L'Aveu

This movie is a stagy Hollywoodish interpretation of a story by Anton Chekhov. While the story itself is good, the problem is that Hollywood converts the story into melodramatic pulp. George Sanders was a great actor but here he is entirely miscast. Playing starstruck was not Mr. Sander's forte. Linda Darnell was beautiful and was also a great actress but casting her as a Russian Russian peasant woman, and a self-centered, illiterate one at that, was a bit of a stretch. Her manipulations were laughable. The idea of her character actually getting over George Sander's character tested the limits of plausibility. Some of the supporting cast were more believable, something however that cannot be said for Edward Everett Horton. One was hard pressed to ignore Mr. Horton's jocular Americanese inflection suggesting a character who might have been more at home at a baseball game anywhere in the United States. All this notwithstanding, it's still a good movie and worth watching because despite the aforementioned flaws, Mr. Sanders is dashing, Ms. Darnell is ravishing, Mr. Horton is amusing, the rest of the cast is wonderful and the movie overall is entertaining, which is the ultimate bottom line.

Such a pity that Detlef Sierck was unable to realise his wish to film Anton Checkhov's 'The Shooting Party' whilst working at UFA Studios, even more so in that, as Douglas Sirk, he eventually turned out this homogenised Hollywood version.

Mr. Sirk's visual sense is evident here and it is nicely shot by Archie Stout but the whole enterprise is studio bound, pedestrian and utterly devoid of passion.

The film's poster is designed to show the physical attributes of ravishing Linda Darnell who plays the first of her sultry temptresses. Her beauty wreaks havoc in the lives of her woodcutter husband played touchingly by Hugo Haas whose East European accent makes his character refreshingly idiomatic; the blinkered, hedonistic and utterly loveable aristocrat of veteran scene stealer Edward Everett Horton and the judge of George Sanders. Although Russian by birth, Gentleman George in his first of three films for this director, is far too urbane to convince in such a passionate role whilst his scenes with Miss Darnell lack the necessary fire.

In retrospect, with the notable exception of Clarence Brown's 'Anna Karenina', Hollywood's attempts to film Slavonic literature must be accounted a failure. The cultural gap is simply too vast.

Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, it tells the story of a young femme fatale, scheming and driving men mad in her hamlet. It is atmospheric and moody, and has some interesting casting. No surprise in George Sanders playing a cad, nor really in Edward.Everett Horton playing a buffoonish, decadent wealthy man (despite the role supposedly being serious, he comes off as his usual comic relief). But the revelation back then was casting 20 year old Linda Darnell as the femme fatale; the role changed her image overnight, after five years playing the innocent girl-next door ingenue, and revitalized her career. Suddenly, she was in the pin-up sweepstakes, as the film publicity had her posing in revealing costumes, amongst bales of hay, a la Jane Russell's for "The Outlaw". In the future, Darnell would usually be cast as a femme fatale, which seemed to fit her better than her previous image.

As for the script, the last fifteen minutes or so has quite few surprises and is interesting in and of itself.

Summer Storm is an adaption of Anton Chekhov's play The Shooting Party updated so as to include the Russian Revolution and the upheavals in the social order it brought. But certain things are both international and eternal. As this one where a beautiful peasant girl uses her looks and charm to get ahead in a society that didn't have any feminist notions.

Linda Darnell is our beautiful and alluring female protagonist. She's a peasant girl who is on the estate of Count Edward Everett Horton and before the film is over she gets the hormones going for Horton, for his estate manager Hugo Haas and for Judge George Sanders.

This was a bit of interesting casting for Sanders as he was in fact born in old Russia and according to his biographer and colleague Brian Aherne had a bit more of that temperament in his nature than you would realize. But for all of his position and sophistication he's addicted to love when it comes to Darnell.

This was also unusual casting for Edward Everett Horton who usually was playing silly fuss budgets in so many comedy films Some of that is here, but director Douglas Sirk got so much more from the character. As Sanders observes about the decadent Horton, he's everything that's wrong with the society that he is a part of.

Anna Lee is in Summer Storm also. She's the girl Sanders throws over for Darnell. But comes the Revolution and the worm really does turn.

It's not exactly what Chekhov had in mind, but Summer Storm is definitely worth a look for fans of the various cast members.

SUMMER STORM is an adaptation of a story by Chekov and takes place after the Russian revolution, with a flashback to before it started. An ex-count, Volsky (Horton) brings a manuscript to a publisher (Lee) written by her ex-fiance (Sanders). The manuscript tells the story of a beautiful peasant woman (Darnell) and the deleterious effect she had on several men: the Count himself, her husband, and a judge, Fedor (Sanders), resulting in tragedy.

This is an enjoyable film. Sanders was never more handsome, and he does a wonderful job as a man who can't resist the temptations of the ambitious Olga. Edward Everett Horton is excellent as the annoying, shallow Count. It's always a pleasure to see the beautiful Anna Lee, whom lots of people remember as the elderly Lila Quartermaine on General Hospital.

The gorgeous Darnell was actually in a mini-slump with her boss, Daryl F. Zanuck, when she made this film. It was a step down from The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, Star Dust - now 21 and married, she could no longer play the sweet virgin. She quickly proved to him she could be a seductress, reaching the absolute height of her stardom in the late '40s. Though she never stopped working, alcohol eventually took its toll, and she died in a fire in 1965, age 41. Sadly when she was brought to the hospital, she was coherent and speaking with the doctors, not realizing that she couldn't feel anything and was dying.