A bold move?

A Summer Place (1959)
Director: Dalmer Daves

This must be a bold movie when it was made in the late 50s, talking about infidelity, teenage promiscuity, behaviour and sex. With all the restrictions on American movies' code of conduct, they pulled this out.

The movie starts with a summer vacation mansion that has seen better days. It is run by a husband-and-wife team (Bart and Sylvia). The husband is an obvious dipsomaniac, and the wife is apparently uncontended with life. They have a soon-to-go-to-high school son (Johnny, acted by teenage heartthrob Troy Donahue). Business is barely sustainable as the husband, who inherited it from his father, is more interested in keeping himself inebriated. 

In comes a millionaire with his wife (Ken and Helen) and teenage daughter (Molly, acted by Sandra Dee, typically typecasted as an ingénue, simple girl) to stay for the next three months. The juicy story behind it is that the businessman used to work as a lowly lifeguard there and had sought greener pastures when Sylvia rejected his love advances. 

Ken and Helen also have an unhappy marriage, with Helen being the uppity urbane female with class consciousness and a stickler for rules). Helen is the strict parent who controls Molly's every attire and behaviour, while Ken is the chill parent.

Ken rekindles his affair with Sylvia. Their nightly secret rendezvous came to Helen's knowledge. Johnny and Molly, with their raging teenage hormones, see Cupid shooting arrows. 

The story becomes twisted as Ken and Sylvia divorce their spouses, and the step-siblings discover their sexuality.

Even though the acting (except for Helen, played by Constance Ford), the dialogue and its delivery leave much to be desired, the music score by Max Steiner turned out to be evergreen.

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