Piazza San Marco and the Architecture of Romance in Summertime Essay

The city of Venice and its monuments function, on the surface, as the framework and backdrop for the storyline in David Lean’s 1955 film, Summertime. The action itself advances as a video travelogue, immediately impressing us with the fundamental role the sea plays for this water community when â€Å"the bus† turns out to be a water taxi and a fire engine a boat. The camera brings us along the Grand Canal, awing us with â€Å"celluloid paintings† of such magnificent examples of lofty Venetian design and decoration as Longhena’s 17th-century Church of Santa Maria della Salute, Palladio’s 16th-century Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, and Antonio da Ponte’s late 16th-century Rialto Bridge in rapid succession. Abruptly, we are returned to the realities of ordinary Venetian life. Passing on foot down centuries-old streets to yet another waterway, we witness a Venetian tossing her household garbage unceremoniously into the canal to be carried away by the tides that perpetually cleanse the city, underscoring again the watery foundation that sustains life in Venice. Yet, Venice is more than a simple frame from which the storyline of the film is hung. Venice defines this love story, enabling the protagonists to escape the constraints of their disparate worlds to a magic place imbued with all the mystery and romance of her eclectic past. Venice is the sum total of ideas and design acquired from its primitive beginnings, through its period under Byzantine rule, its lucrative mercantile contact with the West and East, and its proximity to Rome, as evidenced in the many monumental churches, statues, columns, scuole, libraries, and palaces that were created by the most prominent architects and artists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. As Spiro Kostof says in The City Shaped (1999), â€Å"The city is the ultimate memorial of our struggles and glories: it is where the pride of the past is set on display. † In the film, as in Venice itself, Piazza San Marco figures prominently. Often, the Piazza is more than a mere backdrop, at times it seems to become a character of its own right. One of the most prominent structures of the Piazza is the Campanile. Originally constructed in the 10th century, the tall brick Campanile with its bronze pyramidal spire seen in the Summertime is actually a 1912 reconstruction of the original as it looked when it collapsed in the early part of the 20th century (Kostof, 1995). Early on, as Jane wonders what she will do alone in Venice, the bells of the Campanile ring out, seeming to call to her, beckoning her to Piazza San Marco and her fateful encounter with Renato. In their last meeting, just as Jane utters the sentence â€Å"I don’t want to forget†¦a single moment† the Campanile begins to chime once more. Summertime is very much about the meeting of two very different cultures, and this theme is reflected in much of the architecture featured in the film. The most famous of all Piazza structures, St. Mark’s Basilica is an outstand example the marriage between the Oriental or Byzantine and Gothic building styles. The elaborate mosaics highlighted in the still travelogue shots, the basilica plan, and the five domes that crown the Basilica are clear manifestations of the Byzantine. The arches of the facade, rounded on the underside with pointed rooflines are an excellent example of the interweaving of the Byzantine love for domes and the pointed Gothic arch. Whereas the sculptural detail, rose windows, and trefoil arches present in the Basilica are part of the building’s Gothic heritage. Such Gothic elements also figure prominently in Doges Palace and the Sansovino Library. Finally, St. Marks’ Basilica, Doges Palace and the Sansovino Library all give nods to the classical orders in terms or proportions, but whereas the Basilica boasts obviously Byzantine capitals, Doges’ are a more convex Byzantine Corinthian hybrid, and the Library capitals are Ionic and Corinthian. The beautiful coexistence of two different traditions so expertly managed in Piazza San Marco allows for the viewer and the lovers themselves to imagine, at least momentarily, that despite the obvious problems (she being only a tourist and he being married), a fairytale-like union might be possible for them as well. Venice has been referred to by contemporaries as â€Å"a theme park on water. † In the film Summertime, the integration of the characteristics derived from Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles combine to produce a whimsical wonderland within which fantasies can be lived. To highlight this, the camera returns repeatedly to Mauro Coducci’s 15th century clock tower in Piazza San Marco focusing on its playful mechanical Moor figures, bright blue and gold of the Lion of St. Mark to add a truly whimsical and theme-park-like air to the Piazza. This sense of fun and freedom further adds to the romance of the couples’ time together by establishing it as a separate and safe â€Å"play† space, setting it apart from Jane’s Ohio reality. Both spatially and chronologically, Piazza San Marcos literally frames the romance between Jane (Katharine Hepburn) and Renato (Rossano Brazzi) as they meet in the Piazza and ultimately their last encounter begins there. Significantly, Jane makes Renato take her outside the Piazza to tell him she is leaving. The film goes to great lengths to establish Venice as a fairytale setting, and when Jane explains her reasons for departing so abruptly they echo this notion. Jane says she fears staying to long and ruining the perfect memory they have created. Essentially, though her fear is of the dream fading into reality. Thus, it is understandable that Renato begs her to stay—for him there is no difference because Venice is his reality. And having exited Piazza San Marcos for the final time, the spell is broken, at least enough that, like Wendy, she leaves her Peter Pan in his permanent dream and decides to depart the fairytale land and return to reality, maintaining Venice as a flawless Neverland that lives in her memory. However, unlike Wendy, she had a camera and can look back at her film of the buildings and remember her brief stint in the fairytale land of coexistence. References Kostof, S. (1995). A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals. New York: Oxford. Kostof, S. (1995). The City Shaped. London: Thames & Hudson. Lopert, I. (Producer), & Lane, D. (Director). (1955). Summertime [Motion picture]. USA: Lopert Films.