Expatriate American filmmaker Jules Dassin followed his buoyant caper comedy Topkapi (1964) with this unexpected - and, as it turned out, unwelcome - marriage melodrama, shot on location in Spain's Castile region. Dassin's offscreen wife and muse Melina Mercouri stars as Maria, a hopeless alcoholic who seems to be orchestrating an affair between her British husband Peter (Peter Finch) and the younger and effortlessly beautiful Claire (Romy Schneider) as the trio travels through the Iberian hinterland. When a thunderstorm strands the travelers in an overstuffed provincial hotel, Maria becomes fascinated by the case of a young newlywed (Julian Mateos, fresh from Return of the Seven) who has shot his bride and her lover in a fit of jealous pique and decides to help the fugitive escape justice. Dassin adapted French writer Marguerite Duras' 1960 novella as a vehicle for Dassin's fellow HUAC refugee Joseph Losey but a falling out between the collaborators prompted Dassin to assume control of the project, imbuing the narrative with a sense of inebriate passion that seemed out of step with the cool neorealismo of Brute Force (1947), Thieves' Highway (1949), and Night and the City (1950). Despite kudos for the luscious Technicolor photography of Gabor Pogany, 10:30 P.M. Summer drew the critical contumely of the major reviewers, who lashed out at the film's presumed pretensions and accused Dassin of trying to outdo Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, and Renais; critics could not have hated the film more had it starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

By Richard Harland Smith