone, including Signora Fioria, goes out to dinner, leaving Jane alone. She makes the acquaintance of a small boy, a street urchin called Mauro, who makes a living from the tourists, but Jane decides to explore Venice on her own, eventually reaching St. Mark's Square, where she is dazzled by the beauty of her surroundings. She orders a drink at a café and observes the early evening promenade. All around her, people are in couples. The sound of Jane's camera attracts the notice of an Italian man, around her own age, sitting at the table behind her. Jane is embarrassed when she realises he is looking at her, and leaves.
The next day, Jane continues her sight-seeing with Mauro, but later, on her own, she sees a beautiful red glass goblet, in the window of an antique shop by a canal. When she goes into the shop she is disconcerted to see that it is owned by the man who had watched her in the square the previous evening - Renato di Rossi. She buys the goblet and Renato says that he will try to find another for her, although the glasses are very rare 18th century antiques.
Back at the hotel, Jane strikes up a conversation with Phyl, but is left alone again when she goes off with Eddie. Leaving her camera behind, for once, Jane returns to St. Mark's Square. Taking a table, she sees Eddie and Phyl, with their friends, coming towards her. She moves the chairs to make it look as though she is waiting for some-one to join her, but they pass by without seeing her. Renato comes to the café, but when he sees the upturned chair and untouched drink at Jane's table, he moves on before she has a chance to explain that she is really on her own.
The following morning Jane goes sight-seeing again with Mauro. She returns to the antique shop but Renato is not there. Taking a photograph of it she loses her balance and falls into the canal. Renato calls on her, back at the hotel. Jane is immediately suspicious and questions why he has come to see her. He tells her that he finds her attractive, and Jane admits that she is attracted to him. He asks her out and she is about to accept when the McIlhennys come in to the hallway and show off the six goblets of red Venetian glass they have bought, just like Jane's 'antique'. An angry Jane accuses Renato of having duped her, but agrees to meet him that evening, in the Square.
They spend the evening together and Renato buys her a white gardenia. She agrees to see him again the following night. The next day she goes shopping for new clothes, but when, that evening, she discovers that Renato is married with children, she joins Phyl in Harry's Bar, and both women, disappointed with their men, drown their sorrows, for Eddie is having an affair with Signora Fioria. Renato finds Jane and tells her he is separated from his wife. She relents,goes out with him as planned, and they spend the night together, followed by an idyllic day on the island of Murano. But Jane knows that they have no future together, and prepares to leave Venice. Renato reaches the station as her train is leaving - he has brought her a white gardenia."
ANALYSIS (JANET MOAT)
The credits for Summer Madness (1955) proudly proclaim that it was photographed entirely in Venice. David Lean's love for the city shines out in every scene. The film was to become his favourite. It was based on a Broadway play, which explored the old Henry James subject of New World innocence meeting and being seduced by Old World charm and experience, but the city is such a central character in the film that it is hard to see how the story worked on stage. Once again, it was Alexander Korda who brought subject and director together.
It was Lean's third film in colour, ravishingly shot by Jack Hildyard, and an Anglo-American co-production. In its theme of an adulterous love affair (the Italian is married), it echoes both Brief Encounter (1945) and The Passionate Friends (1948). Like Brief Encounter it begins with a steam train thundering into the frame. Like The Passionate Friends it includes a motorboat ride for the lovers.
Lean is not afraid to show all the tourist sites, and he marshals his crowd scenes with great aplomb. In Katharine Hepburn he had a huge star, and the truthfulness of her playing of an ageing American spinster achingly alone in a city of lovers saves the film from being what, suggested critic Dilys Powell, might otherwise have been a novelette within a documentary. Hepburn and Lean became life-long friends, but were never to make another film together.
Some of the symbolism - there is a shoe motif, and the lovers finally come together to the accompaniment of a firework display over the city - may seem too obvious to modern audiences, and the whole film is shamelessly romantic and glamorous, but, like Venice herself, it is hard to resist. Janet Moat (BFI Screenonline)
AA: I see David Lean's Summertime for the first time in Bologna's Katharine Hepburn retrospective. The film was special for both artists, who became lifelong friends. Summertime was Lean's favourite film and Hepburn his favourite actress. It was Lean's first film on location abroad, and he never again made a pure studio film. Summertime was also Lean's last contemporary story. Lean fell in love with Venice, which became his second home. Even natives of Venice agreed that he had caught the spirit of the city.
Summertime was based on a popular Arthur Laurents play which was later adapted even into a Broadway musical.
But Summertime is a profoundly cinematic achievement. It draws on a grand tradition that goes way back into the birth of the cinema, the year 1896, when la Cinématographe Lumière commissioned Charles and Marie Moisson to shoot a series of vues during their honeymoon in Venice. They saw the city as a dream space and a promised land for lovers. Constant Girel took one of the cinema's first tracking shots from a moving gondola in Panorama pris d'un bateau (Catalogue Lumière Vue N° 227, 21 September 1896).
Max Reinhardt, the wizard of production design, shot Venetianische Nacht (DE 1913) on location because the reality was more magical than any artificial set could be.
Alexander Korda gave Lean a piece of precious advice. Kevin Brownlow quotes Lean: "He said, 'Good luck, just remember that if I'd chosen some of the highly respected directors of the present moment, they would seek out all the side streets of Venice and never take a shot of the Grand Canal or the Piazza San Marco because that would be a cliché. They're not a cliché for nothing. For God's sake don't be shy of showing these famous places.'"
This piece of wisdom was also shared by Charles Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock. All were big enough to embrace the most familiar objects. All were also big enough to transcend the ordinary in them and reveal the extraordinary.
In an important sense, Summertime is a travelogue. A topical connection for our age of image deluge is the ubiquitous 16 mm movie camera with which Jane Hudson films everything.
Ten years had passed since the end of World War II in Europe, and there was a film trend of Anglo-American romance on the Continent. Lean was inspired by Three Coins in the Fountain and Roman Holiday. To Catch a Thief (which shares the fireworks imagery) premiered a few months after Summertime. Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman filmed Viaggio in Italia, and they, too, had considered filming the property that became Summertime.
Italians responded by launching a cycle of comedies in which a man (usually incarnated by Alberto Sordi) fails to find love abroad, for instance in Il diavolo shot in Sweden.
Love is the most common theme in the cinema. All his life, Lean directed films about love, from Brief Encounter till Ryan's Daughter. Each time it was individual and unique. In Summertime, the plot borders on the boulevard comedy. It is easy to see how the movie could have become licentious, salacious, facile and cynical. Instead, Lean displayed grace and tact.
This was the age of the Production Code. All films in general release had to be suitable for children before the establishment of the rating system in 1968.
The biggest laughter during the 2025 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato was heard when Renato tells Jane: "You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. 'No' you say, 'I want beefsteak!' My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli." Jane answers: "I'm not that hungry". This piece of dialogue was ordered cut by the Production Code Administration. (Was it actually cut at the time? It was in place in the 2003 Academy Film Archive restoration we saw).
In Summertime, the double entendre / le double sens is but a spice to a graceful, gentle, tender and life-affirming tale. What matters is the wisdom of the heart. It is never too late. Love is better than anything. It is not a matter of all or nothing.
Katharine Hepburn was a great comedienne in 1930s screwball, in 1940s Tracy-Hepburn duels and in 1950s spinster-in-love stories launched in The African Queen. In Summertime she is at her best. Like the greatest in comedy, she lands in the most ridiculous situations but never loses her innate dignity. We laugh and we cry.
Kevin Brownlow quotes a surprising comment that Lean gave to a Japanese fan magazine about Summertime. For Lean, the film was not so far from Viaggio in Italia after all.
"What appealed to me in the idea of Summertime? Loneliness. Why? Because I think that loneliness is in all of us, it is a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. (...) The film is about a lonely woman who falls in love, and as I know no better remedy for the complaint I hope you will find it sympathetic."
The fabulous print did justice to the film's photochemical Technicolor glory.