Summer and Smoke (1961)

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

nothing new . at the first sigh. the atmosphere, the final fall, the love as ambiguous desire, the ordinary too late for the essential gesture. at the second sigh, a revelation. because Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey are the perfect interpreters of a story who represents a fascinating game of nuances. a love story in the Williams style who conquest new nuances in the performances of the lead actors.Alma by Geraldine Page is fragile and tender and the perfect victim of her feelings, family and illusions. she is one of many victims from the Williams plays but the great familiarity with the role on the stage imposes the right tone for each gesture and word and decision. the transformation , the profound change of Alma is more than dramatic. it becomes the fall who remands so many from every day stories . and this could be the detail for impress.

Geraldine Page had her first true starring role in "Summer and Smoke" released in 1961. Yes, she had been a theatrical star and did television work, and did fine in 1953's "Hondo" opposite John Wayne. But here, Page brings the repressed Tennessee Williams character of Alma to glorious life. The story, set in the 1920's, deals with the Southern small town stifling morals of the day. Page is a preacher's daughter, making her even more repressed; her father is played by actor Malcom Atterbury with all the proper moral condemnation. Her mother, played by old Hollywood star Una Merkel, is mentally unbalanced, adding to the responsibility Alma feels, as she lives at home with both of them. Alma is at an age that would have been considered a "spinster" of the times. Enter the young handsome doctor John (Laurence Harvey), whom Alma has known since childhood, since he lives next door with his cantankerous doctor father (John McIntyre). Alma desires John, but her own sexual inhibitions will now allow her to explore that, so she secretly lusts after him. John is a fellow who focuses on the physical, and takes up with a woman who would have been considered quite loose at the time (Rita Moreno in an early performance). John knows Alma desires him, and he is not sure how to handle it. He tries to take the relationship further, but Alma resists his sexual advances. Neither of these individuals is wrong for how they feel - and they seem to go through the whole movie not connecting. This is probably the finest work Laurence Harvey did on screen - his smoldering sexuality is used here to great effect. He and Page have palpable chemistry. The supporting players are capable as well, but this is Geraldine Page's show, and her genteel demeanor and southern accent are spot on. We are left pondering Alma - she is both tragic and wonderful.

Enjoyed this dramatic love story which involves a girl named Alma Winemiller, (Geraldine Page) a pretty young gal who is a preacher's daughter and very straight laced. Alma grew up with the boy next door named John Buchanan Jr., (Laurence Harvey) and unknowing to herself she fell in love with him a very long time ago. Alma always looks out her window in order to see what John is doing and simply cannot stop watching his whereabouts in life. John's father is a medical doctor who sends John off to medical school and when he returns back home, Alma is all grown up and still has a heart throb for Johnny. However, John has changed and became a ladies man and is a wild guy who loves women and drinking. John finds a Spanish girlfriend named Rosa Zacharias, (Rita Moreno) and they are always making romantic love and living it up every weekend. Alma shows an interest in John and goes after him for a date and John decides to take her out on a date and finds out she is not willing to make love to him, so he calls her a cold fish and predicts she will become an old maid. Great film and excellent acting.

Geraldine Page received an Oscar nomination for her sterling portrayal of a small town spinster hoping to kindle a spark with the ne'er-do-well doctor's son who has lived next door since they were kids. Adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play (in which Page scored a personal success off-Broadway some nine years before the film) is brightly-painted and full of nervous, fluttery life (it's like a neurotic Disney movie--Pollyanna herself might just live down the street). It never takes off into its own emotional sphere however, mainly because the melodrama inherent in the story is so wan (it isn't encumbered by character neuroses, like many of Williams' other works--this one could actually use more). Laurence Harvey is somewhat mild-mannered as Page's leading man (one can't imagine this guy getting too wild), and the supporting players are a variable lot, ranging from Una Merkel's dotty mother to Rita Moreno's strutting flooze. Page is the one to watch; with the tiniest sparkle of dementia in her alert eyes, and the quiver of her uncertain mouth, she nearly transforms this material, an amalgamation of Tennessee Williams and Hollywood in 1961. ** from ****