In our series about romantic films set in Italy, we’d like to remind you of a “golden oldie” today. This is the film in which Katherine Hepburn really did take a dive into the canal!
Directed by David Lean in 1955 and released in the US as “Summertime” and in Italy as “Tempo D’Estate”, the film stars Katherine Hepburn as middle-aged spinster, Jane, who takes the holiday of a lifetime in Venice.
Rossano Brazzi is the handsome, worldly Italian who befriends her.
The two have a romance but, alas, Brazzi’s character is married so the affair cannot have the ending that Jane dreams of.
In many ways the film, the first that Lean shot on location abroad, depicts an Italy, and a world, that have vanished. The cute urchin who shows Jane around would be picking her pocket today and a single woman no longer feels so vulnerable when travelling. Yet there are scenes in the film that every single woman can identify with and Venice is depicted in all its romance and beauty.
The ending is a three-boxes-of-tissues tear-jerker and the theme song haunts the memory.
The most famous scene in the film is the one in which Hepburn falls into the canal and a stuntwoman was not used. In fact, her dive left Hepburn with a permanent eye infection.
Let’s just sit back and enjoy Venetian romance, fifties-style!
