• Summertime (1955)

7/5/25 (Sat)

David Lean’s 1955 rom-com, based on Arthur Laurents’ stage play The Time of the Cuckoo of three years earlier (which was also adapted by the writer in 1965 into a flop musical Do I Hear a Waltz?), comes just before he turned to the huge epics that we generally associate him with. Jane (Katharine Hepburn) is a cautious middle-aged spinster on a dream trip to Venice. Pleasant and intelligent, she is also conservative, conventional (down to her name), and unable or unwilling to let her emotions out. She’s determined to like the city: “I’ve got to! I’ve come such a long way!” But she views most everything through her camera lens. While she meets numerous couples along the way, she always refrains from joining them, afraid of being a “fifth wheel”, despite her longing to do so. Upon an encounter with the Italian owner of an antiques shop, she is wary at first, almost allowing him to get away. She finally gets her courage up and gradually gives in to his passion for her, opening herself up to the possibility of love. Then she discovers, not unsurprisingly, that he is married…

Standard fare with a story that I feel like I’ve seen elsewhere; numerous people have noted the resemblance to Lean’s earlier Brief Encounter, and the woman having an affair in Italy with a good-looking local is a plot in several other films. But the dialogue and characters here are consistently engaging, lifting it above the usual fare. The gradual opening of the bottled-up Jane, while predictable, is great fun as played by Hepburn, and Rossano Brazzi does a solid turn as her suitor. I love his advice to her to “eat the ravioli”, his way of telling her to be adventurous (her response: “I’m not that hungry”). I recall Sondheim saying that he resisted working on the musical since the main character is not the type who (metaphorically) sings, but her development over the course of the film seems exactly the thing that music could express. (His score with Rodgers, which he always maligned, is actually quite good, though I’ve never seen the rarely produced show itself.)

The crass American tourists – are there any other kind? – offer a humorous commentary on the clueless traveler (“The museum had hundreds of paintings – all of them done by hand!”), and the others in the lodging did good work. That’s true as well of the child actor playing the boy Mauro, who attaches himself to Jane.

The real star of the film was Venice itself, which has never looked more ravishing. Several shots showed the city in all its splendor without tourists or vendors, which is not how I remember Venice but is exactly how I’d like to see it (like Kyoto during the pandemic, now that I think about it). If it feels like a travelogue at times, no complaints when it’s done this well. It would be impossible to duplicate that these days, so this is a valuable document irrespective of the story.

Not a major work by a long shot, but very enjoyable for the strong casting (especially Hepburn), the credible and appealing storyline, and ravishing cinematography.