A Summer Place (1959)

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Ken and Helen Jorgenson (Richard Egan and Constance Ford) have a dead marriage. They haven't slept together for years, by her request. Helen is also a spiteful, nasty bigot who tries to indoctrinate to her daughter, Molly (Sandra Dee), that sex is dirty and evil. This highly dysfunctional and sad lot are on vacation at Pine Island, Maine...a place where Ken was a lifeguard two decades ago. There is more to the history of Pine Island than that, however, as Ken had once had an affair with a girl, Sylvia Hunter (Dorothy McGuire). Now Sylvia and her husband, Bart (Arthur Kennedy), run a hotel on the island...the hotel where the Jorgensons are coming for their summer vacation. As for the Hunters, Bart is an alcoholic and has checked out of his marriage from the very beginning. Not surprisingly, Ken and Sylvia are miserable and fall back in love. What is a bit surprising is that their children, Molly and Johnny Hunter (Troy Donahue) have fallen in love as well.The writers and filmmakers did a great job of showing how adultery and premarital sex are NOT necessarily black & white issues. In the case of Sylvia and Ken, both have been emotionally abandoned by their selfish and detestable partners. And, in the case of Molly and Johnny, they are normal hot-blooded teens who have been thrust together by Molly's mother and her rants about the evils of sex. So, it's all very understandable...and all very, very risqué for 1959. But because the story is so well written and the production so glossy, it makes difficult moral issues and choices much more palatable--and provide for a lot to consider. It also makes for a wonderful film for young married couples to watch...sort of a morality tale about what NOT to do!A highlight of this film is the speech Ken makes to Helen early in the film...about her many, many, many prejudices. According to IMDb, the crowd at one performance gave it a standing ovation! A very powerful scene indeed.Overall, this film has many strong scenes, excellent acting, nice music and all the gloss a Hollywood production could have. It also has quite a bit of depth and raises many interesting issues...making it perhaps the best soap opera movie of the day. And, fortunately, while the film might seem a tad dated (such as the custody arrangements), it also is timeless with its themes.

While the "A Summer Place" theme has become a legendary piece of music in the history of movie themes, it is the opening Max Steiner music which I recall, so lush and powerful that it immediately sets up the mood for the drama which is about to unfold. The movie itself is far from perfect, but there are so many elements of it that make it spectacular, whether it being the lush Maine photography, the gorgeous score or the star-crossed lovers of two generations who must face the toughest of obstacles in their determination to find happiness. The first half of the film is devoted to the scandal which surrounds the affair of two married people: sweet Dorothy McGuire and unhappy Richard Egan. She's married to the basically decent but often drunken Arthur Kennedy and he's stuck with the embittered Constance Ford who has rigid beliefs on the raising of their daughter, Sandra Dee. When Dee sees McGuire and Kennedy's son (Troy Donahue) from the yacht her father rented, it's lust at first sight, and the virginal young woman must fight temptations if she is to remain pure.But even insisting that she hasn't done anything wrong isn't enough for Dee's mother to go out and get a doctor to examine her to see that she's still a virgin. This disgusts everybody, and after Donahue threatens to kill Ford, Egan stands up for him after learning what she had done. This causes the vindictive Ford to reveal that she knows about the affair, and her fight for a divorce will not go without scandal. But that doesn't mean that she'll get Kennedy to side with her. Even he finds her actions reprehensible, and that's not the end of Ford who does everything she can to prevent Dee and Donahue from being together once McGuire and Egan marry.Certainly, there are elements of the story that could move this movie into pure camp, but there are many moments that stand out too, hence my very high rating. Ford makes an effort in the beginning to allow the possibility of Donahue and Dee to date, but her request that Dee play Donahue "like a fish" is such a dated concept that went out long before this movie came out. When she reveals her inner prejudices, this causes Egan to explode on her, accusing her of being the most vile racist and hypocrite that ever existed. She too has a very nasty mother who seems to be the one who put the idea of setting her husband up for infidelity into play in the first place. The beloved character actress Beulah Bondi is very funny as McGuire's nosy aunt who encourages her to have an affair with Egan, and I wanted to see more of her "Greek Chorus" character.As for Dee and Donahue, they have a lot to work on as far as acting skills when compared to the talented adults they are surrounded by. Dee doesn't act so much as emote, and Donahue underplays pretty much every line he says. The references later sung in "Grease" (the song "Look at Me I'm Sandra Dee!") spoof their not quite so innocent on-screen romance. Certainly not the first single girl to be pregnant in a movie, it was probably the first time however that the subject was dealt with head on rather than subdued. This is also one of the few times on screen that an abusive parent happens to be the mother (Ford), not the father, as shown in a scene at Christmas where Ford slaps Dee so hard that she knocks over a Christmas tree.This is a film that I can watch over and over. I also cherish the memory of seeing three of the actors on the daytime soaps: Ford in a very long role as "Another World's" kind but no-nonsense matriarch Ada Hobson, Egan as a wealthy and powerful patriarch Sam Clegg on "Capitol", and in a most memorable guest appearance on "The Young and the Restless", Dorothy McGuire as Victor Newman's mother. Her performance on that soap was so lauded that it has been shown in flash-backs over the years several times and used in soap tributes. The fact that this movie soap has tie-ins with daytime soaps is quite appropriate and even more ironic.

Viewing every film as a propaganda-film is, I believe, a very sound way to look on films. Even a seemingly "harmless" film about science is probably the most dangerous propaganda of all, since you are totally unprepared for it watching such a film. It's like with the peasant in medieval times visiting the cathedral and being so intimidated by the grandeur of it all, that he may just accept anything spoken to him in such a place. The "science" program on television is much the same - we do understand about as little about the science as the peasant about the cathedral but we are utterly impressed and accept just about anything coming from a "reliable and scientific" source.Now, a Hollywood-film about love may not seem to be very scientific but is nevertheless most propagandic in its affirmation (often) that what it presents is the view of a majority of people and - could all these people be wrong? Revolution cannot come about without self-esteem. A crushed people is a crushed people and it will only rise if it musters up the strength to fight for justice - but how will it find justice, if it thinks less of itself than it thinks of its masters? The self-evidence of equality will not enter the mind of the slave that accept its role of slave.Insidiously and, because of its other qualities, rather sadly this film somehow comes across telling that there is no difference between lust and love. We might agree that there should not be any difference but one look at a modern porn-film sure tells us that there is and if we are still not convinced about the humiliations going on in these films, we must only consider that rape does indeed exist. We do not have to be in love or anywhere near it in order to perform "the act of love" as it is so "nicely" put.On the other hand, and that is the beautiful part of this film, where there is true love there is also lust for one another, however, this beautiful conception is quickly lost when the young man is portrayed as being an innocent victim of lust that cannot be controlled. Lust can always be controlled, especially if love is involved and that truth is sadly not present in this picture.So, all in all, the propaganda that we are left with is not the propaganda of love and instead the propaganda of lust, which may contain just about any evil under the sun in this power-society.

I have always stopped and listened to the music theme of this movie whether it be in an elevator, grocery store or radio.....I see a beautiful woman walking on a beach when I hear it....Just saw the movie last night for the first time. SWEET HAY-soos....what a morality tale!.....there was never an answer given as to what the right thing was to do for the 2 sets of lovers in this story....and that is as it should be.....no answers....no comfort.....when pheromones strike...when the groin takes the heart with it.....Strangely discomforting and sad movie....way ahead of it's time. Richard Egan and Arthur Kennedy did good work as the men, Richard Egan was surprisingly convincing as a real man with a romantic heart....a man well aware that humans must have been an evolutionary mistake...the loins of animals, and the high moral brains of whatever space aliens came down and decided to play pool with the DNA of Earth.Sandra Dee should have been Natalie Wood....nuff said......Dorothy McGuire is the 50s equivalent of heartbreaking beauty.....hell, I was in love with her by the end of the movie.....Troy Donahue did well...I'll always wonder if he was gay...but his acting chops were good in this film.The saddest thing about this movie is how serious unwed sex, adultery and illegitimate babies were taken in the 50s, and how accepted and laughably commonplace they are today. I mark the beginning of the end of the USA as the Woodstock music festival.