Summer Storm (1944) User Reviews (17)

......."heavenly electricity"......

[AAdaSC · 7/10 · 28 February 2010]

Count Volsky (Edward Everett Horton) submits a book to be published at the publishing house owned by a former acquaintance, Nadena (Anna Lee). It is an account of the life of his friend and Nadena's one-time boyfriend, Judge Fedor (George Sanders) and it takes place over the summer months. Nadeena reads the manuscript and the story unfolds in flashback as we are introduced to a peasant girl, Olga (Linda Darnell). We follow her journey to obtain wealth and power and the lovers that she cheats in order to obtain her goals. The account is written by Fedor and he does not know that his friend Volsky has sold it for money. How will he react....especially given the contents.....?

The film is set in Russia where there is a definite class split. We see Olga climb her way to the top at the expense of those who fall in love with her. Then, there is a dramatic twist - a murder. Who is the killer? The cast are good - Horton is funny, Sanders is both suave and desperate, Darnell is ruthless while Sig Ruman is particularly good as Kuzma, Darnell's husband. The film is a love story that is particularly tense and dramatic at the end. There is a terrible substitute for the word "lightning" that is repeated a few times in the film, an attempt to draw in the viewer to sympathize with those that utter it. It fails. If anyone said "heavenly electricity" to me, I'd tell them to talk properly. Nevertheless, it's a good film and worth seeing again.

Kicks up enough of a storm

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 5 March 2023]

There were quite a few reasons to see 'Summer Storm'. One is because of my long term love of classic film. Two is because of the cast, which included Linda Darnell, Edward Everett Horton (often associated in scene stealing comedic roles) and a personal favourite George Sanders. Three is that it is based on a work by Anton Chekhov, one of the 19th century's finest writers, while it is not one of his best it is still unmistakably Chekhov in mood and characterisation. Douglas Sirk did some fine films and more often than not excelled in melodrama.

While not perfect or a great film, as there was room for it to be darker and more passionate, 'Summer Storm' was quite impressive for an early film adaptation of Chekhov and hardly disgraces the great writer. Sirk has done better and so have the cast, but all of them actually still come off very well and 'Summer Storm' to me was a laudable and largely successful attempt at adapting a work of an author/playwright who is notoriously difficult to adapt.

'Summer Storm' has plenty to admire. Cannot fault the cast. Sanders, at his most handsome, especially excels, he did suave very well and he proves that he could do tormented edge just as well as the cads and villains he was famous for. Darnell is sensual and alluring, despite her role being a bit of a stretch, and the two do have a strong chemistry. Everett Horton is a sheer comedic delight as the count and doesn't resort to mugging. Sirk directs efficiently, not exceptionally but it doesn't wallow into over sentimental melodrama or anything.

It is a very atmospherically photographed film, and benefits also from some intelligent literate scripting that treats Chekhov with respect, a haunting but not overwrought score and a suitably brooding atmosphere.

Having said all that, 'Summer Storm' just misses out on greatness. It could have done with more consistent passion and tension, as while the style is distinctively Chekhov it's Chekhov not fully realised. The low budget does show too in the threadbare, less than sumptuous sets.

Will agree too that the manipulation is sometimes on the silly side.

On the whole, a very laudable effort worthy of a lot of praise and more recognition. 7/10.

Superb film version of Chekhov's 'The Shooting Party.'

[haroldg-2 · 8/10 · 13 July 2001]

SUMMER STORM is Douglas Sirk's 1944 filming of Chekhov's 'The Shooting Party.' Why this literate, mature and well acted film isn't better known is a mystery to me.

Set in Russia just before the revolution, it stars dark and lovely young Linda Darnell as a peasant beauty who's quest for wealth and position leads to tragedy and death.

Linda Darnell has one of the best roles of her film career, and she's never been better then she is here. She gives a sensual and sexy performance as the vain and greedy girl who plays several lovers against each other in order get all she can out of each of them. I think Linda Darnell's beauty hardened rather early, and even by A LETTER TO THREE WIVES in 1949, she was already rather sharp and cold looking. But in 1944 and SUMMER STORM, she was still soft and lovely, and one of the most remarkably beautiful brunettes of the era.

George Sanders gives another fine performance, in a rather typical George Sanders part, as a snobbish, aristocratic judge who's obsession with the girl ruins his career and his engagement to lovely Anna Lee. His loves scenes with Darnell are quite frank and passionate for their day, and both stars are excellent together.

And Edward Everette Horton gives what has to be one of the best performances of his career, in a role quite unlike his usual, as a spoiled, lecherous Russian count.

A top notch adult drama in every way.

good film and performances

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 13 February 2019]

SUMMER STORM is an adaptation of a story by Chekov and takes place after the Russian revolution, with a flashback to before it started. An ex-count, Volsky (Horton) brings a manuscript to a publisher (Lee) written by her ex-fiance (Sanders). The manuscript tells the story of a beautiful peasant woman (Darnell) and the deleterious effect she had on several men: the Count himself, her husband, and a judge, Fedor (Sanders), resulting in tragedy.

This is an enjoyable film. Sanders was never more handsome, and he does a wonderful job as a man who can't resist the temptations of the ambitious Olga. Edward Everett Horton is excellent as the annoying, shallow Count. It's always a pleasure to see the beautiful Anna Lee, whom lots of people remember as the elderly Lila Quartermaine on General Hospital.

The gorgeous Darnell was actually in a mini-slump with her boss, Daryl F. Zanuck, when she made this film. It was a step down from The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, Star Dust - now 21 and married, she could no longer play the sweet virgin. She quickly proved to him she could be a seductress, reaching the absolute height of her stardom in the late '40s. Though she never stopped working, alcohol eventually took its toll, and she died in a fire in 1965, age 41. Sadly when she was brought to the hospital, she was coherent and speaking with the doctors, not realizing that she couldn't feel anything and was dying.

Russian peasant vixen

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 25 April 2018]

Summer Storm is an adaption of Anton Chekhov's play The Shooting Party updated so as to include the Russian Revolution and the upheavals in the social order it brought. But certain things are both international and eternal. As this one where a beautiful peasant girl uses her looks and charm to get ahead in a society that didn't have any feminist notions.

Linda Darnell is our beautiful and alluring female protagonist. She's a peasant girl who is on the estate of Count Edward Everett Horton and before the film is over she gets the hormones going for Horton, for his estate manager Hugo Haas and for Judge George Sanders.

This was a bit of interesting casting for Sanders as he was in fact born in old Russia and according to his biographer and colleague Brian Aherne had a bit more of that temperament in his nature than you would realize. But for all of his position and sophistication he's addicted to love when it comes to Darnell.

This was also unusual casting for Edward Everett Horton who usually was playing silly fuss budgets in so many comedy films Some of that is here, but director Douglas Sirk got so much more from the character. As Sanders observes about the decadent Horton, he's everything that's wrong with the society that he is a part of.

Anna Lee is in Summer Storm also. She's the girl Sanders throws over for Darnell. But comes the Revolution and the worm really does turn.

It's not exactly what Chekhov had in mind, but Summer Storm is definitely worth a look for fans of the various cast members.

Culture clash.

[brogmiller · 6/10 · 10 February 2022]

Such a pity that Detlef Sierck was unable to realise his wish to film Anton Checkhov's 'The Shooting Party' whilst working at UFA Studios, even more so in that, as Douglas Sirk, he eventually turned out this homogenised Hollywood version.

Mr. Sirk's visual sense is evident here and it is nicely shot by Archie Stout but the whole enterprise is studio bound, pedestrian and utterly devoid of passion.

The film's poster is designed to show the physical attributes of ravishing Linda Darnell who plays the first of her sultry temptresses. Her beauty wreaks havoc in the lives of her woodcutter husband played touchingly by Hugo Haas whose East European accent makes his character refreshingly idiomatic; the blinkered, hedonistic and utterly loveable aristocrat of veteran scene stealer Edward Everett Horton and the judge of George Sanders. Although Russian by birth, Gentleman George in his first of three films for this director, is far too urbane to convince in such a passionate role whilst his scenes with Miss Darnell lack the necessary fire.

In retrospect, with the notable exception of Clarence Brown's 'Anna Karenina', Hollywood's attempts to film Slavonic literature must be accounted a failure. The cultural gap is simply too vast.

Melodramatic Love Story

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 27 September 2011]

In 1919, in Russia, the former Count 'Piggy' Volsky (Edward Everett Horton) visits the publisher of the Times Nadena Kalenin (Anna Lee) and brings a manuscript that he had stolen from his friend Fedor Mikhailovich Petroff (George Sanders) to be published. Nadena gives some money in advance and reads the document.

In the summer of 1912, the aristocratic and handsome Petroff is the examining magistrate in the summer resort in Chienova in the District Haircker in the Imperial Russia. His fiancée Nadena is spending the summer vacation in Chienova with her parents that own a publishing house. When Petroff visits his friend Volsky, he meets the gorgeous peasant Olga Kuzminichna Urbenin (Linda Darnell) and he falls in love for her. Olga is an ambitious woman engaged to be married with the peasant Anton Urbenin (Hugo Haas) and she flirts with Petroff. When Nadena witness Petroff and Olga together, she calls off her engagement with Petroff. But sooner Petroff learns that the gold-digger Olga is having a love affair with Volsky, cheating not only her husband but also him. When Olga tells to Petroff that she will marry Volsky, a tragedy happens.

"Summer Storm" is a melodramatic love story based on the novel "The Shooting Party" of Anton Chekhov. It is strange to see George Sanders and Linda Darnell in the role of Russian characters and Petroff singing in Russian is funny. The tone of Douglas Sirk's adaptation of this tragic story has exaggerations in the melodrama but is not bad. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Summer Storm – O Que Matou Por Amor" ("Summer Storm – The One Who Killed for Love")

Linda's first chance to shine

[jjnxn-1 · 9/10 · 30 April 2013]

Early American Sirk film is a little slow but still interesting version of Chekov's The Shooting Party. His signature stylistic elements are not wholly in evidence yet although he uses shadows effectively and he gets excellent work from his cast particularly Edward Everett Horton playing a more complex part then usual. Linda Darnell is most impressive in the first of the bad girl roles in which she excelled. Sirk selected her personally for the film sensing more to her than the feather weight beauties she had been assigned up to that point, although she is almost supernaturally beautiful. She digs deep into Olga's conflicted nature and offers up a passionate portrait of an impulsive girl who causes damage to all that surround her including herself. Unfortunately 20th Century Fox didn't take advantage of the talent she showed and returned her for the most part to films not worthy of her.

Flawed but still entertaining.

[PWNYCNY · 7/10 · 14 December 2010]

This movie is a stagy Hollywoodish interpretation of a story by Anton Chekhov. While the story itself is good, the problem is that Hollywood converts the story into melodramatic pulp. George Sanders was a great actor but here he is entirely miscast. Playing starstruck was not Mr. Sander's forte. Linda Darnell was beautiful and was also a great actress but casting her as a Russian Russian peasant woman, and a self-centered, illiterate one at that, was a bit of a stretch. Her manipulations were laughable. The idea of her character actually getting over George Sander's character tested the limits of plausibility. Some of the supporting cast were more believable, something however that cannot be said for Edward Everett Horton. One was hard pressed to ignore Mr. Horton's jocular Americanese inflection suggesting a character who might have been more at home at a baseball game anywhere in the United States. All this notwithstanding, it's still a good movie and worth watching because despite the aforementioned flaws, Mr. Sanders is dashing, Ms. Darnell is ravishing, Mr. Horton is amusing, the rest of the cast is wonderful and the movie overall is entertaining, which is the ultimate bottom line.

Mediocre

[dougdoepke · 23 September 2010]

Darnell (Olga) does a bang-up job posing seductively as she works her destructive way up the social ladder in czarist Russia. Still, the movie lacks persuasiveness. Now, few actors are better at being both snide and dashing than Sanders (Fedor) who is expert at both, especially in that spiffy uniform. The trouble is this melodrama hinges on soft emotions made intense, and frankly neither Darnell nor Sanders excel at being lovelorn—at least in this movie (contrast with Anna Lee's Nadeena who brings it off nicely). So, we listen to the words and watch the clinches, but it's all minus the inner conviction. Thus, the tragic upshot fails to impact the way it should, despite the touching very last frame.

Nonetheless, Horton (Volsky) gets a showcase role as the decadent, yet likable, aristocrat who also manages to steal the show. At the same time, I don't know who plays the petite maid, but she has a look and manner that's quite distinctive.

Also, I don't know who the production company, Angelus, is, but they're clearly a cheap-jack outfit. The sets for the shooting party are bare-bones and obvious; at the same time, the entire film has an extremely drab look that cuts against its manorial setting. This is a movie- subject that needs generous, if not lavish, production values as a background, especially to justify Olga's aspirations. Instead, we get the economy version, to put it politely. Too bad a prestige studio like TCF didn't take on the project.

Anyway, I agree with another reviewer that the movie is basically for fans of Sanders and Darnell, with Horton as an amusing bonus.

(In passing—note the photo of Lenin in the publisher's office. It may be the only Hollywood appearance of the Bolshevik revolutionary outside of Cold War contexts.)

You pitiful product of centuries of inbreeding.

[lastliberal · 8/10 · 10 January 2010]

This had to come my way by accident. I must have wanted the 2006 film of the same name, and clicked this by mistake. It's the only reason I can imagine I have it.

Well, have it I do, and lets see what we have.

Linda Darnell (The Mark of Zorro) was excellent as a gold-digger, and George Sanders (All About Eve) outstanding as the object of her love. Edward Everett Horton was amazingly funny as a Count who was to lose it all in the impending Russian Revolution.

Lori Lahner was also a scene stealer in her only film.

A tragic love story that makes me glad I got it in error.

A rarely seen Sirk.

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 29 October 2020]

Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, it tells the story of a young femme fatale, scheming and driving men mad in her hamlet. It is atmospheric and moody, and has some interesting casting. No surprise in George Sanders playing a cad, nor really in Edward.Everett Horton playing a buffoonish, decadent wealthy man (despite the role supposedly being serious, he comes off as his usual comic relief). But the revelation back then was casting 20 year old Linda Darnell as the femme fatale; the role changed her image overnight, after five years playing the innocent girl-next door ingenue, and revitalized her career. Suddenly, she was in the pin-up sweepstakes, as the film publicity had her posing in revealing costumes, amongst bales of hay, a la Jane Russell's for "The Outlaw". In the future, Darnell would usually be cast as a femme fatale, which seemed to fit her better than her previous image.

As for the script, the last fifteen minutes or so has quite few surprises and is interesting in and of itself.

A serious mistake

[abelposadas · 4/10 · 7 March 2011]

This movie pretends to be an adaptation of The Shooting Pary by Tchehov. However it begins and ends after the 1916 revolution. This political twist -the States and Russia were allies against Germany- it is really amazing.

On the other hand, the settings are really very poor and Douglas Sirk tries hards but what he and his collaborators give us is really poor. Miss Darnell is an agreeable actress but her Russian peasant is our of her possibilities. As for Mr Sanders singing in Russian, well, how can you take him seriously.

The odd thing is that these two actors were employees of Fox but this is not the company producing the film. What it is logical to suppose is that this artifact was in the line of propaganda about an ally in that year.

LInda Darnell's successful career turning point

[jimakros · 7/10 · 22 April 2021]

After serving loyally 20th century-fox as support to its main leading men for some years ,and mainly Tyrone Power,Linda was given to play this first bad girl role,after having played many nice girls. She did an exceptional job with it,her girl part who uses her beauty as a weapon to get what she wants, is alarmingly realistic mainly because she looks the part,she is breathtakingly beautiful and you feel sorry for anyone who would fall in her path. Linda followed this with several other bad girls,and turned her career to a new direction. As a movie its an ok drama,i have to object they used Horton who does his usual comedic routine which doesnt really fit with the rest of the movie all other characters are strictly dramatic. Other than that the center of the movie is Darnells character,and the star pretty much shines here.

Very good despite its rather ordinary rating on IMDb.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 19 January 2012]

This is a film that probably would not have been made or would have been drastically re-worked had it been made earlier or later in history. As the film, at least in part, is based in Soviet Russia and was written by Chekhov (not the "Star Trek" one), it's NOT the sort of film Hollywood would have made in the 1930s or after the Cold War began. But, because the Soviet Union was TEMPORARILY an ally of the United States (due to WWII), Hollywood felt comfortable making films showing modern Russia.

George Sanders plays a judge living in pre-revolutionary Russia. He eventually meets up with a gorgeous peasant girl (Linda Darnell) and he is absolutely smitten with her. However, what he doesn't know is that she turns out to be a heartless...um....lady. Eventually, after throwing away another woman who would have been a great match, he learns that she is NOT a nice lady. She'd used him and was simply a conniver. What happens next, well, I don't want to spoil the film so I'll say no more.

All in all, the biggest star of this film is the very intelligent and interesting script. Also, while Sanders and Darnell (along with Edward Everett Horton) were not big stars, they were all very good actors and more than carried the film--especially Sanders. Well done and worth seeing.

A peasant girl as a femme fatale causing the downfall of a society.

[clanciai · 9/10 · 1 January 2018]

There are many remarkable circumstances in this film. Anton Tchekhov died in 1904. The film starts in 1919 and then goes back to 1912, not any earlier. It's a Tchekhov story all right, all the melancholy and deep knowledge of human nature is there, all characters are in style and very Tchekhovian, in fact, the film couldn't be more Tchekhovian, and yet it goes far beyond what Tchekhov ever could imagine, as if it was written by Tchekhov after the revolution.

It's a very sad story framed by typical hilarious Tchekhovian human comedy. Both Edward Everett's priceless character of an old befuddled aristocrat and Linda Darnell's scandal beauty are thoroughly comedians, like also her hilarious father (Sig Ruman, in one of HIS best performances,) and all the local people around them. The only tragic character is George Sanders as judge Petrov, and, to some degree, his fiancée Anna Lee, who sees the tragedy but can't do anything about it, the only one to get out of it whole.

George Sanders was an exiled Russian aristocrat himself, and this is one of the few films in which he gives his original character away. He later learned such perfect English that no one could suspect he had been anything but an English snob, but to his misfortune he got out of the Russian revolution alive. All his characters were generally bitter frustrated superior losers usually digging their own graves by pride and conceit, with a few exceptions, like in Hitchcock's "The Foreign Correspondent". Here he is the victim of his own uncontrollable destiny, as he finds himself unable to rule his own passion. This film is his tragedy, he actually gives a song in Russian at one point, while the other characters, above all Linda Darnell and Edward Everett Horton, take over the film.

You must accept her irresistible beauty, and you must understand how both Horton and Sanders had to give in to it. She is simply shamelessly, outrageously and overbearingly beautiful, such a career just has to come to a dreadful end, while poor befuddled Horton just can't understand anything of what is happening. In spite of his own tragedy, which doesn't seem to become him much, as he is incorrigible in his own way, he remains the one surviving comedian of this ludicrous but very melancholy tragedy, like in fact a human epitaph on the fallen old Russia.