Summer Storm is a 1944 period romantic melodrama directed by Douglas Sirk, and starring Linda Darnell, George Sanders, Edward Everett Horton, and Anna Lee.

Just after the Russian Revolution, Count Volsky, an impoverished former aristocrat, visits Nadena Kalenin, head of a publishing company.

Volsky offers her a manuscript, written by his friend and Nadena's former fiancé, Judge Fedor “Fedya” Petroff.

Brokenhearted, Nadena quietly calls off their engagement, as Fedya continues his affair with Olga, who dreams of escaping to America.

Clara, the maid, comes forward, saying she can recognize the killer’s hands by his rings and their aristocratic appearance, only to realize, to her horror, that they are Fedya’s.

As Fedya’s corpse is carried away, the police discover on him only Nadena’s dance card from the wedding banquet, on which he wrote “I Love You.” It ends up discarded on the floor, swept up with the garbage and dumped in a trashcan.

Director Douglas Sirk began developing this project while working at the UFA Studios in Germany.

After fleeing to the United States in 1939, he continued developing the project, working for a time with James M. Cain, but discarding that draft, saying it was too American.

While she had previously been playing innocent, good-natured roles, her performance as the seductive and manipulative Olga changed the public's opinion of her and transformed her into a sex symbol.

Like The North Star, this film was released in the United States during a period of pro-Russian sentiment and interest by the Allies at the height of World War II.