Director: David Lean
Year Released: 1955
Rating: 2.5
This is actually not very Leanian at all - other than his trademark use of trains/train stations - and I dare to actually call it rather routine. It's ultimately about the culture shock experienced by Katherine Hepburn (overacting, as usual), playing a naïve American visiting Venice. It starts off as a documentary more than a film, and much of the first thirty minutes of the film is devoted to shots of the city itself and its breathtaking architecture. The next hour (it is only 90 minutes long) focuses on the cliched love affair between Hepburn and an Italian shopkeeper. This is where the core theme of the film emerges, as Hepburn becomes disenchanted with Italian social customs, and the sexual freedom that takes place at night. I interpret the film as being condemning in a way - I think Lean is suggesting that the beauty of the city itself masks the 'impure' nature of the city's inhabitants: Hepburn leaves at the end with a tear in her eye - she can't bring herself to leave her American world of abstinence and moral purity to enter one of debauchery and infidelity. Where's my boarding pass?
