Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Summer of '42 Blu-ray Movie Review

The Way They Were

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 15, 2017

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 is set on an unidentified summer resort island, where the world war that America has recently entered remains a distant echo. (The original events occurred on Nantucket, but the production filmed in Mendocino in Northern California, where the beachfront community had retained a rustic character appropriate to the period.) The three friends around whom the story revolves are far more interested in the mysteries of sex than the strategies of combat. Fifteen-year-old Hermie (Gary Grimes) is shy with sudden fits of awkward boldness. His best friend, Oscy (Jerry Houser), has a jock's self-assurance, even when he doesn't know what he's talking about. Benjie (Oliver Conant), the youngest and smallest of the group, hasn't caught up with his buddies in physical development or romantic preoccupation, but he's eager to belong.

Summer follows these pint-sized musketeers as they laze together on the beach, fish, fight, make up and talk endlessly about the opposite sex. They are fascinated by the marriage manual that Benjie sneaks from his mother's shelf, which Hermie and Oscy study assiduously for "instructions" to follow with the girls they pick up at the local cinema. But things rarely go according to plan. The extended scene in which Hermie attempts to buy prophylactics from a skeptical pharmacist (Lou Frizzell) became an instant classic when the film was released, as audiences laughed and squirmed over the young man's excruciating efforts to work up his nerve and hide his embarrassment. It's a timeless portrait of adolescent self-consciousness, even for an age where internet shopping has eliminated any need to confront a disapproving adult when purchasing items far more discomfiting than a three-pack of rubbers.

But for all the time that Hermie spends with his friends, his summer is dominated by someone else: a woman in her twenties whose name he doesn't even learn until late in the film. Dorothy (Jennifer O'Neill) is the sweetly vivacious wife of an American soldier recently departed for the war, and to Hermie she's the goddess of love incarnate. Whenever he sees her on the beach or shopping in town, he lapses into a trance. When he finally has an opportunity to introduce himself by helping Dorothy with her groceries, it's the greatest day of the young man's life.

Because Summer is told entirely from the boys' point of view, adults are barely visible. Hermie's parents never appear except for the voice of his mother off-screen (voiced by an uncredited Maureen Stapleton), and Dorothy appears the same way. We see her as Hermie does, which is to say that she's beautiful but incomprehensible. Jennifer O’Neill’s' performance walks a fine line between making Dorothy a credible presence while revealing almost nothing about her. When she asks Hermie to stop by her cottage to help store boxes in the attic, even though she barely knows him, her motives are unclear. Is she friendly and naive, or lonely and eager for male company she knows will be "safe"? Can she really be so oblivious to the young man's anguished longing? And at the end of the film, when circumstances conspire to drive them together, is Dorothy a victim, a predator, or some of both? Hermie has no idea, and neither do we.

Summer is a tale of nostalgia, but it's also one of sadness and regret. As the opening and closing narration by the adult Hermie makes clear (with director Robert Mulligan supplying the voiceover), Hermie leaves childhood behind him that summer, but he also loses an innocence he can never recover. Summer's presentation of growing up illustrates the classic paradox about the experience: As exhilarating as it can be, it also hurts like hell.

Summer of '42 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 of '42 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Summer of '42 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:04). Warner's 2002 DVD of Summer of '42 was similarly bare.

Summer of '42 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.