A Summer Place (1959)
A Summer Place (1959)
Xvid 720x404 23.98fps 1125Kbps | English Dolby AC3 48000Hz mono 192Kbps | English sub/idx | 02:10:08 | 1.2 Gb
Drama/Romance | Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Richard Egan, Dorothy McGuire, Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee
Xvid 720x404 23.98fps 1125Kbps | English Dolby AC3 48000Hz mono 192Kbps | English sub/idx | 02:10:08 | 1.2 Gb
Drama/Romance | Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Richard Egan, Dorothy McGuire, Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee
A self-made businessman rekindles a romance with a former flame while their two teenage children begin a romance of their own with drastic consequences for both couples. Max Steiner's main theme for this film is probably his best-known after his "Tara Theme" for "Gone With the Wind." As with "Tara's Theme," it has remained a favorite ever since, with several charting recordings.
This movie has only one thing on its naughty little mind - sex. There are those who are getting it, those who aren't getting it but want it, and those who aren't getting it and are pretending they don't want it. One character in the latter category bandies words like "slut" and "harlot" about freely, but she didn't fool me. The four adults have managed to screw up their relationships, but the two very cute teenagers, played by Sandra Dee and Troy Donohue, look as if they'll get by okay if they just follow their hearts. I can't pretend that this is a great movie, but I had fun watching it. That's because the dialogue is way over the top and the actors deliver it with relish. In particular, Constance Ford (as Dee's evil, neurotic mom) and Arthur Kennedy (as Donahue's drunken sot of a dad) get all the best verbal poison arrows, and some of them are quite funny (sometimes unintentionally so). At one point Dee asks Donohue straight out: "Have you been bad with other girls?" That's the temper of the screenplay - everybody says precisely what's on their minds. I have to give the film credit for depicting the utter helplessness of adults in trying to manage their children's lives. Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire (as lovely as ever) try to behave with stoic dignity which is hard to do when you're sneaking out to the boathouse for a midnight rendezvous and maybe a little you-know-what. The Technicolor location photography is very beautiful, with California doubling, I hear, for New England. And I enjoyed the costumes (okay, okay, I also enjoyed what was in them).
A Summer Place (1959)
A Summer Place (1959)
A Summer Place (1959)
A Summer Place (1959)
A Summer Place (1959)
A Summer Place (1959)
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