#1 Cheap Summer of '42 Reviews
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In 1971, when Herman Raucher's only-too-autobiographical film was released, it was easy to love . . . and easy to fear that it wouldn't stand the test of time. In part because of a few thousand more lame and less literate coming-of-heartbreaking-age films since, and in part because it's written and played with a humane grace (if you can call the clumsy surety of Jerry Houser's Oscar and Christopher Norris's Miriam, and even Oliver Conant's exposed-nerve nerd Benjie graceful) long since too rare in this subgenre, this film defies that fear.
I know of no coming-of-age film before or since that explores what might have been a testosterone-lubricated cliche with the unexaggerated realism and romanticism this film still evinces. It becomes even more haunting when you realise Raucher a) changed no names (this was indeed his summer of 1942; Oscy and Bengie were, indeed, his real-life best friends; and, Dorothy was only too real in his life), b) changed only a few small details around; and, c) in due course heard from the real-life Dorothy with whom he really did have what began as an unrequitable love and ended as the heartbreaking sexual interlude between an earnest teenage boy and a suddenly-widowed war bride. (She contacted him after the film's success, hoping their encounter hadn't damaged him psychologically.)
Iif you're looking for such a film with this respectful a portrayal of unrequitable love intertwined with unexpected and untenable sexuality, you're going to have a very long hunt for a very small needle in a very impossible volume of haystacks. There is probably no more heartbreaking climax of transient fulfillment than when Gary Grimes (a Golden Globe winner as Best Newcomer) as earnest, intelligent, awkwardly sensitive Hermie---who has fallen genuinely in love with (he thinks) the unattainable---finds his quiet imaginings brought to bittersweet reality. And there is probably no more nostalgia-obliterating, tastefully-arresting eroticism in film than that of Jennifer O'Neill's likeable, accessible-to-a-point war bride Dorothy reduced to vulnerable, softly hungering widowhood by the ravage of war, though it remains a very open question as to which moment therein is the more affecting: the sweetly surreal imagery of Dorothy about to bed Hermie through opaque, wind-billowed curtains; or, the near-noirish moment that precedes it, when she clings to him in her grief and he manages strangely but empathetically to feel hers, shamelessly letting a tear ride its track down his face (if Grimes let himself be that genuinely lost that deeply in the moment it's one of the greatest pieces of acting by a teenager---he was exactly as old making the film as Raucher was when he had his own Dorothy---in film history), orchestrated harrowingly by the scratchy playing of the film's theme music in a version spearheaded by a cliche-defying tenor saxophone howling hopelessly through a recessed orchestra.
There are certain cutouts punctuating the story, particularly Hermie's unseen mother, who may be a fleeting presence for the sake of the focus but who seems far more wooden and soulless than parents in that time and place really were (Maureen Stapleton interject the periodic hails as the mother); and, the incidental Aggie (Katherine Allentuck, Stapleton's real-life daughter), who shares Hermie's earnestness and gentle clumsiness but isn't allowed much more than a brief hint of the depth she hints at sharing with him despite his nervous disinterest and swelling conflict with the cavalier Oscy and Miriam. But these seem more to be signposts rather than obstructions along the romantically tragic path traveled by the struggling Hermie and the endearing Dorothy.
Disregard the cinematic flaws (as in, catching Hermie's breath outside the drugstore in the middle of summer, Dorothy's house somehow disappearing during a walk on the beach that must have been some lap around that island, the 1970s-style Rice Krispies box among the debris when Dorothy drops her groceries, the playing of "Now, Voyager" in the moviehouse scene---a film that wasn't released until after the summer of 1942) and take in a film that becomes more haunting when you realise that Raucher remembered and sketched his Dorothy with a respect you probably wouldn't expect to see or feel from another writer. (Or filmmaker, counting Robert Mulligan's Golden Globe-winning direction.)
Which is pretty damn singular for a film that began as Raucher's bid to write a tribute to his real-life friend Oscar Seltzer (who really was killed in action during the subsequent Korean War), became a tribute to his heartbreaking first love midway through its writing (ok, so he was a year younger in reality than he portrays Hermie---which would get Dorothy arrested and Hermie in court-ordered counseling if it had happened these days), and landed him an Oscar for best factual screenplay and Michel Legrand an Oscar for that impossibly ubiquitous yet unobstrusive music.
If only it could have been a career maker for one and all. It sort of was for Jennifer O'Neill, who went on to a mostly-television career about which you could say she has rarely been long out of work if almost never quite so memorable. (These days, the much-bruised O'Neill---whose promising "Cover-Up" series aborted when co-star Jon-Erik Hexum in a gun accident---is a quietly committed pro-life activist among other activities.) It sort of was for Christopher Norris, who arrived soon enough as "Trapper John, M.D.'s" earnest former sexpot nurse, Gloria Brancuzzi, for about five seasons, before playing one of "Santa Barbara's" vapid vixens and ultimately retiring from acting, for the most part (she was often mistaken for Melanie Griffith, who resembles her strikingly), and earning a psychology degree. It sort of was for Jerry Houser, who's made an even more active character-acting career in film (notably "Slap Shot") and television.
For Gary Grimes, alas, it was the opening to a sporadic career that seems to have stopped as of 1991. And, except for Oliver Conant's signing on to make the badly ill-advised, badly-executed sequel, "Class of '44," neither he nor Katherine Allentuck ever again appeared on film or in television.
Herman Raucher, one of whose earlier plays had been contorted into the Elvis Presley mishap "Follow That Dream," had another of his screenplays contorted into a mishap: "Sweet November," which he wrote in 1968, but which---transmuted into a farcical romantic tragedy by a screewriter and storywriter (adapting and melding therein an earlier Italian film) whose brains had clearly gone to bed (and not the way Dorothy escorted Hermie, either)---landed nothing but three Razzie nominations. Three decades to the year after Raucher's masterpiece.
Summer of '42 Overview
Coming of age drama set in a New England beach community during World War II.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 5-FEB-2002
Media Type: DVD
A beautiful coming-of-age story! - Amazon -
I just love this movie! It's an innocent, simple, story about a boy who experiences his first infatuation with a woman.
It's a movie about three boys at their age of wonder about sex.
Yet it went much deeper for the lead characer - who has learned that sex has more meaning when there is love.
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