En una isla tranquila al sur

One of the great young love romances ever done on the screen, A Summer Place is the story of two romances, one born and the other rekindled.

Richard Egan and Constance Ford with their daughter Sandra Dee are returning to Pine Island, Maine where years ago before Egan became wealthy as a research chemist he was employed as a lifeguard and where he romanced one of the town beauties. Pine Island is like Kennebunkport, the private reserve of the Bush family. This is the private reserve of several old Yankee families who if they can't trace their ancestors on the Mayflower at least they go back to Puritans who might have found New England more hospitable than Restoration Great Britain.

Egan's rented out several rooms from thinning blue blood Arthur Kennedy and his wife Dorothy McGuire. It was McGuire who Egan loved and lost those many years ago.

Neither Egan and McGuire have found much happiness in their second choice for spouses. Constance Ford, a truly uptight and frigid woman from Buffalo has not kanoodled with Egan for years. You know he's good and ready. As for McGuire's marriage, Kennedy has all the airs of a patrician, but not the money any more. Did he lose it because of his alcohol problem, or is he drinking because the family fortune has gone? It's your choice.

So Egan and McGuire discover each other and Sandra Dee discovers Kennedy and McGuire's son, Troy Donahue. Because of her mother, Dee's led a sheltered life and I'm betting the isolation of Pine Isle with its very few inhabitants hasn't improved Donahue's social skills either. The two kids are sadly a textbook case for sex education.

Feeling betrayed by their parents, all of them when you come right down to it, the young people feel they have only each other. The passion multiplies exponentially.

Right up there with the human cast members in making A Summer Place a big commercial hit for Warner Brothers is Max Steiner's theme, played when Dee and Donahue are together. It's popularity on the radio and jukeboxes sold many a ticket to this film.

Egan and McGuire are also appealing in their way to discover their passions are still the same. The odd spouses out are also turning in fine performances. Arthur Kennedy who was never bad in any film he ever did is both arrogant and yet pitiable as the sad sack alcoholic. The villain of A Summer Place is really Ford, she's made life hell for Egan and Dee. Yet you wonder throughout the film what must have she been like back in the day for Egan to fall for her in the first place and what changed her.

It's Eisenhower era America and the story is dated somewhat, but not all that much. I can see A Summer Place being a candidate for a remake, who would you cast in a remake among today's players?