Katharine Hepburn shines in this unusual David Lean film about a sexually repressed spinster who meets a gorgeous Italian man during a lonely vacation-of-a-lifetime in Venice. Any viewer who finds this movie hopelessly dated clearly lacks the imagination required to understand just how taboo sex was for post World War II Americans, especially single working women who had somehow missed the love boat . No American man alive at the time could have come close to wooing Hepburn the way Rossano Brazzi does in "Summertime." The guy has class oozing from every pore, and he recognizes that he can give this "old maid" an affair she will remember. Hepburn is at her very best as she nears hysteria over her awakening. And Venice has never looked lovelier or more romantic.
Review of Summertime
