An action-packed slog

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I just came back from the cinema after having seen the film. And all that comes to mind is -and forgive me for the level of my English- a simple ahhh! This was one of the best performances I have seen in terms of couple chemistry and the protagonist Eleonora Rossi Drago was just splendid! Pure unspoiled femininity coming out of every little move, gesture, look! The b/w photography, the directing and most of all Trintignan and Rossi Drago transform this erotic drama into a symphony of desire! And I can ask,rather bitterly, after all: where are women protagonists nowadays? And what has been done to the pure magic they radiated?

Valerio Zurlini was first known for his melodramas ("la ragazza con la valigla" and "cronaca familiare" but his towering achievement was his final effort "il deserto dei Tartari" a brilliant adaptation of Dino Buzatti's masterpiece (hence not a melodrama)."Estate Violenta" is a moderately successful film:the umpteenth story of a young and attractive widow and a younger (not so younger by the way,Trintignant was actually about five years younger than Rossi-Drago)lad ,during the Fascist years .The boy has a lot of fun with his mates :thanks to his father who provides him protection he has avoided the draft.He spends his time ,with a spoiled youth sunbathing and partying but history is about to catch him up.Rossi-Drago portrays a woman who stifles in her bourgeois atmosphere.Excellent performances by the two leads.Gorgeous brunette Jacqueline Sassard is also featured as Trintignant's girlfriend (she would team up again with Trintignant in Chabrol's "les biches"(1967); nothing was heard from her since).Best scene:bombing of the railway station,Zurlini works wonders when he describes people's panic.

Jean-Louis Trintignat plays the draft-dodging son of a powerful Nazi in 1943 Italy, in a prelude to Bertolucci's "The Conformist," who falls in love with an older war widow, in an absolutely brilliant performance by Eleonora Rossi Drago, (what else has she ever been in?) featuring a brilliantly choreographed sequence to the song "Temptation," reminding me of Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant," this is one of the better scenes one is ever likely to see in all of cinema where the lovers dance and fall in love around a nude male statue oblivious to the war raging outside, similar to Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses," there is an extraordinary pacing to the film, an intense love affair, reminiscent of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's "Notorious," this is a beautifully written, old-fashioned melodrama, the likes of which we just don't see any more.

After being quite impressed by the near-masterpiece comedy Zurlini made in 1954 "The Girls of San Frediano," I was very much disappointed by "Violent Summer," an overly melodramatic soap-opera made 5 years later. Too bad Zurlini couldn't restrain himself from the melodramatic overstatements that ruin the film because the cinematography couldn't be better and the young Trintignant's performance is pretty amazing.