Alle 10.30 di una sera d'estate

I'm totally jealous of Romy Schneider. Not only did she get to act in this extremely steamy movie with Peter Finch, but she also had an offscreen affair with the extremely sexy German actor, Curd Jurgens. I guess she was a magnet for guys who should have been cast as Captain Von Trapp.

Romy plays the friend of Melina Mercouri, a paranoid lush. For some reason, Melina has invited Romy to go on a trip with her and her husband, Peter, even though she knows there's sexual tension between them. When Melina drinks herself into a stupor, she sees (or imagines) the two trying to keep their hands off each other - until they can't. This movie features the first explicit sex scene I've seen in a Hollywood movie, chronologically. Prior to 1966, a scene like this would never have been filmed with major actors and shown in mainstream theaters. In addition to the gratuitous nature of the scene, and the graphic details, there's also female nudity and oral sex. I guess we know now why Peter Finch wasn't in The Sound of Music. Captain Von Trapp wouldn't do those things.

A side plot of 10:30 P. M. Summer (or is it the main plot and it's just hard to pay attention to it?) is Melina's obsession with a murderer on the lam. She imagines what it would be like to meet him, then she finds him, and she thinks it's exciting to help him. Why? I don't know. Why does she drink and pretty much encourage her husband to sleep with her friend? I don't know. Why watch this movie? Well, we all know the answer to that one.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to sex scenes, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the scene when they go to a flamenco club, the camera is handheld like a documentary to show "realism". Also, during the sex scene, the camera swirls around in a big circle, and it will make you sick. And whenever Melina has a fantasy, it shows her POV in a handheld camera. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

I just saw this film (at LACMA) after having seen it when it first came out. Wow! I didn't remember it that way at all! I guess when you're 19 this kind of stuff seems hot stuff, or very very deep. Now that I'm 56, I think it's just kind of pretentious but full of wonderful acting, nice cinematography and lighting, and very pretty actors! Romy Schneider looks beautiful in this, yes. But I have seen her looking even better (mostly in French films). She did, though, have some very early-50s kind of makeup, which was perplexing, considering this was '66. Melina, unbelievably, looks very contemporary; she could have just stepped out onto Rodeo Drive in 2004. I had forgotten how STRIKING her looks are. And her emoting is, well, breath-taking. Peter Finch looked so slender and drop-dead elegant. His face took MY breath away. God, what a face! (No wonder everyone supposedly from Vivian Leigh to Danny Kaye fell in love with him!) Note: Topkapi came before this film, not after. As to the plot, maybe I'm just dense, but I didn't really see the point. I just wanted to be a part of the party! Altho' Melina played, supposedly, a horrible drunkard, I felt she acted like a reasoned lady at all times and don't see what the husband and the lover were "tsch tsch"ing about. She seemed to keep it together pretty darned well for a supposed alcoholic. The whole bit about the murderer was just a turn-off to me, and I thought it kind of spoiled the fun (some of you smarties will say, Duh, that was the POINT!), but I didn't WANT the fun to stop! In sum, pretty people in exotic locales. Lots of this film was very engrossing. The actors are everything here.

I remember when this film opened in London in 1967. It opened simultaneously with 'Accident' by Joe Losey, and 'Accident' eclipsed this one, as they were considered too similar: mysterious, conveying ineffable unspoken currents between people, a pervasive air of unreality and aetherial suggestiveness of things that could not quite be seen. Of the two, this was the more difficult to describe and comprehend. So 'Accident' ran for a long time, while this closed in a week. It is only now that this neglected masterpiece, doubtless buried for decades because it was 'a commercial failure', has reappeared and I have been able to see it again. The colour has not faded and is as fresh as when it was first released. Jules Dassin surpassed himself with this masterpiece. It is his greatest work. Of course, it all relies heavily upon the genius of his wife, Melina Mercouri. It is the most subtle and understated, and hence probably the most powerful, of all her overwhelmingly brilliant performances. Mercouri was more than just a genius, she was a demented and Dionysiac genius, a genuine Greek maenad, a barefoot raver on the heights of Parnassus, in the best traditions of her culture. She is here well matched by Peter Finch at the top of his form, two years after he did 'The Pumpkin Eater' and 'Girl with Green Eyes', in both of which he had proved he was one of the leading film actors of his generation. Now in this intense film together, they speak the unspoken thoughts of a highly complex marriage and of emotional ties where two people have grown together at the root: but will the root snap? The beautiful and alluring Romy Schneider is part of a strange trio on a journey in Spain, where passion crackles in the air, and the flamenco hands clap, as a murderer aged only 19 comes into the story. I read the original novella by Marguerite Duras and thought it was poorly written and, although evocative, far from being a superior work. But it provided the atmosphere Dassin and Mercouri were looking for, a hothouse of semi-articulate and complex emotions, of raging currents of suppressed passions, a crisis of existential doubts, a veritable torrent or electrical storm, to match the real storm which lashes the stranded travellers in the film. Rarely has the invisible been filmed so successfully. This film was not really filmed in Spain, it was filmed in the ionosphere, and what appear to be buildings and people are really plasmas of charged particles. Dassin rose above reality, to film what lies behind it. These things are sometimes thought and felt, they are never seen. But here he reveals them to the eye, like a cloud parting. This is not mere cinema, it is something higher.

Melina Mercouri was absolutely delightful in Never on a Sunday. Then I saw Phaedra and she worked my last nerve. It wasn't her fault. It was a terrible script and badly miscast. It did have high camp value. The love scenes were so bad they decided it best to film through fogged up Windows.

I started watching this film and Mercouri started to bug again. This time it really wasn't her fault. She plays an unhinged dypso. Melina has to carry the entire film. Finch and Schneider do nothing but have extremely dull love scenes. The child's voice is badly ovetdubbed. The kid sounds like a cartoon character.

The filming locations, sets and ambiance of the film are beautiful. The script and acting stink to high heaven.

A sexually frustrated Maria (Mercouri) is traveling through Spain with her husband and a younger woman Claire. Maria's husband is carrying on with Claire and Maria an alcoholic is sexual with every man who chances her way including a murderer in the town they are stuck in.

The murderer had committed a crime of passion with which perhaps Maria (Mercouri) identifies. She helps the murderer get out of town and falls in love with him in the process although they are together for perhaps a half hour and exchange three words...

This film is arty erotic the final flamenco dance looks like a surrogate drugged out orgasm involving all the actors and extras.

60s middle age sexual sequence....lots of these made= Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf... Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.... etc etc... this one was briefer with less story to it.

I only watched it to see Mercouri (did any actress have a deeper voice?)

Trust me this thing is boring.