Summertime

David Lean’s name immediately springs to mind such epic features as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Not a bad resume to have built a reputation and career off of, but it doesn’t quite explain Summertime. So this quiet little story about an American spinster taking a romantic trip through Venice to find love and recenter herself comes from the same man who put Peter O’Toole through hell in the desert? Proof that maybe David Lean’s reputation as a director wasn’t just for the grand epics that immediately spring to everyone’s mind; there was always a great attachment to characters and their journeys in his films. Summertime is like his Mrs. Dalloway, proving that a heroic character need not save the world or engage in battles to gain our admiration. Sometimes all they need to do is just blossom into the fullest and best version of their true self.

Katharine Hepburn, in one of her great spinster roles, stars as the vacationing American who meets a handsome Italian man and falls in a kind of love that she’s only ever heard of and read about. Her Venice is a blank canvas in which she can project her ideals and fantasies about life, culture, self-transformation and love. When the charming and frankly sexual Italian lover comes into her life, she’s shocked and aroused. Suddenly Venice becomes a solid and real place, the precocious little ragamuffin street urchin who accompanies her is a real boy who is really homeless and orphaned. The canals aren’t mystical waterways which transform strangers into lovers; they’re the polluted and murky life line of the city.

Summertime is thinly plotted for two obvious reasons: to allow for Katharine Hepburn to act her ass off, and for David Lean to point-and-shoot the gorgeous scenery with fabulous cinematography and great eye for details. The early parts of the film could have used some edits – how many times must I deal with that insufferable couple who do nothing but explore tourist traps and get no real flavor or picture of the places they visit? I find it strange that this was his alleged personal favorite film, since it is so thin in so many areas. The clichés of the plot and some of the visuals have dated badly, but the performances are like fine wines. While fireworks as visual image for sexual intercourse is as old and played out as the story-line, the way that Lean so loving frames and crafts the scene and has it shot is still wonderful to look at. And the way that Hepburn plays so much of it without words and just through long takes of her face and emoting is a wonder to behold. Summertime is just another example to add to my argument about Hepburn being one of the few actresses who only improved and obtained better work with age. With age came a softening and practical abandonment of all her mannered ticks and neurotic yammering that so hampered earlier films like Morning Glory.