And the subject is the most basic and pervasive of all: not love, but loneliness. It starred my favorite actress, Katharine Hepburn, and it was filmed in my favorite place, Venice. SUMMER MADNESS, or as you call it here in America, SUMMERTIME. When David Lean won the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990, Billy Wilder asked him what his favorite film (that he directed) was: When I first saw SUMMERTIME, I was blown away by the way Lean had really captured the beauty of Venice, with all its magnificent colors, the canal culture, and the wonderful history of art around every corner. For the red glass goblets in SUMMERTIME, he had several test goblets of different shades, sizes, and shapes hand blown before he selected the perfect one to use in the film. ZHIVAGO (1965) he delayed filming for several days to have a field of poppies planted.
Lean was a perfectionist when it came to directing.
Summertime madness katharine hepburn movie#
David was always very fussy about a script and removed everything that didn't interest him - so this movie is really David in Venice." ( Hepburn, 253) "There were two love affairs one was mine with Rossano Brazzi in the story, and the other, David's with Venice." (Hepburn interview, Chandler, 202) " threw out everything but the main plot. In her autobiography, Hepburn commented on Lean's perfectionism: ZHIVAGO (1965)) altered the script a great deal. It is certainly true that the English director David Lean ( DR. Apparently, Laurents was not impressed with the finished product of this film, claiming that "Kate's movie-star wattage blindsighted director David Lean" (Mann, 399). SUMMERTIME was based on the play "The Time of the Cuckoo" by Arthur Laurents, who also wrote the plays-turned-movies WEST SIDE STORY (1961) and GYPSY (1962). So, she rides off into the sunset alone, but not lonely. Once Jane has proven to herself that she is perfectly able to attract and satisfy a man, she no longer feels the desire to maintain such a relationship indefinitely. I think it becomes clear that societal pressures had convinced Jane that marriage (or sex) was necessary to be a whole woman, but after experiencing a very fulfilling sexual relationship with a man, she realizes that she is not, in actually fact, an incomplete woman without a man.
Although at the beginning of the film, Jane displays an almost self-pitying loneliness, she doesn't ultimately satisfy that loneliness with a male companion. The Hepburn character is permitted to maintain the dignity and self-respect she earned as the story unfolded. Yet the film concludes successfully - it is not a tragic ending. Mann points out: "Rather than a mawkish, tearjerker ending, SUMMERTIME gives us the rare portrait of a woman who decides the love of a man isn't necessary to make her whole." ( Mann, 399) SUMMERTIME is one of the few romantic movies I've seen that allows the female protagonist end the picture without a husband, or at least the potential of a husband. However, in many ways, this film is feministically progressive because, as biographer William J.
Summertime madness katharine hepburn professional#
SUMMERTIME is one of what scholar Andrew Britton would call Hepburn's "spinster cycle." It is a film that features Hepburn as a repressed, middle-aged, unmarried professional (214). As it was, they did use a dummy, and the dummy was me." ( Chandler, 209) I certainly would have put up a bigger squawk about it and suggested they use a dummy.
Years later she remembers the incident: "I had no fear, but if I had known just how toxic the garbage in the canal was, or what kinds of problems it would produce for me for the rest of my life, I would have been afraid.I still wouldn't have let someone else do it for me, although it might not have been as hard on someone tougher-skinned than me. The effect is marvelous, although Hepburn did contract an eye infection as a consequence. Passersby were informed that Hepburn was in fact an excellent swimmer, so they weren't to be alarmed when she tipped into the water. Although warned about the dangers of making contact with the polluted water in the canals, Hepburn insisted on doing her own stunt work. The most famous scene of the film is when Hepburn falls backwards into a canal while taking a picture.
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