Really Surprised!

best movie i've ever seen.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Funny how given the right musical score, narration, setting and actors...an adult having sex with a child is considered an 'awakening by some. Yes, I liked the movie years ago, but I know better now. Since the 70's, we better monitor such "splendor". The problem is that adults in the same situation can envision themselves in some kind of "Summer of 42", but all it is without the musical score and great feeling...is criminal activity.

You can argue forever about the morality/legality of what's portrayed here. You can roll your eyes over the implausibility factor. But I'm ready to set those aside to drink in a world of far greater simplicity and time for reflection. Simplicity and reflection are anathema for a teenager of today, but Summer of '42 suggests they could use more of it.The combination of Mr Raucher's book and this movie re-creates a societal atmosphere that characterized American life for 200 years and was swept away in a couple of decades. Our lives today are never off the hook. From childhood to senescence we now exist in a whirlwind of activities and communications that go 24/7/365. There are more texts than we can answer, more entertainment than we can experience and more responsibilities than we can meet.Hermie and his friends travel in a sphere that is hard to imagine for anyone under the age of 70. No television, far fewer phones, slow transportation. No computers, microwaves, air-conditioning, video games. The city streets weren't chock-a-block with McDonald's and the residential streets weren't jammed with McMansions. What they did have was time. And if you were young, you had lots and lots of time to be filled in on your own.Hermie thinks a lot about a lot of things. He doesn't have much help to sort out the details of his adolescent angst and confusion, but he doesn't have many distractions either. He's experiencing the same pain and fear of growing up as we all do, but he's got the freedom and space to work through them at his own pace. He's very troubled and uncertain but he's not getting blasted with imagery and information that has little connection with the real world he is going to be facing.Summer of '42 is schmaltzy, even cheesy, but to imagine a time when a quiet empty field, forest or beach was the norm rather than the exception is an experience to savor.

A fantastic coming-of-age classic, I saw the first release in a theater in 1971 as a young teenager. It's now been resurrected thanks to TCM, where I saw it aired on Dec. 14, 2015. The film is as great as ever, and Dorothy + the haunting music still tug at my heart - even after 44 years! Jennifer O'Neill has an almost magical beauty that is simply beyond physical description. And like millions of other starry-eyed teen-age boys, Dorothy was absolutely my first love. One of my favorite movie scenes |of all time| is when she raises up on tiptoe to sweetly kiss Hermie's forehead. ANY boy who doesn't fall for Dorothy at exactly that moment will never really know love or romance.And even though I still watch it feeling that old familiar pain (and an unspoken kinship with Hermie): God Bless You Dorothy (and Jennifer) for helping me come of age with true love in my heart. I still have it.

Life was simpler. Love was stronger. And each day was a new adventure. I have the DVD and watch this movie at least once every 2 or 3 years. It never gets old, I always see new things or hear new dialog. No great message or political statement, just makes you feel good to be back in the day. The acting was great because you get so involved with the characters you lose the fact of who they really are. The situations are very real for those of us that lived during that period or even into the 50s and 60s. The dialog may seem a little corny, but that is the way we were when I grew up, clumsy and not very cool. The use of the wind throughout the movie gave it the beach feel that I used to get when I went to the beach on the Gulf coast, so the movie takes you away to a past that could have been.