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Screen: Argentine Director's Surprise:'Summerskin' Arrives at the Normandie Film Tells of Girl Who Loves Doomed Man
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: May 29, 1962
LEOPOLDO TORRE NILSSON pulls a dirty trick on us in his new Argentine picture, "Summerskin" ("Piel de Verano"), which came to the Normandie yesterday.
He gets us considerably interested in - even excited about-an Argentine girl who is urged by her naughty grandmother to enter a clandestine relationship with a bewitchingly wealthy young man doomed to die of a lung disease. And he leads us to suppose that this young beauty is genuinely stirred by sympathy and love when the young man woos and wins her, physically speaking, during a sojourn at a lovely summer home.
This part is done rather nicely - a little artily, at times, perhaps-with the director, Señor Torre Nilssón, shooting up into the tops of trees and such to indicate the soaring of emotions, but with a generally sensitive camera style.
He makes us appreciate fully the physical attractiveness and latency of sex in flashingly dark Graciela Borges, who plays the compliant girl. And he gets a warm performance from Alfredo Alcón as the invalid who is aroused by her.
He even treats us to a nice poetic sequence in which the evidently melancholy girl, left alone by her summertime lover who has gone to the hospital presumably to die, visits the beach where they did their first lovemaking and ponders sadly over the "peeling of summerskin."
Then the director really tricks us. He brings the fellow back to the girl, miraculously cured (thanks to her therapeutic influence) and ready to marry her.
And what does he have the girl do? He has her draw herself up icily and tell the fellow she doesn't love him, she never loved him. She did it only for a trip to Paris and an outfit of Dior clothes.
As you can imagine, that does it. The fellow shoots himself, and the girl is left to be sad all over again.
The trouble is that Señor Torre Nilssón has not warned us in any way, either with graphic indications or with articulated hints, that the girl is frigid and deceitful. On the contrary, he has defined her nature as voluptuous and forthright. He has even had her reveal jealousy when she finds that the fellow is playing a bit of footsie with his lusty blond nurse.
To understand the reversal (if it is to be understood), one must note that this picture was written by Beatriz Guido, who also wrote Señor Torre Nilssón's previous picture - his only previous one shown in New York. That was "End of Innocence," and it was about a rigidly brought-up girl who has had a somewhat shocking sex experience that has left her frigid for the rest of her life.
Evidently some such stiff upbringing must be imagined for the girl in "Summerskin." That would be the simplest explanation for her acting as she does. But it isn't in the picture, and it certainly is not conveyed in the dialogue; at least it isn't mentioned in the English subtitles.
How can you like a picture that ends as cruelly and arbitrarily as this one does?
Also on the bill at the Normandie is "Night Journey," a half-hour film of Martha Graham's dance interpretation of Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex." For those who are attuned to Miss Graham's dancing and her choreographic style, it should prove quite satisfactory, for the staging is clean, the photography good.
It lost this observer, however, when the silver cord turned out to be about twenty feet of rope.
The Cast
SUMMERSKIN; screen play by Beatriz Guido; produced and directed by LeopoLdo Torre Nilsson; distributed by Angel Productions. At the Trans-Lux Normandie Theatre, Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. Running time: ninety-six minutes.
Martin . . . . . Alfredo Alcon
Marcela . . . . . Graciela Borges
Joujou . . . . . Franca Boni
Adela . . . . . Luciana Possamay
Marcus . . . . . Juan Jones
