[6]

A bold film for its time, A Summer Place deals with sexual awakening and reawakening. Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue play the teenaged lovers; Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire play the adulterous middle-aged ones. The first forty-five minutes of the story are pretty strong, but once the affairs are out in the open, the script struggles to find its focus. Highlights include a terrific monologue Richard Egan hurls at villainous Constance Ford, who plays a mother so mean she has her daughter “fully inspected” by a doctor when she fails to come home one night. Arthur Kennedy also turns in a memorable performance as Donahue’s boozie pops. Max Steiner’s score contributes to the melodrama a little more than necessary, but it contains one of the catchiest and most enduring love themes in all of cinema.