7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Daydreaming teen Hermie and his offbeat pals Oscy and Benjie they spend their summer vacation in a sleepy resort town. After befriending 22-year-old Dorothy, Hermie becomes determined to romance the beauty when her husband is sent to fight in World War II. Quickly, the young man leaves childhood behind as he experiences love for the first time.
Starring: Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, Oliver Conant, Katherine AllentuckComing of age | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Romance | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Summer of '42 is the film that launched a thousand male adolescent fantasies. Released in 1971,
twenty-nine years after the era it depicts, Summer was screenwriter Herman Raucher's
autobiographical account of his teenage sexual initiation by an older woman, and Raucher stuck
so closely to actual characters and events that he even gave the lead character his first name.
Warner Brothers lacked faith in the project, limiting the budget to $1 million and refusing to pay
Raucher upfront for his screenplay. The author had to accept ten percent of gross receipts that the
studio expected to amount to little or nothing, but Raucher had the last laugh when the film
became a box office hit. Its writer was set for life (or so he said), and it didn't hurt that the
novelization Warner insisted on having him publish to promote the film became a bestseller in its
own right.
More time has now passed since Summer's release than had elapsed between the making of the
film and the events it portrays. Its teenage milieu is so alien to the present day that I wonder
whether anyone new to the film will find its characters relatable. However, for the historically
curious, and certainly for existing fans, the Warner Archive Collection has added Summer of '42
to its Blu-ray roster. For reasons discussed in the Video section, the transfer may be
controversial, but it accurately represents this curious artifact of a bygone era.
Summer of '42 was shot by three-time Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Surtees, whose
impressive credits include Ben-Hur, The Sting and The Graduate. Surtees used heavy diffusion
to create a sense of dreamy nostalgia, casting a gauzy haze over nearly every daylight scene. At
night and in darkened interiors, he used heavy shadow and dark blacks to create a similar effect.
These techniques give Summer a distinctly "period" look, but they also soften the image and
accentuate the film's grain. The Warner Archive Collection's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray
faithfully reproduces Surtees' visual style, but it may not appeal to contemporary tastes. The disc
is derived from a 2K scan of an interpositive performed by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging
facility, followed by MPI's typically careful color correction and WAC's customary thorough
cleaning to remove dirt, scratches and damage. During the process, WAC compared the IP to the
film's negative to ensure that what appeared on the master accurately reflected the original
photography.
Despite the soft and often grainy texture, the image on WAC's Blu-ray is impressively detailed,
allowing full appreciation of the production design's meticulous historical re-creation, with its
period-specific brand names, advertisements, billboards and array of products (the drugstore
scene is especially impressive). A few moments are degraded, notably an early shot of Benjie
sitting alone on the beach, which appears to have been optically zoomed (or, perhaps, taken from
a dupe source) so that the grain is even heavier and both Benjie and his surroundings are almost
blurry. But these are fleeting exceptions to what is otherwise a careful balance between misty
childhood memory and rueful adult clarity. Consistent with its aesthetic as a memory play,
Summer has muted and even washed-out colors, with an occasional exception that pops from the
frame (e.g., the red carnations that Dorothy is carrying when Hermie first accompanies her
home).
WAC has authored Summer at its usual high average bitrate of just under 35 Mbps.
Summer's original mono soundtrack has been taken from the magnetic master, cleaned of any age-related flaws and encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The highlight of the soundtrack is Michel Legrand's haunting theme, which spawned a successful soundtrack album and won Legrand an Oscar. Despite the track's low-budget origins, the fidelity is quite good. The dialogue is clearly rendered, as are essential environmental sound effects like wind and waves.
The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:04). Warner's 2002 DVD of Summer of '42 was similarly bare.
I suspect that Summer of '42's initial success was tied to the makeup of its initial audience, many
of whom had lived through the film's era and could look back upon it fondly, especially after the
turbulence of Sixties counterculture. Today, however, the Sixties are almost as quaint as
Hermie's world. In a time when even the squeaky cleanliness of Archie comics can be
transformed into the sultry skullduggery of Riverdale, Summer of '42 feels very far away. For
those interested in making the journey, WAC's Blu-ray comes highly recommended.
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