Summer of '42 (1971)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

...because - outside of the music - the 70s is a decade most of us in America would just as soon forget. There was inflation, an unpopular war, a disgraced president, gas lines, and shag carpet. The thing is, most of the things I just mentioned hadn't even happened yet, but by 1971 there was a feeling that our best days were over and we were in a downhill slide as a country. So it would be natural to look backwards at the 30's - there were lots of A list 70s films set during the Great Depression - and also at the 1940s. Summer of 42 is set at a time when the U.S. didn't know how WWII was all going to turn out, but in 1971 we knew it was our finest hour, and there was a desire to revisit that time.Summer of '42 is a very well-done and entertaining movie. It certainly presents what I would guess is a pretty accurate view of the time and place and what adolescents were like at the time. That for me is its greatest merit. I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it's certainly a good one. I always feel a little sorry for any kid whose nickname is Hermie. Yikes. At first glance "Summer of 42" is merely another coming of age film wherein a teenager falls in love with an "older" woman and lives the summer dream of every adolescent boy, but first glances can be wrong. Gary Grimes delivers a strong performance, but the gem in this movie is Jennifer O'Neil. This stunningly beautiful woman delivers a remarkably haunting performance as the "suddenly" widowed young bride who dream walks into one night of sexual searching with a local teen. Her performance is so sensual yet innocent of any feelings of guilt, her one night is a gentle embrace of life, not sexual release or wantonness, a perfect performance from a actress we got to see far to little of.

Hats off to writer Raucher and crew. They've managed to overcome a lack of plot, action, and pizazz with a coming-of-age movie that's about as sensitively told and captivating as any on record. Those coastal vistas and wooden structures reach near poetic levels of time past. Having been young in the late 1940's, there's a lot of nostalgia in the radio programming and ads of the time. And I can certainly testify to the restrictive sexual norms of the period. Going into a drugstore and risking a dressing down was like a rite of passage for many teenage boys. Otherwise, hope lay in some obliging gas station with a coin operated dispenser in the men's room.Grimes really registers as the sexually naïve Hermie, while O'Neill shines as any boy's dream girl. For Hermie, conflicting signals from his hormones, buddies, and society have left him achingly confused. (Here actor Grimes's subtle staring into the distance speaks volumes.) But instead of Hermie easing his way along with the plain-faced Aggie, he's obsessed with an older woman, Dorothy (O'Neill). Trouble is she's already emotionally wedded to her overseas army boyfriend. So he pines at the same time he manages a helpful relationship with her at her seaside cabin. Just what he's hoping for, we can't be sure. On top of that, his two buddies are no help to his dilemma. Seldom have older movies conveyed the foolish antics of teenage boys as effectively as this, as they push each other around both physically and mentally. More importantly, it's a realistic background on which to frame Hermie's sensitive instincts. At the same time, kudos should go to Houser and Conant as Hermie's unhelpful buddies.I guess my only reservation's with the seduction scene. I can't figure out Dorothy's motivation coming on top of the heart-wrenching telegram. I would think sex with another guy would be furthest from her mind. But there we are. Maybe if they'd had her tipsy drunk that would have helped. But that would also have compromised the ambiguity of her act. Is she just using Hermie as a comfort object; is she tenderly inducting him into adulthood in a selfless act; or is she just escaping anguish in any way she can. Perhaps it's a mix of them all in some kind of foggy way. But, since the story's factually based, we have to assume the circumstances really happened in some private manner.(Several minor points- Judging from poor plain Aggie, there's likely a story behind her dilemma as touching as Hermie's. Dorothy's long straight 1970's hair style is definitely not 1940's. Women coiffed their hair in those days. Note that the iconic old movies referenced are all Warner Bros. 40's features. Not surprising since this production is from the same studio.) Anyway, the film remains a superbly wrought remembrance of a time gone by, as poignantly relevant now as it was then. A big salute to all involved.

A fantastic coming-of-age classic, I saw the first release in a theater in 1971 as a young teenager. It's now been resurrected thanks to TCM, where I saw it aired on Dec. 14, 2015. The film is as great as ever, and Dorothy + the haunting music still tug at my heart - even after 44 years! Jennifer O'Neill has an almost magical beauty that is simply beyond physical description. And like millions of other starry-eyed teen-age boys, Dorothy was absolutely my first love. One of my favorite movie scenes |of all time| is when she raises up on tiptoe to sweetly kiss Hermie's forehead. ANY boy who doesn't fall for Dorothy at exactly that moment will never really know love or romance.And even though I still watch it feeling that old familiar pain (and an unspoken kinship with Hermie): God Bless You Dorothy (and Jennifer) for helping me come of age with true love in my heart. I still have it.

In a way, this movie is a companion piece with "The Way We Were" (1973). As I noted in my review of that movie, the scene where Katie first has sex with Hubbell challenges our attitude about rape and the double standard. In that case, it had to do with having sex with someone too drunk to have given consent. "Summer of '42," on the other hand, challenges our attitude about rape and the double standard when it comes to having sex with someone too young to have given consent.With both movies, we pretty much have the same three time periods: the 1940s, when the movies were set; the early 1970s, when the movies were made; and today, when we watch them from the perspective of the twenty-first century. In "Summer of '42," a 15-year-old boy named Hermie falls in love with a 22-year-old woman named Dorothy. One evening, she gets word that her husband's plane has been shot down over France, and he is dead. She and Hermie have sex, and the next day she is gone.I never really cared for this movie, but that is neither here nor there. The sense of it was that Dorothy, in her grief, turns to Hermie for affection, and that what happens is a deeply meaningful and positive experience for him. Now, I don't know what the laws were in Massachusetts in 1942, but I am pretty sure that in most states, if a 22-year-old man had sex with a 15-year-old girl, he would be guilty of statutory rape, and if found out would be sent to prison, especially when the jury was told that he had sex with her on the very night he found out his wife had been killed, for that would make him seem callous. Should we condemn the man but excuse the woman? Did Dorothy deserve to go to prison for rape, just as a man would?Once again, as with "The Way We Were," we have a situation in which there is consent after the fact, in this case, when the boy becomes a man. Does that matter? And if it does, what would our attitude toward Dorothy be if the adult Hermie was psychologically harmed? And once again we have to distinguish between the attitudes existing when the movie was set, when it was made, and the attitudes we have today.Even today, the double standard lends itself to late-night humor. Typical was when Jay Leno was discussing a story about a female teacher that had sex with one of her male students, leading Leno to ask in exasperation, "Where were these teachers when I was in Junior High?" Humor aside, could "Summer of '42" be made today? More to the point, could such a story be told in a contemporary setting? Probably not. But I wonder if that represents a genuine change in attitude, or simply a fear that the movie would not be well received. I, for one, would have a hard time condemning Dorothy, even if the story were set in the present, just as I would have a hard time condemning Katie for what she did to Hubbell, even if the story were set in the present.