Movie: Summertime

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

What happens in Venice
stays in Venice.

Plot Overview

Young Jane Hudson became good at all the 40's dance steps. She went to a ball with a poor college boy who couldn't afford a posy. As she matured she “stayed at parties too long because I didn't know when to go.” Bourbon was her poison but not marriage. “I'm the inde­pen­dent type,” she claims, “always have been.” She's now a “fancy secretary” in back­water Akron. Her boss is very demanding of his girl (“In America every female under fifty calls her­self a girl,”) how­ever she's been granted time off in the coveted summer months to make way for a new model. Jane (Katharine Hepburn) works hard & plays hard. She's “saved up big time for a trip to Italy.”

The movie opens in medias res on the choo-choo to Venice showing her take moving pictures out the window with her 16mm camera. She's advised, “When in Italy you should meet Italians.” She befriends a recently retired couple, a dyed-in-the-wool widow, a young couple with marital problems, and a street urchin who tries to hustle her. Unplanned she has surrounded her­self with a multi­gener­ational array of travel companions such as her married sisters in the states acquire as relations with­out trying. She's in par­tic­ular hoping “to find what she's been missing all her life.” She pictures him: “young, rich, witty, brilliant, and unmarried.” She hooks up with a dime-a-dozen shop­keeper Renato de Rossi (Rossano Brazzi) who's part of his own big family, and she surmises, “it just isn't the way I thought it would be.”

Ideology

When Jane asks about Renato's assistant Vito de Rossi (Jeremy Spenser) Renato tells her he's his niece nephew. Later she finds out he's his son whose mom is alive and well; mom & dad have been separated for a year—having an “arrangement” allowing them to mix it up. Jane thinks that's wicked & wrong. Renato recounts a food analogy. Say she is hungry and is offered ravioli but instead wants beef­steak. She should stop being childish and eat the ravioli. Ravioli is meat strips encased in dough, the two items in a sense married. Beef­steak is strips of meat unac­com­panied. This analogy is consistent with, (Prov. 30:20) “Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.” She ingests for­bid­den fruit and wipes away the evidence as if it's no big deal.

A married couple struggles with infidelity involving another party Jane knows, being facilitated by the boy. In the Italian culture Jane is supposed to mind her own business. And the boy is no saint either. He washes his face from a fountain on the Piazza San Marco. Jane washes hers from it, too. After she gives the boy a solid what for, he changes his T–shirt from a Charlie Brown striped to a solid tawny one. Maybe he's turned a new page. Jane wants to leave any indiscretions behind her, on the order of H.M. Naqvi:

“I mean, you guys are like one way here, like hard­core home­boys, what­ever, but when you guys go home, you become different, all proper and conservative. You have to decide what you're about—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy on, Dora!” My mouth was dry and I felt very dizzy. “You're what, like thirty-one? Have you decided what you're all about yet? Why is it so strange that our behavior is, um, defined by certain contexts?” (93)

Production Values

“” (1955) was directed by David Lean. It started as Shirley Booth's Broadway hit, “Time of the Cuckoo,” then became a book by the current work's play­wright Arthur Laurents and had songs added by Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical, “Do I Hear A Waltz.” Its current form had input from H.E. Bates and David Lean, as well. It stars Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi and Isa Miranda (whose surprise face­lift nearly disqualified her from the role of an older madame/concierge.) The stable of actors used came through splendidly although the leads were more somnolent than inflamed. Hepburn carried it off well.

Its certificate was approved for the production code of the time. Some serious effort was expended to restore the color, and my DVD includes a palate screen to enable the viewer to finesse it further. The mise-en-scène was totally fantastic with local color, operatic venues, and personal inter­actions. If you're into trains, you'll like the trans­por­tation. As for the date, it's time­less. Runtime is 1 hour 40 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

There's precious little religion shown for a Catholic country, and cultural preferences seem to be at odds with the Church's teaching. It's the devil who has the floor with Protestant America in the background.

The lure of temptation is what this film is all about, in a foreign setting. The Playboy Philosophy will get there by and by, but their struggle was with the Puritans who fled Catholic Europe. For the thinking man or woman.

Movie Ratings

Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability for children: Passed code. Special effects: Restored color. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Naqvi, H.M. Home Boy. Copyright © 2009 by H. M. Naqvi. New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2009. Print.