Verão Violento

After being quite impressed by the near-masterpiece comedy Zurlini made in 1954 "The Girls of San Frediano," I was very much disappointed by "Violent Summer," an overly melodramatic soap-opera made 5 years later. Too bad Zurlini couldn't restrain himself from the melodramatic overstatements that ruin the film because the cinematography couldn't be better and the young Trintignant's performance is pretty amazing.

I believe that there are movies, and movies... "Violent summer", in my modest opinion, it is one of those movies "outstanding." It is able to remain in the memory after 42 years, with some unforgettable Eleonora Rossi Drago and Jean Louis Trintignant. The music " live-motive" it created next to the rest of the sound band and the "light and shade" of the picture an overwhelming and captivating atmosphere. The protagonistic couple's election is decisive. The mature woman and the youth are achieved faultlessly. During years I was in love with that woman (I was 16 years old when I saw it). I believe that it is unjust to disqualify certain movies. There will always be who find defects of some type. And in any thing. Maximum when it is intangible things. But the feelings, the summer, the war like detonating., and the passion becomes tangible in this film. And that is undeniable. God willing it is re-published in the future for delight of us and of the new generations. Because the good cinema is much more than the critics of the specialist.

Valerio Zurlini was first known for his melodramas ("la ragazza con la valigla" and "cronaca familiare" but his towering achievement was his final effort "il deserto dei Tartari" a brilliant adaptation of Dino Buzatti's masterpiece (hence not a melodrama).

"Estate Violenta" is a moderately successful film:the umpteenth story of a young and attractive widow and a younger (not so younger by the way,Trintignant was actually about five years younger than Rossi-Drago)lad ,during the Fascist years .The boy has a lot of fun with his mates :thanks to his father who provides him protection he has avoided the draft.He spends his time ,with a spoiled youth sunbathing and partying but history is about to catch him up.Rossi-Drago portrays a woman who stifles in her bourgeois atmosphere.

Excellent performances by the two leads.Gorgeous brunette Jacqueline Sassard is also featured as Trintignant's girlfriend (she would team up again with Trintignant in Chabrol's "les biches"(1967); nothing was heard from her since).Best scene:bombing of the railway station,Zurlini works wonders when he describes people's panic.

Zurlini's Violent Summer is unlike anything else I have seen, even though I have seen nearly all of his films. The photography and the casting is near perfection with a script that is tight and unpredictable. I guess there are other stories involving frowned upon love between an older woman and a young man but they are nothing like this. The devil is in the detail in the way the film gives a sense of reality and of immense sensual beauty.

A great film from a great talent.

Jean-Louis Trintignat plays the draft-dodging son of a powerful Nazi in 1943 Italy, in a prelude to Bertolucci's "The Conformist," who falls in love with an older war widow, in an absolutely brilliant performance by Eleonora Rossi Drago, (what else has she ever been in?) featuring a brilliantly choreographed sequence to the song "Temptation," reminding me of Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant," this is one of the better scenes one is ever likely to see in all of cinema where the lovers dance and fall in love around a nude male statue oblivious to the war raging outside, similar to Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses," there is an extraordinary pacing to the film, an intense love affair, reminiscent of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's "Notorious," this is a beautifully written, old-fashioned melodrama, the likes of which we just don't see any more.