Summer Storm (1944)

Summer Storm
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Written by Rowland Leigh, Douglas Sirk, and Robert Thoeren from the novel “The Shooting Party” by Anton Chekhov
1944/USA
Angelus Productions/Nero Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Fedor Mikhailovich Petroff: You’re so beautiful; why is it that you degrade everything you touch?[/box]

Amazingly, the filmmakers decided to promote Linda Darnell as the next Jane Russell via this adaptation of a Chekhov story.  Fortunately, it is a much, much better film than The Outlaw.

The story begins at a publishing house after the Russian Revolution.  Impoverished Count “Piggy” Volsky has brought a manuscript written by his friend Fedor Petroff for sale to Nadena Kalenin, who has inherited her father’s publishing house.  The Count has not even bothered to read the manuscript.   Moved by her former association with its author, Nadena begins to read it and the film segues into flashback.

Beautiful peasant girl Olga (Darnell) dreams of the finer things.  She has the looks and drive to get them too.  Decadent district judge Fedor Petroff (George Saunders) has been redeemed by the love of sweet “intellectual” Nadena Kalenin (Anna Lee).  Count Volsky (Edward Everett Horton) is a lusty twit.

Anna is determined to get ahead by hook or by crook and agrees to a marriage arranged by her drunkard father with the Count’s overseer.  Before he knows of the engagement, Fedor stops to give Olga a lift in his carriage.  Despite his love for Nadena, he is overwhelmed by Olga’s beauty and soon has her in his arms.  It is with this encounter that all his troubles begin.

Fedor slyly convinces the Count to throw a wedding and reception for Olga and her groom and to invite all the elite.  Fedor even volunteers to be the best man at the wedding. During the party afterwards, Olga arranges things so that Nadena will see him kissing her and Nadena breaks off their engagement.  After she has Fedor thoroughly in her grip, however, Olga sets her sights on bigger things.  Tragedy is bound to follow.  With Hugo Haas as Olga’s husband and Sig Ruman as her father.

This film has many highlights.  This may be the biggest part Horton ever had and he is quite funny in it.  Saunders shows he can play a tortured Russian romantic lead almost as well as he does a cad.  Darnell, despite all those poster shots, is fine and more calculating than sex-kittenish.  It’s certainly more of a period melodrama than it is a film noir as billed in my film noir guide.  If the story appeals, I’d recommend it.

This was only the second American film made by director Sirk who had been quite active in his native Germany and would go on to make such classic Technicolor melodramas as All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind.

Karl Hajos, borrowing liberally from Tchaikovsky,  was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCkE7zp9MiU

Trailer