Summertime (1955)
Director: David Lean
Stars: Katherine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi
Although some Kate Hepburn fans may be disappointed by this
foray in to middle aged melodrama, it is arguably one of the star’s bravest
moves, surrendering herself as she does to a character so removed from her
usually strident and uncompromising image. Always an intelligent adventuress,
Hepburn perhaps recognised at this point, she could lay down the weapons needed
to fight her way through the old Hollywood system, and instead now
negotiate her way through the nuances of later life in a modern world with
different complexities. And not such an about turn either when considering her
eminently successful performance in The African Queen as a comparable virgin on
the path to a different kind of enlightenment.
Released the same year as All That Heaven Allows, Hepburn is
more brittle jittery than Jane Wyman’s dignified melancholy in Douglas Sirk’s
masterclass of middle-class American repression, but both women become involved
in romances with captivating men that are compromised by prejudice. In this
case, the prejudice involved is the heroine’s own, convinced as she is that her
would-be paramour is a cynical digger of tourist romance. As it turns out, she
is arguably the one guilty of exploitation, as ultimately the ‘exotic’ antique
dealer is the one that really falls whereas her engagement is ultimately more
of an adventure in self-discovery. A chance for middle aged romance
nevertheless, and with it a break from housebound sexlessness and walled up
emotion to discover passion and a new life that breaks with middle class
expectations. And nobody depicts lovers wrenched apart by public transport
better than David Lean.
