This attempt to watch the first one hundred titles of the Criterion Collection has broadened my cinematic horizon as of late, encouraging me to see several films which would have normally gone under the radar.  It compels me to put aside my prejudices towards certain directors or genres, or, in the case of this review, encounter films I know virtually nothing about by directors who remain relatively unknown by me. As a result, I come to learn just how negligent as a film geek I have become; for example, in some bizarre oversight on my part I have all but missed the entire oeuvre of David Lean, which becomes all the more strange when you consider his back catalogue: A Passage to India, Doctor Zhivago, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Lawrence of Arabia, and the Bridge on the River Kwai. The exception to my ignorance of this director is ‘Brief Encounter’ which I saw a couple years ago after Richard Linklater endorsed the film as an influence on his ‘Before Sunrise’. ‘Brief Encounter’ is a wonderful film that effortlessly conveys the conspiratorial atmosphere of a love affair that is gradually undermined by the social mores around it (think of Douglas Sirk’s films, or even better, Todd Haynes’ homage to Sirk, ‘Far From Heaven’; this film is of that caliber).

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the same David Lean of ‘Brief Encounter’ pops up frequently on the first one hundred films of the Criterion Collection and that inevitably I would be put in a position to see further works of this master storyteller; one of which is his 1955 love letter to Venice starring Katherine Hepburn, ‘Summertime’. Now let me establish my biases upfront: I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Venetian art, I have all but set foot in Venice having planned in detail at least three vacations which centered around this magnificent embodiment of the picturesque, and if there was a single genre of cinema that rates above all others for me, it is drama, and more particularly that subset of travelogue romance which take as theme the regenerative power of love, or the conspiratorial dimension to romantic love. Such films have the protagonists meet one another as strangers, and within a short period grow to feel a profound connection that then defines their very purpose for living. And in all of these films there is a world surrounding them that continues to go on its way alienated from the internal world of these two lovers, so much so that their connection has a great deal to do with this division, this us vs. them mentality. Summertime appeals to all of these biases. Wong Kar-Wai has been the undisputed champion of this sort of narrative, but upon my viewing of this second feature of Lean’s I am starting to wonder if I am on the threshold of excavating a new treasure of immeasurable worth to rival even Kar-Wai.

‘Summertime’ is so damn good it is unnerving. Watching it with my wife, I actually had to pause the film three or four times just to blubber about it. One needs to take pause when, after watching several months of mediocre cinema, something like this falls on your lap. First, it is the most honest portrayal of Anglophone abroad storytelling I have ever seen, bristling with nuance of traveling experiences I had and forgot I had, and realizes onscreen the multifaceted nature of traveling, that strange mix of the mundane and the glorious. Where a lesser film would editorialize the experience and keep only salient moments to document, this journey into Venice takes in the complete panorama of experience, the quiet moments of walking to your hotel, the basking in the first morning before all the possibilities, and the visuals, my God the visuals. Filmed entirely on site, ‘Summertime’ seems every bit as rich and sensuous as I imagined Venice would be, which is an incredible feat considering that this was made in 1955 Technicolor and yet this deficiency sort of works in a histrionic way to sheath the visuals in a nostalgic light. Every shot is stellar, every shot is filled with something to look at and admire. This is one of those rare experiences where after the film had ended I felt this mad rush to watch it all over again, and this could easily be done because of the sumptuous detail in every frame.

While enjoying the film on the voyeuristic level as travelogue I was equally compelled by the tender finessing of the narrative, which is incredibly modern and complex for such a dated picture. Lean depicts the central love story without condescension, allowing the characters proper depth and cultural background. ‘Summertime’, despite some superficial signs to the contrary, is not a harlequin romance, where the Italian amour concedes to the American woman’s every fantasy. Instead there is an abrupt friction between the two cultural perspectives of what love entails that culminates in a quasi-disillusionment for the heroine that is fascinating to watch. What results is a corpuscular attraction, a sharp edged, smooth sided uneasy alliance with intense bursts of drama, such as when Hepburn throws the chair. What I appreciate most from Lean’s story is its peppering of realism in the smallest touches, such as how idiomatic expressions are not easily grasped by the Italian Renalto, yet they are not emphasized as plot developments either, you just see the right amount of confusion in each conversation that one familiar with that sort of thing will recognize, or how the seduction unfolds, clumsy and unsentimental.

The characters make the film. Hepburn’s Jane Hudson goes against every preconception of what a Hepburn character ought to be; here she plays a meek lonely woman who rages at every attempt by others to appease her state. This is a surprisingly sensitive depiction of depression, again, for something from 1955! Jane is a woman with very little back story, she embodies a lived-in loneliness which clings to culturally idealized perceptions of how love is supposed to occur. Rossano Brazzi as Renalto de Rossi, the uninhibited Italian who wants to consummate his love for Jane, is also against type; while still a handsome man, he is not without his flaws, and his advances are less then ideal fare for the romantic. He is a man stumbling into love, at every turn trying to offset Jane’s erratic trepidation with intimacy. This chemistry results in a beautifully imperfect dance of psyches that mirrors the imperfections of the picturesque which surrounds them. One of the most extraordinary elements to the film is how Lean (both writer and director) chose to end the story; of course with this kind of story, it is practically inevitable that the tourist will have to return home, but rarely has it been done with such iconic flare. In one long take Lean perhaps establishes the single best ending to a picture I have ever seen, one which compliments as a perfect book-end everything established in the beginning.

Delightful… is the one word review equivalent.

I feverishly look forward to his version of Charles Dickens ‘Great Expectations’ (yet another CC candidate) -- Mike