I could not believe how many people on IMDb love this movie, and carry on about it as it if was Citizen Kane. Some silly even said that this was one of the greatest films ever made. My advice to this person is that you have to do some serious film watching. Maybe take a film class in some college in your town. Released in 1959 (and shown at Radio City Music Hall no less) it was even then poorly reviewed and with good reason. It stinks. The direction is sloppy and plodding. It just lays there for over 2 hours. This is the kind of melodramatic soap opera that a director like Douglas Sirk could turn into pure cinema magic, and in fact he did just that in the same year with the fantastic Imitation Of Life, with our dear little Sandra Dee once again playing a troubled daughter. I was also bothered by the obvious California coast trying to look like Maine. Why the hell didn't they just set the film in California? As far as the performances go they were OK. The usually fine Dorothy McGuire did what she was getting paid for, and Richard Eagan was his same old wooden self. An attractive man but a bad actor was he. The only tangy performances were given by Arthur Kennedy, (his final drunken scene had some real depth and feeling to it) and the always watchable tough as nails Constance Ford. I guess one can watch this trash as pure camp if it wasn't so damn boring.
Review of A Summer Place
