Ring in the solstice with the smoldering passion of David Lean’s 1955 sumptuous Technicolor romance. Shot on location in Venice, Italy during the sunniest months of the year, Summertime made Katharine Hepburn a romantic lead at 48. Hepburn is utterly relatable and captivating in her Oscar-nominated turn as Jane Hudson, an unmarried secretary on a long-awaited solo vacation away from her humdrum life in Akron, Ohio.

Featuring leisurely footage of the crowded Piazza San Marco and soothing gondola rides along the Fondamenta San Felice, Lean’s film, for which he received a Directing nomination at the 28th Academy Awards, manifests his understanding of nuanced female interiority through his closeups on Hepburn’s engrossing, dynamic face. Don’t miss this opportunity to see a gorgeous 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive; it was struck in 2004 and has screened no more than three times.

Summertime was restored in 2003 by the Academy Film Archive and the British Film Institute with the support of the David Lean Foundation.

The memoir of Danish author Karen Blixen (published under her pen name Isak Dinesen) was adapted by director Sydney Pollack and screenwriter Kurt Leudtke for this lavish romantic drama, focusing on the years Blixen (Best Actress nominee Meryl Streep) spent running a coffee farm in Nairobi and her relationship with hunter Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford). Out of Africa was nominated for 11 Oscars and won seven including Best Picture, Directing (both for Pollack), Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography and Sound, with John Barry winning his fourth Oscar for an achingly romantic score.

Selected by the Cinematographers Branch