Summer of '42 (1971)

Directed by

Robert Mulligan

Genre

drama film, biographical film, comedy drama, romance film, coming-of-age film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 43m

Rated

PG

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 160 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In the summer of 1942, a teenage boy on an island becomes infatuated with a young woman whose husband is away at war. The story follows his one-sided romance and coming of age during that season.

nostalgicbittersweettenderslow-pacedromanticmelancholicintimate

What happens

Summer of '42 is a 1971 American coming of age romance film directed by Robert Mulligan, and starring Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, and Christopher Norris. Based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman "Hermie" Raucher, it follows a teenage boy who, during the summer of 1942 on (fictional) Packett Island, embarks on a one-sided romance with a young woman, Dorothy, whose husband has gone off to fight in World War II. The film was a commercial and critical success and was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Score for Michel Legrand. Raucher's novelization of his screenplay of the same name was released prior to the film and became a runaway bestseller, to the point that audiences lost sight of the fact that the book was an adaptation of the film and not vice versa. Though a pop culture phenomenon in the first half of the 1970s, the novelization went out of print and slipped into obscurity throughout the next two decades until an off-Broadway adaptation in 2001 brought it back into the public light and prompted Barnes & Noble to acquire the publishing rights to the book. The film was followed by a sequel, Class of '44, also written by Raucher, with lead actors Grimes, Houser, and Conant reprising their roles. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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