Summertime (1955) - film review

Jane Hudson, a middle-aged spinster from Ohio, finally gets to realise her lifelong dream, a holiday in Venice, where she hopes to find love and romance amidst the golden waterways and ancient monuments.  At the hotel where she is staying, she gets to know a painter and two fellow Americans, and a young street boy offers to be her guide as she explores the marvellous city.  The sight of so many couples depresses Jane but whilst seated at a café in a busy square she becomes aware that a man is watching her.  Embarrassed, she hurries away but she meets the same man a short time later when she enters an antiques shop to buy a red goblet.  The man, Renato de Rossi, is clearly as attracted to her as she is to him, but Jane holds herself back.  Can this really be the man she has been waiting for all her life?  Or will he be just another short lived acquaintance, soon forgotten after she has left Venice...?

David Lean directed many great films, several undisputed masterpieces, but the film of which he was fondest was Summertime, a comparatively modest work which has been described as a remake of his earlier Brief Encounter (1945), relocated from the dull home counties of England to the lush squares and canals of Venice.   After a decade of films made in black and white, Summertime, with its sumptuous colour photography, is a significant turning point in Lean’s career, offering a taste of the cinematographic magic that the director would unleash in his subsequent blockbuster epics.   Lean fell in love with Venice during the making of Summetime, and from the stunning vistas that make up the film, it is not hard to see why.  Venice is an artist’s paradise and Lean and his cinematographer, Jack Hildyard, are clearly enchanted by what the location has to offer them, managing to capture the splendour, poetry and romance of the city in virtually every frame.    

Following her success in The African Queen (1951) and a series of highly popular comedies in the 1940s where she played opposite her real-life lover Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn was a major international star by the mid-1950s – and a personal favourite of David Lean.  Summertime allows Hepburn to give one of her most moving and memorable performances, convincingly portraying a middle-aged spinster who desperately needs to be loved but who is too afraid of the consequences ever to hold onto what she most fervently seeks.  Audiences were used to the actress making them laugh but here she succeeds in making them weep.

Summertime is a beautifully made and poignant film but somehow it lacks the coherence and inspired touch that we find in David Lean’s true masterpieces.  At times, the story it tells seems to be overwhelmed by the director’s fascination with the location, with the result that the film feels more like a travelogue made by the Italian tourist board than a piece of drama.  Also, some of the visual symbolism is painfully unsubtle - for instance, Renato’s futile attempt to rescue a lost gardenia, representing a love than cannot endure, and the fireworks display which we see when the two lovers slip away to consummate their affair.   These trite visual metaphors date the film somewhat and are the kind of thing you might expect from a lesser director, not someone who was reputed to be the greatest British filmmaker of his generation.   However, despite these obvious faults, Summertime is a film that still manages to charm and beguile the spectator.  It succeeds in evoking not just the majesty of Venice but also the heartrending poignancy of a love affair that, like a late spring blossom, endures for but a few glorious days and then is lost forever.  If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

© James Travers 2009

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