Été violent

Valerio Zurlini (1926 - 1982) was essentialy forgotten when in the 2000's his films were again brought under the attention of the public by way of DVD releases and retrospectives. Although Zurlini may not be an Fellini or Visconti, his films are still worth seeinig.

"Violent summer" is situated in the summer of 1943. The war is going badly for Fascist Italy but, unlike the population in Germany in "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" (1957, Robert Siodmak), Carlo (Jean Louis Trintignant) and his friends are still living the "dolce vita". They are in the Northern of Italy while the allied forces are invading the South. They are, so to speak, dancing on the edge of the volcano.

The violence in "Violent summer" is restricted to the last 10 minutes of the film. The rest of the time the film is rather slow, with beautiful cinematography.

"Violent summer" has two themes. In the first place it is about a rich boy (Carlo) who is using the influence of his dad to avoid military conscription. In this way it is similar to "The cranes are flying" (1957, Mikhail Kalatozov). In "The cranes ..." the boy is presented as a disgrace and compared to the real heroes in this patriotic war. In "Violent summer" the behavior of Carlo is partly overshadowed by the second theme of impossible love. Carlo gets a relationship with war widow Roberta (Eleonora Rossi Drago). This relationship is condemned by friends and relatives on both sides. On the side of Carlo there is a jalous girl friend. The family of Roberta is of the opinion she should honor the memory of her deceased husband. In fact they try to make this 30 year old woman a prisoner of this memory.

In the ambiguous end it is unclear which theme is dominant.

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.

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.

Why not make a drama that really brings home how it does affect ordinary people ... or a whole town/village. In this case it is the second world war ... I have to admit, I do not know how I would have reacted if I were one of those characters in the movie. Although I am quite certain they are not just characters but either based on real people or close to what people felt and did back then.

If that sounds like a slow paced drama/movie you are up to watch ... well go ahead and do it. Everyone else might have issues with it and how it tells its story. It's a what if ... and what would you do ... and while it may have aged, it still is poignant and apt ... and full of emotion.

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.