SUMMER AND SMOKE

Watching Summer and Smoke @ 3 am.......The exemplary acting of Lawrence Harvey made Tennessee William's stagey old-school dramaturgy and the proscenium-bowing righteous acting of all its other actors seem like high school drama department stuff........I recalled another Harvey film, done around the same time......the remake of Of Human Bondage....where Harvey is better 'matched' by Kim Novak...their 'real life' dislike of one another adding some dynamics, maybe..... in some of the film's similar scenes.......Two films in which Harvey plays a young doctor who eventually rejects his female suitor after she 'comes on to him' after he had, earlier, made some 'moves' on them......It's time for remakes of both films, retaining the innuendos that were only inferential during the repressive 1950's and early 1960's, before the floodgates of 'un-expurgation' and "R" & "M" separated adults from 'children'..... That transitional phase between curtain and footlight acting and post-1950 'Methodism' which, thankfully, led to modern Naturalism.......I've already imagined a remake of Summer and Smoke...with Cate Blanchett and Lawrence Harvey.....just digitally remove Geraldine Page..which would not even be a consideration, had Margaret Leighton landed the role.... although Page's performance....at the time....was considered 'Golden Globe Worthy'!!.., John McIntire, whose talents were better served in formula Westerns; Pamela Tiffin, playing her 'kitten with a whip' schtick.....leave Rita Moreno who, even then, is always...and still is.....'on point', although she had to suffer through the racist posturing, still prevalent at that time....(and, later, "bitched" about this)....Ahem!.... And, incidentally, suffering through having to watch Edith Head's horrid costume designs in Summer and Smoke led me to ponder "how on earth did she get the Breakfast At Tiffanys gig!!"? Oh, that was really Hubert de Givenchy, wasn't it? Harvey's attire, was, as always....impeccable.......