It is a performances centric movie

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

With the '50s coming to a close, audiences were probably looking for a movie to break away from the decade's repressed mores. Boy did they get one! "A Summer Place" contains what were probably some of the most candid discussions of sex to grace the silver screen up to that point (by which I mean that the words "sex" and "pregnant" get used in the movie). But more importantly, the movie hints at what "The Graduate" would deal with head-on less than a decade later: the hypocrisy of the parents' generation. The parents act like nice, upstanding members of the community, while in reality they're a bunch of cold, spiteful individuals (not to mention bigoted; one of them doesn't want to be around "Jews, Catholics, Italians, Poles, French, Germans, Blacks, Latinos or Asians")*.Obviously it was still going to be a few years before cinema could deal with these issues directly. But for a movie to even mention sex, adultery and divorce in the oh-so-wholesome Eisenhower era was a major leap (at least for 1959). As for Sandra Dee, it's understood that she usually got cast in "cute" roles. I bet that if the executives hadn't tried to control her career so much, she would've graduated to serious roles. Who knows? She just might have become her generation's Meryl Streep. From what I've read about her, she was smarter than these ingenue roles implied (as she put it, she soon figured out that the producers just considered her a piece of property). It was probably some consolation to her that San Francisco's Castro Theater held a retrospective of her movies in 1998, which she attended as guest of honor.*"Dirty Dancing" also addressed this, showing how the supposedly liberal parents didn't want their daughter to associate with the "wrong" kind of people.

Ken and Helen Jorgenson (Richard Egan and Constance Ford) have a dead marriage. They haven't slept together for years, by her request. Helen is also a spiteful, nasty bigot who tries to indoctrinate to her daughter, Molly (Sandra Dee), that sex is dirty and evil. This highly dysfunctional and sad lot are on vacation at Pine Island, Maine...a place where Ken was a lifeguard two decades ago. There is more to the history of Pine Island than that, however, as Ken had once had an affair with a girl, Sylvia Hunter (Dorothy McGuire). Now Sylvia and her husband, Bart (Arthur Kennedy), run a hotel on the island...the hotel where the Jorgensons are coming for their summer vacation. As for the Hunters, Bart is an alcoholic and has checked out of his marriage from the very beginning. Not surprisingly, Ken and Sylvia are miserable and fall back in love. What is a bit surprising is that their children, Molly and Johnny Hunter (Troy Donahue) have fallen in love as well.The writers and filmmakers did a great job of showing how adultery and premarital sex are NOT necessarily black & white issues. In the case of Sylvia and Ken, both have been emotionally abandoned by their selfish and detestable partners. And, in the case of Molly and Johnny, they are normal hot-blooded teens who have been thrust together by Molly's mother and her rants about the evils of sex. So, it's all very understandable...and all very, very risqué for 1959. But because the story is so well written and the production so glossy, it makes difficult moral issues and choices much more palatable--and provide for a lot to consider. It also makes for a wonderful film for young married couples to watch...sort of a morality tale about what NOT to do!A highlight of this film is the speech Ken makes to Helen early in the film...about her many, many, many prejudices. According to IMDb, the crowd at one performance gave it a standing ovation! A very powerful scene indeed.Overall, this film has many strong scenes, excellent acting, nice music and all the gloss a Hollywood production could have. It also has quite a bit of depth and raises many interesting issues...making it perhaps the best soap opera movie of the day. And, fortunately, while the film might seem a tad dated (such as the custody arrangements), it also is timeless with its themes.

I saw A Summer Place for the first time very recently, and one thing that really struck me was just how gutsy Constance Ford's portrayal of Helen Jorgenson was. Not many actors can pull off a character who has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Most actors would pressure the director and writer into giving their characters at least a small bit of sympathy, but Ford was excellent at playing someone thoroughly bad. I'm sure she got static for her portrayal when she visited the supermarket or whatever in her daily life.I'm not kidding, Bruno Ganz' portrayal of Adolf Hitler in Der Untergang/Downfall was more sympathetic and likable than Constance's portrayal of Helen.

I grew up in Monterey and I recognized a half dozen of the filming locations for this well-loved and enduring movie--most which have been identified in other postings. I'd like to add that the "private girls" school Molly is attending is, in reality, the Monterey City Hall (I obtained my Social Security card there in 1965). The used car lot Johnnie walks out of is really the parking lot of the key making store (whose sign Johnnie walks under) that was there until the 1980s on Pearl Street. The stunning Frank Lloyd Wright home is easily seen on Scenic Drive in Carmel to this day. The owners could not obtain house insurance for years because of the crashing waves that sometimes flow over the house. The sunset/evening "watch" for the boat and stranded young lovers is filmed next to the famous "Witch Tree" at 17-Mile Drive which is very dilapidated now, but still recognizable. I used to ride my horse near one of the trails there. Where the boat crashes is right off the Carmel Highlands and can be seen today from certain cliffs.As admirers of this movie will recall--there are truer-than-true phrases in this movie: Ken and Sylvia swear they will love each other through "all the winters all of our lives" and that "the only reason for being alive is to love and be loved" and "I love you too much to speak"and that "learned love that counts for everything" and "love and humor on your side--these are the weapons of the angels". All the characters are "arch-types" who advance the story lines---but really, haven't we all met certain people who are like these?