Passionate Summer

Passionate Summer is a 1958 British drama film directed by Rudolph Cartier and starring Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers and Yvonne Mitchell.[2] It is also known by the alternative title Storm Over Jamaica. It was based on a best-selling 1949 novel by Richard Mason called The Shadow and the Peak.[3]

Passionate Summer
Original British quad poster by Renato Fratini
Directed byRudolph Cartier
Screenplay byJoan Henry
Based onnovel The Shadow and the Peak by Richard Mason
Produced byKenneth Harper
George Willoughby
StarringVirginia McKenna
Bill Travers
Yvonne Mitchell
CinematographyErnest Steward
Edited byReginald Mills
Music byAngelo Francesco Lavagnino
Muir Mathieson (conductor)
Production
company
Harper-Willoughby
Distributed byRank Film Distributors (UK)
Release dates
  • 25 September 1958 (1958-09-25) (London, UK)
Running time
101 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Premise

A British schoolteacher moves to Jamaica to teach after a tumultuous divorce, and meets an exciting new woman.

Cast

Development

The film was based on Richard Mason's novel The Shadow and the Peak which was published in 1949.[4] It was Mason's second novel, following The Wind Cannot Read, which the Rank Organisation had filmed with Dirk Bogarde. The New York Times called The Shadow and the Peake "diverting, it is humorous, it contains the necessary serious undertones."[5]

In March 1950 it was announced that Alec Guinness was weighing up whether to appear in The Mudlark at 20th Century Fox or The Shadow and the Peak from J. Arthur Rank.[6] Robert Hamer was to write and direct.[7]

Guinness elected to make The Mudlark and there were reportedly issues getting the script approved by the censor. In December 1951 Hamer said producer Michael Truman would be going to the US in January to negotiate changes to the script with the Breen Office (the US censor).[8] Hamer was to make the movie for Ealing and he wanted to star Vivien Leigh. Michael Balcon reportedly gave his approval, then changed his mind, worried about the film's erotic content. This led to Hamer leaving Ealing.[9]

In December 1957 it was reported that film rights were owned by Kenneth Harper, who had offered the lead to Van Johnson, who had just made Action of the Tiger with Harper.[10]

Production

In March 1958 it was announced the film would be made in Jamaica and at Pinewood Studios under the title of Passionate Summer starring Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers and Yvonne Mitchell. McKenna was coming off two large hits, A Town Like Alice and Carve Her Name with Pride. She and Bill Travers had married in real life in 1957. Filming began on 28 April 1958 shortly after production had started on another Mason adaptation, The Wind Cannot Read.[11]

McKenna was pregnant during filming and it would be the last film she made for Rank (although she turned down a movie they wanted her to do afterwards).[12]

Director Rudolph Cartier was under contract to the BBC but was released to Rank to make the film.[13]

According to Bill Travers:

Neither of us [his wife Virginia McKenna] cared very much for Passionate Summer. Cartier was already an important person in television — that was how he got Passionate Summer — but I’m not sure that he translated well to the big screen. He did a lot of rehearsal, and, by this time, I’d begun to shed the idea of doing a tremendous amount of rehearsal. By then, I wanted to make things more natural and I found that Cartier was too bound by what had happened at rehearsal. I think the film needed something much more impressionistic than Cartier’s direction. It needed to be made like a French film. [ also think that it was as a result of that film that Ginny and I became less than favourites with the Rank Organisation.[14]

Reception

Variety called it "the sort of glossy novelettish yarn that will do nothing for the reputation of the British film industry."[15]

The Monthly Film Bulletin said "any forebodings roused by the story outline of this film are thorough fulfilled."[16]

In the US, Passionate Summer was the name given to a French film starring Raf Vallone that came out in 1957. So the film was retitled in America as Storm Over Jamaica.

Film academic Philip Kemp wrote the film "was scripted (flatly) by Joan Henry, directed (turgidly) by Rudolph Cartier and acted (stolidly) by Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. If [Robert] Hamer hadn't long since been driven to drink, this film would have been enough to do it."[17]

Box Office

The film was a box office failure. Travers later said that because of this he and McKenna became "less than favourites with the Rank Organisation."[18]

References
  1. "PASSIONATE SUMMER - British Board of Film Classification". www.bbfc.co.uk.
  2. "Passionate Summer (1958)" Archived 23 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, BFI.
  3. Goble, Alan (8 September 2011). The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110951943 – via Google Books.
  4. New Novels Hale, Lionel. The Observer (1901- 2003); London (UK) [London (UK)]23 Oct 1949: 7.
  5. Among the New Novels: Miracle & Aftermath Queen's Gambit Lion-Killer Jamaica Ginger Mother Knows Best New York Times 26 Feb 1950: BR18.
  6. KINGSLEY TO DIRECT 'DARKNESS AT NOON': Playwright Has Finished Half of Koestler Dramatization, Due Early Next Season New "Tobacco Road" Version By SAM ZOLOTOW. New York Times 6 Mar 1950: 27.
  7. LONDON - PARIS - HOLLYWOOD Morgan, J; Koval, Francis; Leonard, Harold. Sight and Sound; London Vol. 19, Iss. 4, (Jun 1, 1950): 152.
  8. SCREEN SCENE ON THE THAMES: Maugham Mellows Toward Movies--Full SlateAt Ealing--Addenda Boom Fast Work Pot-Pourri By STEPHEN WATTS. New York Times 23 Dec 1951: X5.
  9. The long shadow: Robert Hamer after Ealing Kemp, Philip. Film Comment; New York Vol. 31, Iss. 3, (May 1995): 70.
  10. De Toth Sets Star Musical: 'Best Dancer' May Get Oscar; Scripts Pile Up for Johnson Scheuer, Philip K. Los Angeles Times 9 Dec 1957: C13.
  11. CURRENT ACTION ON BRITISH SCREEN FRONTS: British Lion's New Blood -- Wartime Heroine's Biography -- Other Items By STEPHEN WATTS LONDON. New York Times 23 Mar 1958: X5.
  12. McFarlane, Brian (1997). An autobiography of British cinema : as told by the filmmakers and actors who made it. p. 382. ISBN 9780413705204.
  13. GOSSIP Filmer, Fay. Picture Show; London Vol. 70, Iss. 1830, (Apr 26, 1958): 3-4.
  14. McFarlane, Brian (1992). Sixty voices : celebrities recall the golden age of British cinema. BFI. p. 223.
  15. "Passionate Summer". Variety. 1 October 1958. p. 6.
  16. PASSIONATE SUMMER Monthly Film Bulletin; London Vol. 25, Iss. 288, (Jan 1, 1958): 144.
  17. Kemp, Philip (2003). "The Long Shadow: Robert Hamer after Ealing". In Mackillip, Ian; Sinyard, Neil (eds.). British Cinema of the 1950s - A Celebration. Manchester University Press. p. 82-83.
  18. Shipman, David (1 April 1994). "Obituary: Bill Travers". The Independent. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022.
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