‘Summer of ’42’: the forgotten 1970s movie loved by Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino
Want to hear the most sensual, captivating and nostalgic film soundtrack of all time? Just track down a copy of Summer of ’42. Michel Legrand’s title theme, ‘The Summer Knows’, a lush swirl of moody strings, has kept me warm on many a sun-dappled holiday. Turns out the film’s pretty good too. Just ask Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino, both of whom have confessed their love for this wonderfully syrupy 1970s drama.
Released amid a wave of what, during a recent episode of The Video Archives, Tarantino called “turgid ’70s tearjerkers,” Summer of ’42 is a coming-of-age drama based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher. It tells the story of ‘Hermie’, a teenager who travels to Nantucket Island for a summer vacation, where he quickly falls in love with a young woman called Dorothy, whose husband is off fighting in World War II.
Directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, Oliver Conant and Jennifer O’Neill, Summer of ’42 forms part of a short-lived subgenre that included films like Love Story, The Other Side of The Mountain, The Promise, and A Warm December. The first years of the 1970s truly were the golden age of “love stories gone awry”. However, with the release of 1970’s American Graffiti, such nostalgia fests became increasingly fixated on the post-war decades. “From that point on,” Tarantino says, “Every nostalgia-based movie had to look, for the most part, like American Graffiti.“
Until George Lucas came along, Summer of ’42 represented the high watermark of melodrama. Though Stanley Kubrick never stepped into the teen market, he was a huge fan of this particular film. Indeed, according to his wife Christiane, The Summer of ’42 may have been his favourite. He even chose to spotlight it in his classic horror The Shining, in which young Danny and his mother Wendy are seen watching a clip from the film on an unplugged TV during a particularly fierce snowstorm.
“I’m right there with Stanley,” Tarantino told his co-host Daniel Avery. “I think Summer of ’42 is actually one of the best movies of the ’70s and one of the most devastating endings of any movie I’ve ever seen. It’s just a great movie. I’m a big fan of the sequel, too, The Class of ’44.“
You can watch the trailer for Summer of ’42 below.
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