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| SUMMERTIME (1955) |
A Lopert Film Production
A United Artists Release
Technicolor, 99 minutes
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CAST
Jane Hudson: Katharine Hepburn
Renato Di Rossi: Rossano Brazzi
Signora Fiorini: Isa Miranda
Eddie Yaeger: Darren McGavin
Phyl Yaeger: Mari Aldon
Mrs. McIlhenny: Jane Rose
Mr. McIlhenny: MacDonald Parke
Mauro: Gaitano Audiero
Englishman: Andre Morell
Vito Di Rossi: Jeremy Spenser
Giovanna: Virginia Simeon
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CREDITS
Director: David Lean
Producer: Ilya Lopert
Associate Producer: Norman Spencer
Scenarists: David Lean, H.E. Bates
Based on the Play The Time of the Cuckoo by: Arthur Laurents
Photographer: Jack Hildyard
Art Director: Vincent Korda
Associate Art Directors: W. Hutchinson, Ferdinand Bellan
Editor: Peter Taylor
Sound Recorder: Peter Handford
Sound Editor: Winston Ryder
Musical Score: Alessandro Cicognini
Camera Operator: Peter Newbrook
Hair Stylist: Grazia De Rossi
Makeup Artist: Cesare Gamberelli
Assistant Directors: Adrian Pryce-Jones, Alberto Cardone
Production Managers: Raymond Anzarut, Franco Magli
Assistant to the Producer: Robert Kingsley
Continuity: Margaret Shipway
Location Photography in Eastman Color
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SYNOPSIS
Jane Hudson, a middle-aged American spinster, arrives in Venice, fulfilling a lifelong dream. On her first evening, she has an encounter with Mauro, an enterprising little street urchin, who becomes her unofficial guide. While sightseeing with him the next day, she meets Renato Di Rossi, the proprietor of an antique shop, and soon the pair are hopelessly in love and seemingly inseparable.
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CRITIQUES
"Miss Hepburn is clever and amusing as a spirited American old maid who turns up in Venice with her guide books and a romantic gleam in her eye. She makes a convincing summer tourist. And her breathlessly eager attitude is just right for the naive encounters and farcical mishaps that have been arranged. But a sense of her wistful frustration and her loneliness in this city where she has dreamed she will find "a wonderful mystical magical miracle" does not take hold upon the mind until Mr. Lean has skillfully wrapped her in the haunting beauty of the place—until he has set her stringy figure against the impassive buildings, the moving crowds, and the great sweep of the Piazza St. Marco in the light of the setting sun. Nor does the excitement of her meeting with a handsome Venetian come home until Mr. Lean has walked her with him through the shadows of the whispering arcades and let them reach for a fallen gardenia in the dark waters of a canal. It is Venice itself that gives the flavor and the emotional stimulation to this film."
- Bosley Crowther, The New Yorker, June 22, 1955
"As the secretary, Katharine Hepburn has an air of stylized hysteria that is somewhat unsettling when we first meet her. After she quiets down, though, she is wonderfully effective, making the most of her opportunities for registering pathos and passion, and turning in a couple of first-rate slapstick sequences as well."
- The New Yorker, 1955
"Miss Hepburn has labored long in the service of her art and, like many grand actress personalities, she has now created herself in her own image. Everything superfluous is gone, the elements are refined and complete - the sad mouth, the head-back laugh, the snap of chic in shirtmaker dresses, the dream of enchantment behind wistful eyes, the awakened puritan passion of the girl in love, the 'regular' way with children, the leggy stride, and always the bones - the magnificent, prominent, impossible bones which a visiting journalist, made somewhat exuberant by the deceptively mild local wine, described as the 'greatest calcium deposit since the white cliffs of Dover.'"
- Lee Rogosin, Saturday Review, 1955
"Essentially, the film is a bit of autumn crocus-pocus. But it has two assets. It has Katharine Hepburn; and it has Venice. With love, with passion, Mr. Lean and his director of photography Jack Hildyard have observed the great square of St. Mark and the small canals with their face of exquisite corruption; the splendid panorama of the Grand Canal, the houses rising like cliffs over the narrow cracks of water, the gilded figures strikig the hours. The eye is endlessly ravished. Yet without Katharine Hepburn we should, I fancy, have been left watching a novelette within a documentary. Miss Hepburn adds human distinction to the scene, and she adds it not only by the nervous vitality of her playing, but by her own physical beauty. Throughout the film she insists that she is old and faded, and all the time we look at a woman with an austerity of profile, an elongated, wiry elegance of body which will make her worth looking at if she lives to be a hundred."
- Dilys Powell, The Sunday Times, October 2, 1955
"Katharine Hepburn, prim and gaunt as an aging American virgin vacationing in corrupt, sensual Venice, and Rossano Brazzi as a soft, thickening Venetian art dealer who makes love to her. There is an element of embarrassment in this pining-spinster role, but Hepburn is so proficient at it that she almost - though not quite - kills the embarrassment. It's hard to believe that the coming together of a withered Puritan and a middle-aged roué would light up the sky with the fireworks that the director, David Lean, provides, but this is one of those overwrought, understated, romantic movies (like Lean's Brief Encounter) that many people remember with considerable emotion."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Katharine Hepburn, a lonely spinster on a European vacation, is seduced by the charms of Venice in this expert 1955 melodrama by David Lean. Two years before the fateful Bridge on the River Kwai, Lean still shows some sense of subtlety, and Summertime contains some glowing moments. The film shifts to mechanical manipulation, though, shortly after Rossano Brazzi makes his appearance as Hepburn's swain. Recommended, with hesitations."
- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
"Hepburn is a spinster from Ohio making a lone trip to Venice, desperately in search of a 'miracle'. She gets more than she bargained for, though, when she falls for the distinctly continental charms of antique dealer Rossano Brazzi. Shirley Valentine later shamelessly milked all the exotic romance clichés, but this (based on Arthur Laurents' play The Time of the Cuckoo) is an infinitely more subtle, poignant piece, with a lovely performance from Hepburn at its centre. David Lean may well have identified with this 'fancy secretary', her ciné camera always primed, for the film marks a turning point in his career: this was his first movie shot on location abroad, an experience he obviously enjoyed."
- Adrian Turner, Time Out
"Not the greatest David Lean film perhaps, nor yet the greatest Katharine Hepburn vehicle. But Summer Madness grows on you, because of its artless innocence and because of Hepburn's performance as Jane, the spinster from Akron, Ohio, who comes to Venice in the 1950s. Her robust American frankness and moral rectitude hide a longing to be loved, and she's sent into a girlish flutter when handsome antiques dealer Renato (Rossano Brazzi) pays her attention. The dialogue can be stagey and Venice is evoked at a tourist level, but it's beautifully photographed and Hepburn's loneliness and sadness look disquietingly real. A very Leanesque brief encounter."
- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 2004
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COMMENTARY TRACK
"It was fascinating to work for David [Lean]. He was very basic - he was simple - he was true. He told a story. It's a slice of life you understand. In all its detail. He photographed what he saw in his mind's eye. It was a most extraordinary gift. He seemed to me to simply absorb Venice. It was his. He had a real photographic gift. He thought in a descriptive way. His shots tell the story. He was capable of a sort of superconcentration. It made a very deep and definite impression on me, and he was one of the most interesting directors I ever worked with."
- Katharine Hepburn, Me, 1991
"A lot of Summertime takes place in a pensione and Kate had a scene where she was walking across the terrace. She did a rehearsal and tripped over a loose tile. I thought, 'Oh, damn, what a nuisance. Let's do it once more.' She tripped again and I realized there was nothing wrong. I examined the spot and there was no loose tile at all. She used the tripping to show her nervousness of the situation. She was adept at sliding things in like that, things you would never dream were invented."
- David Lean
"She got on very well with David. They were great soul-mates because she was such a wonderful professional. She'd come in like an express train to Grand Central and she'd hit the mark. Not near it, but absolutely on it. You couldn't put a razor blade between the chalk mark and her feet."
- Peter Newbrook (camera operator)
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UK poster
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Belgian poster
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Rossano Brazzi, Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi
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On location: Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: David Lean, Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn, Constance Collier, Phyllis Wilbourn
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Watch the trailer
