We've had this box set for well over a decade and had rather stalled out about halfway through (probably because a lot of what counts as "art house" is gritty and/or bleak) but I am now determined to kickstart the process and plow through the remainder. Jami gets to choose first, and found one of the few at least mildly comedic ones (one that Granny had rather wanted to watch on one of her visits, or at least, wanted to watch more than she wanted to watch what we ended up making her watch). A rather slight number, despite being a heavyweight cooperation between Katherine Hepburn and David Lean. It's sandwiched between an example of Lean's smaller films (Hobson's Choice) and the first of his huge epics (Bridge on the River Kwai), and has elements of both. It's small in scope and focus (unsurprising, perhaps, as it was originally a play), but has gorgeous expansive technicolor cinematography, capturing Venice in travel-brochure sumptuousness. It's one of those films for which the adjective "bittersweet" was invented: Hepburn plays Jane Hudson, a middle-aged spinsterish Ohio secretary who as the film opens is frantically filming out of the window of the train with her hand-held film camera as they pull into Venice. She is immediately presented as something of a charming chatterbox, revealing to the Englishman in her car that this is more-or-less the trip of a lifetime. He assures her that most people enjoy Venice, but it is rather noisy. It certainly seems so as she is jostled from the train to a "bus" that turns out to be water-borne, where she meets a pair of fellow middle-aged Midwesterners, the McIlhennys (small-town Illinois) who are in the middle of a months-long mad dash through Europe (they've done Britain and France already and will end up in Portugal). It turns out they are also staying in her hotel (the Pensione Fiorina) and are thus able to direct her where to get off. They are a constant motif throughout the film, she gushingly enthusiastic, attempting Italian phrases and keen to collect souvenirs, he, clearly devoted to her but initially stubbornly inured to the charms of Italy (although by the end of the film he has become a convert to museums of art ("they're all hand-painted!") and even ventures an "Arrivederci!" to his wife's delight), as well as rather boorish (referring to "wop cooking" in front of the refined female owner of the pensione). The latter bonds with Jane, revealing that she turned her house into this hotel after her husband's death. And it is an idyllic little hotel, with stunning views out on to the water, and a charming singing maid, Giovanna, as well as a street urchin (Mauro) who is on hand for various services whether you want them or not, and who becomes Jane's sidekick in fairly short order. There are two more guests at the hotel, also American, but younger and more glamorous: a painter and his model wife. They are responsible for a rather poignant moment about halfway through the film when Jane tries to get herself invited along to a dinner and they make it clear she's not welcome. And in general, if there's one thing Hepburn conveys painfully well in this film, it's loneliness - made all the more affecting by her cheery, chatty front (she has a habit of calling everyone "cookie"). But, fear not! She cannot mope for long in the beauty of Venice, and soon she (or at least her still-shapely (in her late 40s) gams) is noticed by handsome, only-slightly-greying Antique Shop owner Renato de Rossi.
She is unnerved by his cool, appraising gaze as they are both having coffee in one of the plazas, and is even more unnerved when she bumps into him in his shop, into which she has been drawn by desire for a red goblet in the window. He insists it is 18th Century, and demands 10,000 lire for it. She agrees, at which he explains that she is expected to bargain, and he gives it to her for just over 8,000 lire, despite her protestations. Again she flees, but she has a pretext to return because he has said he will try to track down a companion goblet. Thenceforth the romance is up and running, despite her (somewhat exasperating) resistance. There are some stumbles along the way, most notably when the McIlhennys come back from a glass factory with a dozen identical red goblets, made that very day. He is offended at her suspicion and insists that his goblet was indeed antique, and, what is more, she got it for cheaper than the McIlhennys got any of theirs. The second big blow is when the handsome boy who helps out in the antique shop reveals himself not to be a nephew (or even "niece") as Renato has claimed, but a son, and that Renato is still married. This discovery is paired with the discovery that the painter is having an affair with her landlady, and it offends her rigid American sensibilities no end. However, he convinces her (a) that his wife and he are separated, and (b) that she's being provincial, and they both love each other, and they manage to have some idyllic days, including a trip to Murano, a little island off Venice where the glass is made, and that is full of multi-colored houses, that filled me (and no doubt countless views over the years) with a yearning to visit. However, Jane is sensible enough to know that this love cannot last and, as she says she has always been one who stays at parties too long, determines to leave this one before she outstays her welcome, and leaves Venice on the train she came in on, albeit with him chasing after it with a last present of a gardenia (you'll know why when you watch the film). Is this Brief Encounter II? Not really: she was looking for romance, and he is not going anywhere. She could indeed be back next year to renew the affair, and she's perfectly right to realize that his hot Italian love would inevitably cool (probably as soon as he spotted another pair of gams in the piazza). But she came out of her shell. She stopped being a passive observer (the film camera is more-or-less abandoned halfway through the film), she got a makeover, she fell in a canal, she developed a more well-rounded, less romanticized view of love. Better to go out on top.
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