Summer Storm

“The will to live is stronger than the pity I felt for another man.” Based on the only full-length novel by Russian master Anton Chekhov, Douglas Sirk’s Summer Storm is a period noir set in Ukraine in which we follow a murder case and its aftermath over a seven-year period during which the world is fundamentally transformed. In the resort town of Tyrneva, examining magistrate Fedor Petroff (George Sanders) is engaged to the wealthy Nadena Kalenin (Anna Lee), but his feelings are complicated when he meets a young, vivacious woodcutter’s daughter, Olga Kuzminichna (Linda Darnell in the role that established her femme fatale image). Petroff isn’t alone in falling for Olga, and she’s well aware of her beauty’s power, ultimately marrying bookkeeper Anton Urbenin (the great Hugo Haas, once again playing the cuckold) not because she loves him but because he’ll provide access to wealth, power, and, potentially, the honorific of countess through his employer, Count “Piggy” Volsky (Edward Everett Horton), who is also Petroff’s best friend. (When asked why she married him, Olga responds, “Because I hated the dirt”). Olga’s material ambitions get the best of her, culminating in bitter jealousies and brutal murders. The story spans two timeframes, 1912 before the Russian Revolution, and 1919 when the aristocratic main characters have fallen into lives of deprivation and abasement (the final shot is a close-up of dirt on top of trash). Some viewers may find the pacing a bit slow, but tension accelerates in the second half, culminating in a final, desperate chase on the dark, city streets.