A summer place (1959)
|
|
|
|
|
Year:
|
1959
|
|
Director:
|
Delmer Daves
|
|
Stars:
|
Richard
Egan, Dorothy
McGuire, Sandra Dee,
Troy
Donahue, Constance
Ford, Arthur
Kennedy, Beulah Bondi
|
|
Genre:
|
Drama,
Trash, Romance
|
|
Review:
|
When Egan (married to Ford) and McGuire
(married to Kennedy) meet at a fancy summer resort, they rekindle an old
romance, while their offspring (Donahue and Dee) fall in love with each
other. Unfortunately Ford is determined to make things difficult for them
all.
A Summer Place was adapted from Sloan Wilson's bestselling book by the
director, Delmer Daves.
It fits into the cycle of family melodramas which were popular at the time;
Douglas Sirk's "woman's pictures" such as
Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows now enjoy good reputations,
and even less well thought of soap operas such as Peyton Place worked well
within the Production Code of the time. But this over-the-top offering just
looks winningly ridiculous.
The film is a priceless piece of high camp with some hilarious scenes to keep
you entertained throughout the lengthy running time. Witness the one where
Ford (the mother - and wife - from hell) calls a doctor to examine her
daughter Dee, to make sure she's still a virgin after a night out with
Donahue.
The family relationships are destructive to an absurd degree all round,
whereas romantic love is noble and passionate, even when it causes no end of
trouble. This kind of thing is reserved for the daytime soaps these days, so
it's amusing to see it given an expensive, glossy treatment in true fifties
Hollywood style. Lush music by Max Steiner: listen for the famous theme song.
|
|
Reviewer:
|
Graeme Clark
|
A Summer Place (1959)
by Charles Oakley
In most '50s flicks, sex is subtext. Sex
in A Summer Place stands front, center, and at
rigid attention. Reduced to taking in renters, Dorothy McGuire must put up
with a blue-blooded souse of a husband. Along comes filthy rich Richard Egan
and his inexplicably dikey wife and, before one can
say "old flames," McGuire's gazing out her bedroom window at
Egan--the ex-lifeguard who deflowered her in her teens but was too poor to
marry her. When a teen Sandra Dee whines about the "cast-iron girdle"
her mother buys to hide her budding curves, Papa Egan--with whom Sandra likes
to snuggle in bed to confess "naughty" thoughts--hurls it into the
ocean. Mommy Dearest reasserts her authority when she commands Sandra to
"get the disinfectant and clean the bathroom. And don't forget the
toilet seat!" But we know what repression breeds, right? Barely after
they have been introduced, Dee and Troy Donahue--the innkeepers' pouty glambomb of a son--dive
into a tacky soundstage woods to dry-hump in time to Max Steiner's famous,
lilting theme. Dee's
mother spies on the young couple ("You can't let him
think that your kisses come cheap!"), and hires a local yahoo to
catch her husband and Troy's
mom in the act. And does. After the teens spend
the night together, Mother Harpy greets her daughter with a waiting doctor,
bellowing, "Take off every stitch and let him examine you!" The
director zooms in on Dee
for big, fat, hissy-fit closeups.
"I want my fatha! I want my fatha!"
she screams. Yes, doll, we know, but all you're going to get is
pregnant by Troy.
The couple finds acceptance with her father and his mother, now married. The
chintz moment supreme, the scene that put the Production Code seal of approval
on all the heavy breathing that has preceded it, comes when the director cuts
from an exterior of Egan and McGuire's spectacular Frank Lloyd Wright love nest
to a living room interior where our four stars, cozily
domesticated, talk sex and chow down supper on TV trays. (John Waters and David Lynch, take a lesson.)