"Summertime", Dir: David Lean, 1955

David Lean's 1955 evocative and bitter sweet holiday romance, "Summertime" is included in the July Criterion Channel line-up of films following a similar theme and was a random choice intended to tear me away from a second viewing this month of Netflix U.K's final run of "Call My Agent"/"Dix Pour Cent" as it sadly bows out for good on July 21st following an epic run that began during lockdown. However, it won't stop me from catching it for one last time (I've watched it at least 5 times..:)) and I shall miss the series' (4 seasons) brilliant writing and casting that has propelled the original French series into becoming an international phenomenon and has launched some of its ensemble cast onto a wider cinematic stage.

But back to "Summertime" - in many ways the plot is a retread of Lean's earlier success, "Brief Encounter", made a full decade before in 1945, but with the added value of some stunning Eastmancolor location photography in the story's setting of Venice, a reflection of the growing trend of affordable overseas travel in the immediate post-war era of the 1950's.

Both films are about the romantic flings of lonely women that are ultimately thwarted for various reasons, primarily to do with social mores of the time during which they were made and are very much from a woman's perspective in a climate where women were able to make life choices that didn't necessarily depend upon male approval, though to be fair "Summertime"'s heroine, as a middle aged American woman, appears more emancipated than the staid portrayal of the middle-class English woman of "Brief Encounter".

This slant no doubt led to the casting of Kathryn Hepburn as "Jane Hudson", an actress known for taking on roles where she played a type of modern emancipated woman of the early 20th Century, though in many ways she is playing against this type in the film - adventurous enough to travel to Venice unaccompanied but unwilling and perhaps lacking in confidence to commit to a relationship and resigned to the possibility that it may never happen due to her age. Having arrived in Venice via an overland train journey she is thrust unceremoniously into the chaos of crowds of tourists who have descended on the city and is eventually directed to her hotel via a floating bus where she happens on an irritating older American couple who are staying at the same hotel.

At the hotel she meets another couple, both artists from the U.S (Darren McGavin and Mari Aldon) who apart from being younger, seem very much "into each other" enough that Hepburn's "Hudson" becomes acutely aware of her predicament even though she is not there for the express reason of finding romance. Things take a turn however when she is sitting in a cafe on the Piazza San Marco and innocently filming the passing crowds and scenery using a small portable cine camera (an astute product placement addition given the film's format of Kodak's Eastmancolor and the boom in portable cine cameras and "home movie" formats made available by Kodak to the general public in the post-war period) and is being studied intently without her knowledge by a handsome Italian, played by Rossano Brazzi, sitting an adjacent table. Feeling his gaze, Jane Hudson hurriedly leaves the scene after Brazzi's "Renato" steps in to help her pay her bill by calling over a waiter.

Some time later while exploring what Venice has to offer in terms of picturesque material for her camera Jane Hudson's eye is caught by a red "Murano" vase in the window of an antique shop next to one of Venice's many small canal bridges and it is here that she is suddenly made aware that the antique dealer is none other than Renato, the man from the Piazza San Marco - their eyes meet and there is an immediate frisson of attraction, though Hepburn's "Hudson" refuses to acknowledge it.

After some initial resistance and due to Renato's insistence that she put aside her reservations to follow her heart and accept that they share a mutual attraction, they embark on a passionate love affair that culminates in a night spent together. However, the romantic idyll is upturned when Jane Hudson discovers that Renato has a son who works with him at the antique shop and that therefore he must be married and she feels duped as a result.

Determined to break the relationship and bitterly disappointed and ashamed, she decides to cut short her holiday in Venice and consign the intense episode to an unwise holiday fling of a woman desperate for attention but unable to express her true feelings and is vulnerable as a consequence - a great deal is made of the fact that she is an "American woman" several times in the film, ie as if to underline the fact that she is capable of making her own choices, in contrast to women of other countries where tradition and prevalent chauvinist attitudes may restrict such a level of freedom.

Renato confronts her in her hotel and admits that he has children but is separated from his wife, a detail that should be viewed in the context of how divorce was viewed by the Catholic church in Italy at the time as a form of transgression. However, this confession is not enough for Jane Hudson and she decides to leave Venice and the romance behind despite admitting to Renato that she had been the happiest she had ever been in her life as a result, and the two part ways as she boards the train seen at the beginning of the film as Renato makes a last, ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at saving the relationship with a small gift as the train pulls out of the station as Jane waves at him as he disappears into the distance. Reading the Wiki entry for the film it becomes clear that Lean had no interest in sugar-coating the plot and turning in an anodyne holiday romance film in a picturesque setting and instead opts for as realistic a portrayal of a relationship between a man and a woman as was acceptable at the time, aided by touching and convincing performances by Hepburn and to a lesser extent, Brazzi. Added to this is the almost documentary approach to the visual narrative where it serves a dual purpose of encouraging international tourism. The scene where they consummate their relationship is constructed around visual hints that could seem quaint by today's standards, eg a firework display and one of her shoes left on a balcony but apparently even this level of cinematic symbolism was enough to outrage U.S censors and led to the film being banned for many years in India, partly because it appeared to be non-judgemental about extramarital affairs but also perhaps because of one rather controversial scene where a young street urchin, "Mauro" (Gaetano Autiero) who has befriended Hudson cadges a cigarette from her and is seen happily puffing away on it after she exits the scene, something that must have been a common sight in reality amongst the poor in Italy but was possibly too close to reality to escape the gaze of the film censors.

Lean's background as a film editor ensures that the film never flags or allows the many picturesque shots of Venice to dominate the narrative - one early sequence springs to mind where the opening shots set aboard a train cut abruptly to a shot of the steam train wheels grinding to a halt, effectively acting as a page turn and preface before the main part of the story set in Venice itself.

Kathryn Hepburn was already in her late 40's by the time she acted in "Summertime" but that doesn't make the film's romantic relationship seem any less probable - an inadvisable contemporary remake might focus more on the details of a sexual relationship that is only hinted at in the broadest terms in a very roundabout way in the film and there is something distasteful about the thought of Kathryn Hepburn being humped by Rossano Brazzi - some things are best left private or to the imagination though you do wonder if some censors were more outraged by the idea than the reality of what was committed to film.

"Summertime", Dir: David Lean, 1955

Criterion Channel and some other streamers.