You won't be disappointed!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The American secretary Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn) travels from Ohio to Venice. Jane is a middle-age single and lonely woman that have saved money for her dream trip. On the arrival, she immediately befriends the owner of the boarding house Signora Fiorini (Isa Miranda). During the night, she goes to a café and an Italian helps her to call the waiter. Jane feels sort of uncomfortable for being alone and on the next day, she sees a red glass goblet in the window of an antique store. The owner Renato de Rossi (Rossano Brazzi), who is the man that helped her, explains that it is an ancient goblet from the Eighteenth Century and therefore expensive; then he also explains that she should always bargain for a lower price in Venice. Jane recognizes Renato from the previous night and becomes clumsy. Soon Renato woos her but the needy Jane is afraid to love."Summertime" is a deceptive film directed by David Lean and with Katharine Hepburn. Her character is a tight and awkward spinster and the romance with Rossano Brazzi has no chemistry. Most of the time the viewer has a tour through Venice and a tasteless romance. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Quando o Coração Floresce" ("When the Heart Blossoms")

This is part of my ongoing personal project to see all of David Lean's 18 directed movies. This particular film is sandwiched in between his early years with Coward, Dickens, and his wife (from 1949 to 1957), Ann Todd on the one hand, AND his five epic-type movies made from 1957-1984. Lean's story sources seemed to be heavily influenced by the traditional English values of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, even after the short 'kitchen sink' revolution of the late 50s to early 60s.For this movie, David Lean received his third of seven Oscar nominations for Best Director (with 2 wins) while Katherine Hepburn received her sixth of twelve nominations for Best Actress (with 4 wins—2 in consecutive years). Personally, I think that their nominations for this movie were the least worthy for both of them—nowhere near their other film projects. To me, this movie marked a demarcation for both Lean and Hepburn, separating each from better works from the past and setting the table for better movies yet to come.Though Lean had already made two Technicolor movies, neither were, technically, as colorful as this one. And none were quite as committed to 'out of the studio' camera shots as this one was. Here, the location was beautiful and vital to the movie's story. Further, when you think of the stunning 'on location' epics that Lean later made, you are glad that he ventured out to make this first one!!With Katherine Hepburn, audiences had not seen her vulnerable romantic side since Alice Adams. Here, she actually wears a dress and is as shy as she had been at the opening of The African Queen (1951) and would soon be in The Rainmaker (1956). This is a rare intimate story about a spinster secretary, Jane Hudson (Katherine Hepburn), who goes to Venice, more or less seeking a romantic adventure. When she finds it with a local Venetian shopkeeper, Renato de Rossi (Rossano Brazzi), and then discovers that he is a married; she first rejects it then accepts it for what it is worth---and for however long it can last.

Hepburn is either too old and unattractive or Brazzi to young and refined (even though he's not very prosperous, we later find out) to make their relationship in this film believable. Brazzi acts as someone commented here more like a predator than as a man in need of love, but then again we never learn much about either character. Was Hepburn supposed to be a virgin? Why does everyone keep calling Hepburn signorina, even when she's with Brazzi? Was Brazzi really feeling lonely and couldn't find a pretty young Italian or tourist girl (he's quite a handsome fellow, you know) and was Hepburn the best he could get? Does he dig older American women (it seems he does)? It also seems he wanted to keep Hepburn but as a mistress, an arrangement she clearly would have refused, but this is never discussed during the abrupt ending. This film has some things in common with Lean's other doomed-from-the start romantic film "Brief Encounter", with trains as a motif. BTW, it seems things have changed plenty since 1955 given that today a woman in Venice I don't think would feel safe walking the city alone, specially at night. All in all, this a very dated, miscast, unbelievable, yet wonderfully photographed film.

Katharine Hepburn isn't the most overrated movie actress, and she certainly wasn't the worst. But she definitely could be too mannered for her own good. Witness her 1955 Oscar-nominated performance in this David Lean film.Playing a middle-aged single woman who comes to Venice in search of "mystery", and maybe a man to go with it, she pushes up her chin, clenches her teeth in an unconvincing smile, and calls everyone younger than her "cookie" to show she's hip...or something. Then when she finally meets the man (Rossano Brazzi), she can't get away from him fast enough.His line of woo is really one for the ages: "Eat the ravioli, my dear girl. You are hungry.""I'm not THAT hungry.""We're all that hungry.""Summertime" is a marvelous slide show in motion brilliantly featuring one of the world's most beautiful cities. But it never comes together as anything compelling. Lean leans on the superlative work of his cinematographer, Jack Hildyard, in lieu of story or characters.All we know about Kate's character, Jane Hudson, going in is that she's a private secretary who talks in capital letters, like: "I'm From Akron, Ohio, How Do You Do?". We know less about Brazzi's character, except that he sells possibly suspicious antiques and feels something for Jane. When they come together, we get Rossini, fireworks, and not much else other than an abrupt ending. Hey, I wasn't complaining too much. I just wanted it to be over.The secondary characters are even more from hunger. You get the McIlhennys, an American couple as pungent and unsubtle as the sauce they were no doubt named after. There's a painter, his patiently suffering wife, and a maid who sings like she should be on stage, not dusting blinds.Hildyard's brilliance nearly makes up for much. His camera-work captures a lot of amazing colors and detail, as well as a nice sense of dimensionality, like the way Jane's upper-story window looks down on the canals below. At one point, Hepburn even manages a natural line delivery of a good line: "In America, every female under 50 calls herself a girl...after, who cares?"Mostly Hepburn underlines and undermines her character's every emotion, squeezing already-overbaked dialogue too hard, like this consecutive series of lines to Brazzi: "Why did you do that? Oh, I don't think I want to see you again! I love you!" Even before the hugging and kissing starts, she makes sure you get her character's loneliness in every scene, tearing up and grimacing whenever she sees an affectionate couple pass her by on the Piazza San Marco. Lean doesn't help matters. When she meets Brazzi in his store for the first time, Lean makes sure to insert a harp glissando at the moment of their eye contact, in case you don't get the point something really big just happened.Love is a special thing. But you can gild the lily too much even in its service, and gild it even more for a big abrupt sad ending utterly wrong for the characters. Lean and Hepburn were movie legends, and justly so, but "Summertime" reminds you why they have detractors, too.