Summertime (1955)

directed by David Lean

Megan Robinson

I hate being vulnerable. To me, there is no greater curse than the ultimate truth that true human connection is not built on the foundations of exceptional strength and greatness, but instead created through the openness to be weak, scared, and lonely. I was just visiting the Museum of Modern Art with friends, and two of us ventured to John Giorno’s Dial-A-Poem piece, where rotary phones allow you to dial a number and hear a randomly selected poem. We separate and find ourselves dialing the same number for wildly different results; I’m still not sure what exactly he heard, but it was short. For myself, I heard Frank O’Hara’s work “To Hell With It,” causing me to fight back tears, begging them to go back into my eyes not just so they wouldn’t ruin my makeup, but reveal this weakness, this prolonged loneliness awoken through a poem about grief.

Hiding teardrops has been a common pastime for me. The reasons always change, but the tears seem to grow thicker, warmer, and saltier as I age. I am only 23 years old, but life has never felt so out of my reach. The internet certainly doesn’t help; from the multitude of young girls and women on TikTok who buy anything to prevent wrinkles, to those who post teary confessions about mind-numbing, minimum wage work with no one to go home to at night, I have never been less alone in feeling alone. Vocalizing that vulnerability is incredibly brave, and I admire the women who do (even if it can devolve into fear mongering about dreaded crows feet and buccal fat) because I never could—instead, I have to write about movies to open my heart. 

Summertime, the David Lean romance about a middle-aged Katharine Hepburn discovering first love, is an Old Hollywood film that feels achingly modern in its story, one that I continuously see and experience all over social media. Hepburn plays Jane Hudson, a secretary from Ohio taking a vacation across Europe, with her final destination as Venice, where she hopes to find some kind of miracle, to “find what she’d been missing all her life.” Jane can’t help but find couples everywhere she looks, alienating her as a single woman who feels that her singleness amplifies her age, and it becomes clear that what’s missing in her life is love.

The first time I watched Summertime, I was almost afraid of what a film from 1955 could say about a woman like Jane. After all, I’d seen the desperate spinster, usually no older than 30, in these kinds of films before; hell, I even watched as an entire film class laughed at every moment this archetypal character was on screen in Vertigo, Midge sending everyone in the darkened theater into a laughing fit whenever the camera lingered on her own longing for Scottie. As I see more and more posts about how life ends at age 22, an age I’ve now passed miraculously without turning to dust, I waited for the other shoe to drop during Summertime. The amazing thing, though, is that it never did, and empathy became the driving force for a film made in a time where actresses over 30 could struggle to find work where they didn’t play mothers, maids, or witches.

Jane finds herself in the company of the McIlhenny’s, an older couple who use the money they’ve saved not having children to travel across Europe. Already, there’s a bit of a celebration of the kind of experiences you can have in a non-traditional family where children don’t have to fill a void, or maybe there’s no void at all left by a lack of children. Another couple, the Yaeger’s, are young and full of life, but find themselves arguing, with husband Eddie cheating on wife Phyl with the host of their hotel, Signora Fiorini. Here, coupledom is made to produce as many problems as a single life can. After all, Jane and Phyl both find themselves crying in a bar over a man later in the film—no matter how much experience you have, you take the risk of breaking your heart every time you step into that vulnerable state, or succumb to societal milestones of adulthood.

Jane, alone at lunch, finds herself watching all the lovely couples centered in Piazza San Marco, as well as the untapped desires of youth searching for something a bit more lustful. As the camera pans from Jane, we see a single man—Rossano Brazzi’s Renato de Rossi, sitting alone and sipping from his glass—who finally catches a glimpse of Jane filming her surroundings. He finds her all at once intriguing, a bit silly, and definitely sexy, a nonchalant, small smile forming and a new light catching his eyes as he steals a glance at her leg. When she catches him staring, however, she fumbles away, fear of that same desire she longs too much to understand.

Hepburn plays Jane as a structured, conservative, and miserably insecure woman. To watch an actress who, on screen and off, was always bouncing off the walls with an assured confidence in herself, continuously frown and fight back tears, or struggle to find the right words to say, is a revelation. One particular shot, where Renato thinks Jane has someone waiting for her in Piazza San Marco, causing him to leave, leaves me fighting back my own tears as her frown reaches new levels of devastation. She’s trying to play the game of flirtation and failing miserably—who hasn’t been there? It’s strange to watch a performance from one of the most celebrated actresses of all time, who is lauded for her strength, be so achingly relatable. Even when Renato confesses his desire, she refuses him. It can’t be this easy, and if it is, it must be wrong, and if it is, why is this my only chance?

*

Romantic films are never about firsts, though, unless they’re made for teens and tweens. As I age, that reality provided by the edgy feminist Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You becomes more unreachable. Does first, great love have to happen as a teen? If you ask any of the romantic films made for adults, of course it does, but that’s not the only love you’ll ever find. Romances are all about finding the one after a long search that includes a string of people these protagonists view as horrible blips that prevented real love. I’ve had blips, sure, maybe even smaller than that, but so many desires have remained dormant for so long I’m not even sure that love exists.

Summertime wants to prove me wrong, and it does. For the past several months, even the romantic films I adore have left me empty. I rewatched When Harry Met Sally… in December, and just found it to be a nice experience to watch a funny movie with my father; unfortunately that means we watched the diner scene together but we both knew it was coming and I had too many behind-the-scenes tidbits to discuss as it happened, trying to talk over the massive fake orgasm. It was always the movie that made me believe in love again, but not this time. And it just kept happening: Hepburn and Cary Grant’s New Year’s kiss in Holiday, what I once viewed with reverence, left me cold; Stanley Kwan’s Rouge should be the ultimate romantic tragedy of class keeping love suppressed, and I walked away just thinking that it was pretty good; the ending of Bridget Jones’s Diary is supposed to make me swoon! And did I? No! But Summertime kept me crying for almost its entire runtime. I get it, and it sees me, but it also screams from the open window of the train that there’s still hope.

In Renato, Jane has real feelings, honest to god butterflies, that she can’t ignore. He’s not perfect though; when the McIlhenny’s return with glasses eerily similar to one that Renato sold her in his shop and claimed was an antique, Jane feels betrayed. In her tears, though, Renato understands that her disappointment comes from longing, and he refuses to let two adults who desire each other let those feelings not be acted upon. Later, he betrays her again, this time with the discovery that he’s in a marriage of convenience for his children’s sake. He knows he’s not perfect, but he also knows there is no perfect person, or perfect love: “You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. ‘No,’ you say, ‘I want beefsteak.’ My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli.” Jane responds, her ideas of what this moment would be like for her still fighting it, “I’m not that hungry.” Renato, though, knows the most simple fact of life—“We are all that hungry.”

A torrid love affair begins in the short time they have with each other. Each magical night is set against the beauty of Venice, its blue skies, lively music, and fireworks setting the stage for a romance Jane had always dreamed of. Again, the tears flow. Fiorini tells Jane early on about that miracle, that “Those miracles, they can happen sometimes. But you must give a little push to help.” Suddenly, Jane is done waiting. Waiting is time, an hourglass with sand forever falling down, and the next thing you know everyone is telling you life is over unless you get that big job or husband now, and your entire feed becomes engagement reveals and pregnancy announcements. Maybe I have to say what I’ve always wanted to, maybe I’ve let every crush I’ve ever had go uncommunicated for far too long, waiting instead for the sweeping off my feet I was promised in the movies. Sure, Jane is a bit swept, but she does everything she can to understand what this mutual desire really means. 

*

The gardenia, like all flowers, is said to have a dozen different meanings that are all vaguely similar depending on what culture you’re learning from. Some websites, however, cite it as a symbol of a secret love. Jane and Renato find themselves approached by a florist, and Renato, saying he is always surprised by Jane, wants her to pick, hoping he can read her right. She picks the gardenia, however, taking him by surprise and transporting her back in time to a ball she almost had a gardenia for, but her date, the apparently eternal broke college student archetype, couldn’t afford one. Jane and Renato do not scream about their love on the rooftops; they even retreat to an island just to escape the noise of Venice and unite in the warmth of being alone together. By the film’s end, Jane boards her train back home, and Renato runs after her, unable to give her another gardenia, replacing the original that had fallen into a canal. No one will ever know of their love but them. Isn’t that, though, its own miracle?

Love is not always meant to last forever. A fairy tale ending stops where it does because marriage is seen as the final end goal, something to strive towards but never experience the difficulties and struggles of. The great poets immortalize their love in writing; Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, also sighted on my MoMA trip, painted their wives over and over again, preserving them however they could because they knew that nothing really lasts forever. Life is ephemeral for us, but an everlasting force. Jane and Renato will probably never see each other again, but the two experienced something that they will forever share. Jane’s life is forever altered because she took a chance, and someone took one with her. As Carrie Bradshaw said in a much worse film, the Sex and the City movie, “Some love stories aren’t epic novels. Some are short stories. But that doesn’t make them any less filled with love.”

Summertime feels like it can’t possibly exist. This older woman is given a chance not just to be in an older Hollywood film, but to find love and not keep it, but still be happy it happened. As I’ve aged, I’ve found myself drawn to these women who are able to keep living life despite how old they get. Sex and the City’s world of single women in their thirties is more than normal to imagine now, but when you’re the perpetually single friend, it became a comfort to me, just to see how many people one can experience and still not find “the one,” if that even really matters. Maybe being Bridget Jones isn’t so bad when she’s still able to have beautiful friendships and a happy life without a man. When my mother was younger than I am now, her family called her a spinster, and even if they were always known to playfully tease, it’s not like they didn’t somewhat believe it. A part of me wishes everyone could see Summertime just so we could kill the spinster archetype once and for all in the minds of millions. 

I have waited my entire life for something to happen. As a child, this works out pretty well, as most things just happen to you, or an adult is making these things happen. You, personally, don’t register yourself for school, your parents do that, and suddenly you have a regimen to follow for the next decade-plus. But that push, when you can be a fully autonomous person, that makes miracles happen. Supposedly. As a woman, the inability to find or maintain a relationship can be a hard pill to swallow in a culture that dedicates most of its time telling you how to be desirable to get that man, or that you are constantly desired everywhere you go and that’s a promise and a threat. You’re told to push to find that miracle, but every attempt, every push, doesn’t really seem to work. No botox or blushes really seem to be the answer.

But I’ve never felt desired—more often than not, people look at me like I have three heads and frankly, I wouldn’t even know what to do with two, let alone three. I am a much younger Jane, probably living exactly how she did: working for little pay, being sociable and sweet without ever leaving the comfort of myself, knowing that there is comfort in others too, but everyone else can find it except for me. She has to give up the idea of what a first great love is “supposed” to look like, though, to really experience the world as it is, not as a taunting land of couples, but a vast landscape of beauty and love everywhere you look.

When I finished hearing my poem at the MoMA, I could barely discuss it. But I did let it slip, on purpose: “Mine made me cry.” What’s the point of hiding the tears when it’s that kind of raw expression of emotion that links us together? Why do Jane and I have to find secluded places to sob, to never let anyone see just how hard it can be? Is the only way to achieve an independent womanhood to abandon all feeling and desire, in the hopes that one day it will all magically pay off? I haven’t felt anything real in a very long time, but the feeling of watching Summertime on the ironic first day of autumn has stuck with me for months. Watching it again, I succumbed to emotions I forgot existed.

Jane has desire bubbling under the surface, trying to forget that it’s real. Something is bubbling inside of me, inside all of us. Sometimes we fall for the wrong person, sometimes we never see them again even though they promised to call, sometimes we lose love just as fast as we find it. There’s no point in denying it, or acting like it makes you a failure of your gender because you couldn’t make that mystical nuclear family before graduating college. We are all that hungry. I’m starving, quite frankly, and I think I’m ready to admit that.

Megan Robinson is a freelance writer and editor based in New Jersey. She recently graduated from Ithaca College with a BA in Culture and Communication. Her work has appeared in Polyester, Film Daze, Flip Screen, and more. She is currently a staff writer and copy editor for Film Cred and a staff writer for MovieJawn. She doesn’t know what the future holds but knows she has to make movies before she dies. You can find her on Twitter @hughjmungo_ and Instagram @megan-t-robinson.