Summer of '42

I was looking through the Watch TCM app for some older movies just about to expire from the app to watch and do reviews on. That's how I came up with the ide of posting on My Past the other day. Another movie about to leave the app was "only" as old as 1971: Summer of '42. Surprisingly, I had never actually watched it before, so I finaly got around to watching it so that I could do a review on it here.

The movie, as you can guess is set in the summer of 1952, which means that Wold War II is raging and is going to be a part of the plot. However, that's not what the movie is really about. Instead, the movie tells us about one Herman "Hermie" Raucher (played by Gary Grimes, with the movie's director Richard Mulligan providing voiceovers from the perspective of an adult Raucher). In those days, it wasn't uncommon for middle-class people to get away for the summer, with the Raucher family going to Nantucket Island for the season. However, for kids like 15-year-old Hermie, it wouldn't do to spend an entire summer there without their friends, so parents coordinated to make certain multiple friends were able to go together. In this case, that means Hermie is on the island for the summer together with his best friends Oscy (Jerry Houser) and Benjie (Oliver Conant).

Being 15 years old and going through puberty, it's only natural that the three have lots of thoughts of sex. At the same time, being only 15 years old it's not as though any of them has actually "made it" (to use a line from Harry and Tonto) or even has a good idea of what sex, love, and romance are really like. But they'd like to think they know.

One day while at the beach, they happen to see Dorothy (Jennifer O'Neill), a young bride who's married a GI in one of those hurried marriages that happened in those days because the groom is just about to go off to fight the war. All three are at least somewhat interested in the idea of the nice-looking older woman, but it's Hermie who really starts having sexual thoughts about it. The feelings are strong enough that when he sees Dorothy struggling with her groceries, he offers to help, just to be close to her. He acts older than he is, although that presents problems when he tries coffee for the first time.

Hermie has more meetings with Dorothy, as he's actively looking for them, and he really starts having sexual thoughts when he helps move boxes and sees her in short shorts as a result. But he's still just a boy, with friends his age who feel like they're more likely to have success with girls their own age. Girls tend to mature earlier than boys, which I suppose is part of why it's less common in real life for teenage boys to be involved with a 20-something woman than the other way round. Oscy and the other boys run into a group of girls, and Oscy finagles this into a date, at least for him and Hermie; Oscy rather rudely leaves Benjie with the homely girl and the two don't want to be hooked up.

Hermie still thinks about sex, whether it be trying to cop a feel with the girl Oscy set him up with, or more usually about Dorothy. As such, there's not all that much to the plot of the movie more than being a slice-of-life story, at least until one day when something fateful happens....

Summer of '42 is based on things that happened to the real-life Herman Raucher, who would go on to become a screenwriter and novelist. Raucher did quite a good job at creating an atmosphere of innocence in young boys who hadn't yet experienced any of the loss that World War II was going to bring to a whole lot of people. As such, it's easy to see why the movie became a sleeper hit when it was released back in 1971. A lot of people were looking for nostalgia, which this movie gives in spades. It's also nicely photographed.

I think there are a lot of people out there who will like this movie, especially if they want that nostalgia kick. I didn't dislike the movie, although I will admit that I think other people will like it more than I did. I'd also suggest that I think it would work great on a double bill with Woody Allen's Radio Days, which is a lighter-hearted look at the same era. Summer of '42 is definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it before.