Summer And Smoke (1961)

A sexually repressed spinster (Geraldine Page in an Oscar nominated performance), the daughter of a minister (Malcolm Atterbury), has been secretly in love with the boy (Laurence Harvey) next door since they were children. But his cynicism and lust for life clash with her genteel ways. The Tennessee Williams play, never one of his major works, has always been problematic. Opening on Broadway in 1948 following the smash success of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, it flopped. But four years later it opened in an off-Broadway revival with Page in the lead and became a great success and established Page as one of the great actresses of her generation. Williams, however, was never happy with the play and rewrote it as ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE which he preferred to the original. Personally, I prefer SUMMER to ECCENTRICITIES but either way, how lucky we are that the producer Hal B. Wallis allowed Page to recreate her stage role for the screen. To say she is magnificent is an understatement. It's the kind of performance that, to use a cliche, knocks you out of your seat! Even the ludicrous miscasting of Harvey as a Southern stud doesn't impede the majesty of Page's work. Directed by Peter Glenville with one of Elmer Bernstein's greatest scores. With Rita Moreno, Pamela Tiffin, Earl Holliman, John McIntire, Thomas Gomez, Lee Patrick, Max Showalter, Pamela Duncan and Una Merkel whose marvelous performance as Page's unstable mother received an Oscar nomination.