Summertime

David Lean basks in the splendor of Venice’s tourist hotspots in a manner that, as evinced by Summertime’s rapturous visual splendor, anticipates his subsequent string of massively scaled productions.

It offers a rich, sometimes dazzling surface, with its fine Venice locations, but its conception seems tentative.

The dialogue can be stagey and Venice is evoked at a tourist level, but it's beautifully photographed and Hepburn's loneliness and sadness look disquietingly real.

While her obvious star power radiates in every scene, Hepburn elicits great sympathy for Jane through the subtle moments of profound sadness, the immutable sting of loneliness still resonating seventy years later.