Summertime (1955)

5 October 2019

I'm a big fan of David Lean films, and iF I were to list my top ten films his movies would probably cover at least 3 of them. So I was looking forward to seeing Summertime (1955), starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi.

In this film, Hepburn's a lonely, middle-aged secretary on vacation in Venice, where she finds unexpectedly finds romance. At first the film felt like tourist propaganda, heavily showing the attractions of the area. But once it went over that, it reminded me a lot of the drama and suspense in Brief Encounter (1945, 10/10). Hepburn's a tour de force, as she was in many of her films, and carried the film beyond what it is - which is a tourist falling in love on vacation. One other thing I lament on is that my DVD copy is an older Criterion version (#22/1000+) and wasn't given as much love as it could have: it;s standard screen, without subtitles, and kinda cheaply done for Criterion. All that said, it was still a good movie to finally see. 8/10