Summertime is a 1955 romantic comedy drama film directed by David Lean, and starring Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Darren McGavin, and Isa Miranda.
It follows a lonely middle-aged American secretary and her experiences touring Venice alone for the first time, during which she falls in love with an Italian antiques dealer.
Jane Hudson is an unmarried, middle-aged, self-described "fancy secretary" from Akron, Ohio, on her summer vacation, enjoying her lifelong dream of a trip to Venice after having saved money for it over several years.
On her first evening in Venice, Jane walks to the Piazza San Marco, where the sight of so many romantic couples intensifies her loneliness.
She seems on the verge of agreeing to have dinner with him when the McIlhennys return from a shopping trip to Murano where they purchased a set of new red goblets similar to the one Jane bought.
Renato realizes that Jane now thinks he has swindled her, but he assures her that the same designs have been used for centuries in Venice and he insists that her goblet is a genuine antique.
Stunned to discover Renato is married and has several children, Jane takes refuge in a bar where she encounters Phyl, who confides that her marriage to Eddie is in trouble.
Jane, unwilling to remain in a relationship she knows is destined to end unhappily, decides to return home early.
Arthur Laurents had written The Time of the Cuckoo specifically for Shirley Booth, who starred in the 1952 Broadway production and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance.
Producer Hal Wallis expressed interest in purchasing the film rights, but felt Booth was too old for the role, and envisioned Katharine Hepburn and Ezio Pinza in the leads.
Ilya Lopert ultimately acquired the rights with the intention of casting Booth and hiring Anatole Litvak to direct.
Laurents' screenplay was allegedly unsatisfactory, and newly hired director David Lean tried to improve it with associate producer Norman Spencer and writers Donald Ogden Stewart and S.N.
Roberto Rossellini expressed interest in directing the film with Ingrid Bergman as Jane, and Olivia de Havilland supposedly considered starring in the project.
[7] Italian government officials initially resisted director David Lean's request to allow his crew to film on location during the summer months, the height of the tourist season, especially when local gondolieri, fearful they would lose income, threatened to strike if he was given permission to do so.
The problem was resolved when United Artists made a generous donation to the fund established to finance the restoration of St Mark's Basilica.
[8] In one scene, Jane Hudson falls into a canal as she steps backwards while photographing Di Rossi's shop in Campo San Barnaba.
[9] He filled the water with a disinfectant that caused it to foam, which added to Hepburn's reluctance, then required her to film the scene approximately four times until he was satisfied with the results.
They reduced the complicated pondering of an American woman's first go at love with a middle-aged merchant of Venice to pleasingly elemental terms.
And they let the evident inspiration for their heroine's emotional release be little more than the spell cast by the city upon her fitful and lonely state of mind.
Through the lens of his color camera, the wondrous city of spectacles and moods becomes a rich and exciting organism that fairly takes command of the screen.
And the curious hypnotic fascination of that labyrinthine place beside the sea is brilliantly conveyed to the viewer as the impulse for the character's passing moods.