Summertime: A Good Travelogue and a Bad Hepburn Film

SUMMERTIME (1955)

Directed by David Lean

United Artists, 100 minutes, Not-rated.

★ ½

 

 

 

If you live in New England, sometime around mid-February you will probably start to get itchy for longer, warmer days with more sunshine. The seed catalogues will come out and even though spring has not yet arrived, no one will blame you for dreaming of summertime. Just don't dream of the 1955 film of that name!

 

If you've ever wondered if Katharine Hepburn has ever made a really bad movie, this one holds the answer. Hepburn. Romance. Venice. What could go wrong? Quite a lot, beginning with a very lame script. It’s hard to imagine that a director the likes of David Lean could serve up such rotten calamari, or that this movie actually garnered a few Oscar nominations. (The voters must have broken into the wine cellar and left no bottles uncorked.)

 

As a travelogue, Summertime is worth viewing, but with your favorite method of fast forwarding a movie close at hand. Summertime begins on the train crossing the Venice lagoon with Jane Hudson (Hepburn) hanging out the window of the train, movie camera in hand, and burning through filmstock like a crazed director determined not to miss a second of light. She is enthusiastic, but alone and forlorn, the film's major theme. She checks into the spectacular pensione run by Signora Fiorini (Isa Miranda) with views to die for. (Side note: Don't believe anyone who tells you that Venice is overrated, too smelly, or too touristy. It was then as it is today one of the most one of the Western world’s truly unique and spectacular cities.) But it's a place you want to share not make a documentary film no one but you will view.

 

Jane is a late 40s open (47 at the time) gal from Akron OH who has been unlucky at love her entire life. Not much has said about why this is the case, but we sense that she is a good girl who'd love to be a naughty one, or at least give it a try. She adores Venice, Signora Fiorini, and the pensione, though it’s also occupied by boorish, chauvinistic types once dubbed “ugly Americans.” There's Eddie Yeager (Darren McGavin) and his wife Phyl (Mari Aldon) two jet setters who aren't nearly as glamorous as they appear. But at least they're better than the insufferable Lloyd and Edith  McIllhenny (McDonald Parke and Jane Rose), she a motor mouth who sees Italy as a shopping mall; he a portly lout unafraid to blurt out that he doesn't like “wop food.”  Neither knows the first thing about Italy, though Edith is at least willing to be surprised and loudly tell everyone about those surprises.

 

Jane’s solo vigil gets an unexpected jolt when she spies a red goblet in a window shop, buys it, and is attracted to its owner, who she noticed staring at her in the Piazza San Marco.  Hitherto, her only male companion was Mauro (Gaetano Auticro), a seven-year-old street urchin who's a combination charmer and hustler. But as she begins to practically stalk the store owner Renato De Rossi (Rossano Brazzi), you know what's coming next. It’s just a matter of time until her goo-goo eyes lead to liaisons at the piazza. Jane tries to play Ohio good girl, but Renato convinces her that in Italy, pleasure is embraced and she should allow herself to indulge in it. Prego; a torrid affair. Prego; unexpected obstacles, like the fact that he's married. Que sera, sera. He says he and his wife don't live together and that's good enough for her. Cue the bittersweet ending.

 

Rossano Brazzi was in high demand when this film was made having just starred in English language films such as Three Coins in a Fountain and The Barefoot Contessa. He is indeed dashing as a middle-aged suitor/Lothario. Alas, Hepburn is grating. She plays her part like a 50-year-old going on 16. I wondered if she was having trouble finding roles. She was no longer young enough to play the brainy gal with killer legs, yet not yet old enough to take on the fearless matron roles that breathes new life into her career. See Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and The Trojan Women.

 

I reiterate that summertime is a sumptuous look at Venice, a place everyone should visit before they shuffle off this mortal coil. But it doesn't commend the film to say that its major virtue is that it will prompt you to visit your travel agent.

 

Rob Weir