SUMMER STORM
(United Artists)
HIS film, adapted from (a good long way from) Anton Chekov’s story, The Shooting Party, introduces us to another of those sultry temp-
tresses whom Hollywood actresses delight to portray when they are feeling in a particularly dramatic mood, We have seen Bette Davis do it often, and Garbo, and Joan Crawford, and a long way before that there were Theda Bara and Nazimova; and now it is Linda Darnell’s turn to let off steam and drive men mad with her languorous glances and alluring curves. As a Russian peasant gitl. (pre-Revolution style) she claims three victims before she herself falls victim to one of them. Each one is merely a stepping-stone to the next: first the doting peasant overseer (Hugo Haas) whom she marries but betrays on her wedding night; then the charming but dissolute Judge (George Sanders) whose infatuation for her is stronger than his love for his fiancée (Anna Lee); and finally the lord of the estate himself, a decadent Count (Edward Everett Horton) who is so much under her spell that he actually proposes marriage. But somebody sticks a knife into her at a shooting party, and it is not until after the revolution that Justice and the Hays Office are finally satisfied. Audiences, who are showing welcome signs of a taste for more serious drama these days, are apparently satisfied, too. They have some pretty good reasons to be. Summer Storm would probably have been a better picture if it had been produced by Russians; they would have made more natural and convincing use of that atmosphere of sweltering humid summer heat which, through its influence on human passions, should provide the motif of the whole drama. As it is, in their attempt to behave as Russians are popularly supposed to behave, the players are so intense and pent-up that they sometimes seem artificial. But allowing for’ this, the story is handled with far more finesse-is better acted and worked out better to its conclusion — than the average Hollywood production.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19450223.2.35.1.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 296, 23 February 1945, Page 17
Word count
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339SUMMER STORM New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 296, 23 February 1945, Page 17
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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