Summertime

Summertime (1955)

All the pent-up yearning of her life was finally fulfilled ... amid the splendor of the world's most fabulous city!

Middle-aged Ohio secretary Jane Hudson has never found love and has nearly resigned herself to spending the rest of her life alone. But before she does, she uses her savings to finance a summer in romantic Venice, where she finally meets the man of her dreams, the elegant Renato Di Rossi.

Date of release
1955-06-21
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (177)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
David Lean

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $2M
  • Budget: $1.1M
  • Earned 1.8× its budget
  • Filmed in: Venice
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 2. Including: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films

Summertime is a 1955 romantic drama film directed by David Lean, and starring Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Darren McGavin, and Isa Miranda. It follows a lonely middle-aged American secretary and her experiences touring Venice alone for the first time, during which she falls in love with an Italian antiques dealer. Lean co-wrote the screenplay with H. E. Bates, based on the play The Time of the Cuckoo by Arthur Laurents.

Production

Arthur Laurents had written The Time of the Cuckoo specifically for Shirley Booth, who starred in the 1952 Broadway production and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance. Producer Hal Wallis expressed interest in purchasing the film rights, but felt Booth was too old for the role, and envisioned Katharine Hepburn and Ezio Pinza in the leads.

Numerous names were mentioned in conjunction with the project before filming finally began. At one point producer Lopert considered casting director-actor Vittorio De Sica as Renato. Roberto Rossellini expressed interest in directing the film with Ingrid Bergman as Jane, and Olivia de Havilland supposedly considered starring in the project.

Principal photography took place on location in Venice in the summer of 1954 on a budget of $1.1 million. Finance came in part from the Woolf brothers. It was one of the first British-produced films to be shot entirely on location. Interior sequences set in the Pensione Fiorini were filmed in studio, though the scenes occurring on the Pensione's veranda were shot along Venice's Grand Canal on a terrace constructed on an empty lot.

Italian government officials initially resisted director David Lean's request to allow his crew to film on location during the summer months, the height of the tourist season, especially when local gondolieri, fearful they would lose income, threatened to strike if he was given permission to do so. The problem was resolved when United Artists made a generous donation to the fund established to finance the restoration of St Mark's Basilica.

In one scene, Jane Hudson falls into a canal as she steps backwards while photographing Di Rossi's shop in Campo San Barnaba. Leading lady Katharine Hepburn, concerned about her health, was disinclined to do the stunt herself, but Lean felt it would be obvious if he replaced her with a stunt double.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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