Summertime (1955) on Netflix
Jane Hudson, a middle-aged secretary from Akron, Ohio, saves for a summer in Venice. There she meets Renato de Rossi, an antiques dealer who sells her a red glass goblet.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.1/1011,590 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
A summer in Venice is the last stop on the European trip that Jane Hudson, an unmarried secretary from Akron, Ohio, has saved for over several years. On the vaporetto she meets Lloyd and Edith McIlhenny, and at the Pensione Fiorini the widowed Signora Fiorini welcomes them. Among the other guests are the painter Eddie Yaeger and his wife Phyl, while Mauro, a street urchin, keeps appearing beside Jane. Alone in the Piazza San Marco one evening, she notices an Italian stranger watching her and hurries away. The next day she stops in front of a red glass goblet displayed in an antiques shop window, and inside comes face to face with the man again: Renato de Rossi, the shop's owner, who tells her the goblet is 18th-century work.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Summertime (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Katharine Hepburn was covered in Vaseline and filmed the Venice canal scene about four times in water that David Lean had filled with a foaming disinfectant; she later contracted a rare conjunctivitis that plagued her for the rest of her life.
- The Production Code Administration refused to approve Summertime over its depiction of adultery, especially the scene where Jane and Renato consummate their relationship, and 18 feet of film were cut before approval came. The National Catholic Legion of Decency then objected to a line that was trimmed and gave the film a B-rating, calling it "morally objectionable in part".
- Italian officials resisted David Lean filming on location in Venice during the tourist season, and local gondoliers threatened to strike over lost income; United Artists resolved it by donating to the fund restoring St Mark's Basilica, and Lean had to promise the cardinal no short dresses or bare arms near holy sites.
- Arthur Laurents wrote the play The Time of the Cuckoo for Shirley Booth, who won a Tony for the 1952 Broadway production, but producer Hal Wallis thought Booth too old for the film and envisioned Katharine Hepburn and Ezio Pinza in the leads.
- Before filming, producer Ilya Lopert considered Vittorio De Sica for the role of Renato, Roberto Rossellini expressed interest in directing with Ingrid Bergman as Jane, and Olivia de Havilland supposedly considered starring.
- Arthur Laurents' screenplay was thought unsatisfactory, so David Lean worked on it with Norman Spencer and writers Donald Ogden Stewart and S.N. Behrman without success, then brought in novelist H.E. Bates to collaborate with him.
- India banned Summertime in 1955, and David Lean suspected the censors objected to an American spinster falling in love with a married Italian man, even though his character is separated from his wife.
