Movie · 1971 · Comedy, Drama, Romance · 1h 43m · PG · English
Curator score: 4.5/10 (15.3K ratings)
In everyone's life there's a "Summer of '42"
Overview
Over the summer of 1942 on Nantucket Island, three friends -- Hermie, Oscy and Benjie -- are more concerned with getting laid than anything else. Hermie falls in love with the married Dorothy, whose husband is an army pilot recently sent to the battlefront of World War II.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.5/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.52/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 77%
Metacritic: 59
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Robert Mulligan
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, Oliver Conant, Katherine Allentuck, Christopher Norris, Lou Frizzell, Walter Scott, Maureen Stapleton, Robert Mulligan
Curator Review
Verdict
A wistful, beautifully photographed coming-of-age memory piece with a famous score and a strong sense of time and place. It’s worth seeing for its mood, visual grace, and emotional afterglow, but its male-gaze perspective and dated sexual politics can make it feel uneasy or frustrating today.
Best for
fans of nostalgic coming-of-age dramas
viewers who like bittersweet wartime romance
people drawn to memory-driven, atmospheric filmmaking
audiences interested in early-1970s American cinema
Skip if
you’re sensitive to older films with sexist or objectifying perspectives
you want a fast-moving plot
you prefer romance that feels modern or emotionally balanced
you dislike sentimental, score-heavy melodrama
Overview
Summer of '42 is less a conventional romance than a recollection of one: hazy, tender, and shaped by the way memory smooths over embarrassment and pain. Robert Mulligan gives the film a soft, sunlit melancholy, and the period detail does a lot of the emotional work, turning a small Nantucket summer into something larger and more elusive.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the atmosphere: the beach-town routines, the boys’ awkward bravado, and the sense that adolescence is mostly confusion with occasional flashes of revelation. The film’s famous music and Jennifer O’Neill’s luminous presence help seal that reverie, even when the story feels slight or overly mannered.
Bottom line
At the same time, the movie’s viewpoint is hard to ignore. Its fascination with an older woman through a teenage boy’s gaze can feel uncomfortable, and some viewers will find the nostalgia too polished to be fully convincing. Still, if you respond to bittersweet memory films and early-70s emotional restraint, it has a quiet pull.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Zegan (4.5★) · 226 likes
Milfsommar
𝐓👁️ (4.5★) · 140 likes
Almost all the reviews on this site for 'Summer of ’42' range between sub-par, to poor. If Stanley Kubrick can recognize the greatness of this film so much so as to claim it was one of his favorites, and then include it in, 'The Shining', then obviously anyone who sees it as less than gold isn't thinking straight. subjectivity isn't real either lmao jk
I'm writing this mainly just to tell all of you who haven't seen this film, to… more
Cauby Monteiro (5★) · 85 likes
"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past"
tru (4.5★) · 57 likes
god what an awesome, sweet movie. such a perfect vibe... like looking into a memory
Filipe Furtado (4★) · 56 likes
Truffaut's influence is far more pronounced on the more Europeanized side of New Hollywood than is often given credit, and Summer of '42 is one of the more obvious examples (even more curious when one considers that Truffaut wrote his most enthusiastic review of a young Hollywood director's movie for Mulligan's debut, Fear Strikes Out). It is a memory piece that is impressive by how well detailed it is, and that is surprising by how painful and awkward remembrance comes… more Truffaut's influence is far more pronounced on the more Europeanized side of New Hollywood than is often given credit, and Summer of '42 is one of the more obvious examples (even more curious when one considers that Truffaut wrote his most enthusiastic review of a young Hollywood director's movie for Mulligan's debut, Fear Strikes Out). It is a memory piece that is impressive by how well detailed it is, and that is surprising by how painful and awkward remembrance comes… more