Summertime - Criterion Collection
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Starring: ~ Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi Isa Miranda Darren McGavin Mari Aldon List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $22.99 You Save: $6.96 (23%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours  |
|
 | Product Details: Studio: Criterion Region: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Format: Color, Dolby DVD NTSC Rating:   Sales Rank: 22904 | | Look for similar DVDs by genre: | | Customers who bought this item also bought:
| | Customer Reviews: A Virtual Visit to Venice (17 February 2010)This is one of my favorite movies. Filmed in Venice instead of a back lot in Hollywood, there are ravishing scenes of Venice that make one feel as if they are there. From the scene of the fire brigade rushing along canals to the twists and turns off every piazza--it all feels so familiar. Hepburn's hotel, the Pensione Fiorini is a real place in Venice, the incomparable Pensione Accademia. For those of us who love that place still, it is recognizable in the movie. You'll watch this one over and over, but it will always make you want to book a trip to Venice, especially to take the train across the train trestle into that misty, watery place. One of the unexpected charms of this film is its treatment of Hepburn as a lonely, single female traveler. It doesn't romanticize in this respect, but shows her frustration, the slights she endures from vacationing happy couples, and even her tendency toward a nip of something stronger than a Campari with soda when life gets her down. Unusual, indeed for that time in cinema. The cinematography is grand and many scenes are stirringly poignant. There is humor in the couple of "ugly Americans," tragedy in the artistic couple who can't get over themselves, and understanding of human foibles when Hepburn loses her heart to a Venetian shop owner (predictable in all ways, but still charming). Oh, buy this movie! You'll never book a more satisfying ticket or come back from a reality trip feeling better. And you'll watch this lovely film over and over. Spinster finds romance in Venice (26 January 2010)The title pretty much says it. I am a sucker for romantic films from the 50's starring iconic stars falling in love in beautiful, foreign places. Some of them hold up (I recently saw The King and I which still had all of its original magic and charm. Not so long ago I saw Grace Kelly and Cary Grant fall in love in Monaco in To Catch a Thief---still wonderful! Then there is the still enchanting Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.) This film....not so much. The really good part is the photography of Venice in all its sunny magnificence. The really bad part is the plot. Perhaps it was meaningful in the 50's and perhaps it suffers from the many films which has borrowed its ideas. (eg. firecrackers exploding in the sky to signal sex). Also it seems that the myth of the repressed or desperate American women who travel to warm climates for romance is getting a little moth-eaten. Here it is Katherine Hepburn, as a forty-ish secretary from Ohio, who saves her money for her trip of a lifetime, one in which she hopes she'll discover "what she's been missing." She plays innocent for a while but it's quite obvious to the audience that what she's after is Romance. She mopes around miserably while watching happy couples pass by. She seems to drink quite a bit. She is attracted by a crimson goblet in an antique store. (The film is not really subtle with the symbolism, but again, this was made in the 50's.) The owner of the antique store provides just what she's been looking for--the Liberator of her repressed Libido. He's played by Rosanno Brozzi, who, I guess was considered quite the Latin Lover in his day. What he sees in her is hard to tell, as she is really frumpy in her long shirtwaist dresses and frizzy hair, all bound up on top of her head. Maybe it's her ankles, or her availability. He pursues, she protests, he persists. It doesn't take long till she melts in his arms. She discovers to her horror that he is married, but it only takes a few minutes of explanation---he and his wife have an "arrangement"---to assuage her Midwest conscience and she again melts into his arms, (after a manicure and new clothes) and has The Best Time of Her Life. Of course she does have to use her return ticket and leaves him before he dumps her, which, being fairly bright, she knows will happen. But hopefully, although she wears the same dumpy brown jumper she arrived in, she has apparently had her flame lit and maybe she'll go back to Akron a changed woman. Well, at least she has her home movies and her red glass goblet. As for Rosanno, well, there are always new tourists arriving daily; he'll cope. Hepburn fans, and they are a loyal bunch, will love her in anything. I never much got the charm of Rosanno Brozzi---he's no Marcello Mastroanni, but if he still has fans aroung, they'll be pleased. For me, the only good reason to see it is the stunning photography. The ultimate holiday romance... (19 January 2010)Of all director David Lean's films (which included such masterpieces as "Great Expectations", "Doctor Zhivago" and "Ryan's Daughter"), his personal favourite was reputed to have been 1955's SUMMERTIME, based on Arthur Laurents' play "The Time of the Cuckoo". Katharine Hepburn is Jane Hudson, a middle-aged spinster secretary from Ohio, who finally manages to save enough money for her dream holiday to Venice. It's a city of love, something which the lonely Jane has had little experience with, until she meets antique shop owner Renato de Rossi (Rossano Brazzi). Shot on genuine locations in and around the fairytale canal city, SUMMERTIME is the perfect "travelogue" movie, containing one of Katharine Hepburn's most appealing, emotionally fragile performances. Her 'Jane' is quite a pathetic figure in many ways; lonely under her false mask of bravado and clearly frightened of love, yet miraculously returned to full life thanks to her romance with de Rossi. Rossano Brazzi's performance is likewise very fine; the previous year he'd filled a similar role in "Three Coins in the Fountain" (with Jean Peters playing another American secretary swayed by his continental charms while on a working holiday in Rome). The screenplay was crafted by David Lean with H.E. Bates ("The Darling Buds of May"); and the story later returned to it's stage roots via the Broadway musical "Do I Hear a Waltz?", with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim. Doesn't have subtitles (03 January 2010)so far peoples hard of hearing like me, pretty useless..unless you just want to enjoy the scenery.. Still a Gem (10 August 2009)Fell in love with this movie as a kid...okay, maybe I didn't "get" it all back then, but I sure did fall in love with Venice. So, when I became that "spinster schoolteacher", it even became more of an iconic film for me! I finally travelled to Venice in the Fall of 2006. I watched the film (on an old video tape) before and after going. It remains a most special film for me. The story may be a little hokey, but it is well done. Katharine Hepburn is sublime, Rossano Brazzi is dreamy, but, for me, Venice will always be the real star!! |
