Summertime (1960)
Year: 1960
Country: UK
Director: David Lean
Criterion Spine Number: 22
Reviewed: June 2014
Country: UK
Director: David Lean
Criterion Spine Number: 22
Reviewed: June 2014
A gentle, moving romantic drama of the sort we never see nowadays, Summertime is a beautiful and quietly amazing film. It doesn’t offer showy lines or a sex scene or much comedy like most romantic films of the present, it just shows you the power and importance that love can have, taking us from loneliness to love. Katherine Hepburn is as graceful and elegant as ever as Jane Hudson, a woman on a solo trip around Europe, who finds that travelling by one’s self is a terribly sad experience. There’s the couples kissing and the scandal and the fact that seeing the sights with someone else is always more enjoyable. She meets a child but even he isn’t enough to combat her loneliness, that is until she meets an attractive antiques dealer. What makes this film special is the way that it’s handled, so gently, so tenderly. Filmed in Venice, the city’s famed waterways and alleys provide a beautiful backdrop to the gentle romance that slowly grows between the two. It’s interesting because other films I’ve seen recently (most notably, Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now) treat the city as something claustrophobic and terrifying, so to see it presented as almost more romantic than Paris was a joy to behold (as I’ve always had a bit of a fascination for Venice). However, the most enjoyable parts of the film is seeing Jane’s veneer melt away. She starts the film as an enjoyable happy-go-lucky woman but we soon learn there is a sadness that she hides. I always love seeing characters like this, as it’s something we can all relate to, putting up masks to hide our true feelings and then having love strip that mask away. It’s a fairly slow-moving film, but it never feels like it’s dragging, as the nature of the city and Jane’s own personality compel us even further into the story and the film. The colours are sumptuous and lively, bringing to light the city and Jane’s beauty. The story is simple and uncomplex, but it’s ending shies away from Hollywood cliché to create something far more poignant and memorable. While not as good as Lean’s other masterwork, Brief Encounter, Summertime is a beautiful expression of the tenderness of romance set against a beautiful backdrop and featuring one of the greatest actresses to ever live in Katherine Hepburn. Just gorgeous.
Best Scene: “The most beautiful things in life are those that we do not
understand.”
Overall Verdict: 9
understand.”
Overall Verdict: 9