Summer of ’42 (1971) & Class of ’44 (1973)

          Featuring one of the most lyrical love scenes in all of ’70s cinema, Summer of ’42 is an offbeat romance involving a teenage boy and a grown woman. Compassionately directed by Robert Mulligan, the film takes a bittersweet look at characters moving through profound life changes, conveying a sense of how deeply two people can comfort each other in times of need despite coming from different worlds. Screenwriter Herman Raucher, who adapted his original story into a novelization after completing the script—the book version eventually became a best-seller, just like the movie eventually became a sleeper hit—has said that the tale is autobiographical.

          According to Raucher, he was a confused 15-year-old vacationing with his family on Nantucket Island during World War II, and he became friends with a beautiful woman named Dorothy and her husband, a U.S. soldier. After the soldier was summoned to active duty, young Raucher remained friendly with Dorothy. Then, one afternoon, young Raucher arrived at Dorothy’s house moments after she learned of her husband’s death in combat. Distraught and lonely, she took young Raucher to bed, and then departed the island the next day, leaving her adolescent lover only a note.

          In the film version of this story, young Raucher is “Hermie” (Gary Grimes), a curious and kind-hearted teen spending the summer with his pals Benjie (Oliver Conant) and Oscy (Jerry Houser). Dorothy is portrayed by the mesmerizingly beautiful model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill. The teen high jinks that comprise much of the movie’s first half are forgettable, but all of the scenes with O’Neill have a certain magic. Not only does Mulligan guide O’Neill to a higher performance level than she ever reached in another project, but Mulligan captures the wonderment Hermie feels at connecting with a sophisticated adult. The entire movie has a nostalgic feel, with cinematographer Robert Surtees capturing the stark beauty of East Coast shorelines and composer Michel Legrand contributing tender melodies. Yet the appeal of the picture stems almost entirely from that one key scene—handled with unusual elegance and restraint, Hermie’s encounter with Dorothy is beautiful and bewildering and sad. The sequence is poetry.

          Alas, the success of the movie compelled Raucher to write a thoroughly unnecessary sequel titled Class of ’44, which was produced and released two years after the original film. Neither director Mulligan nor costar O’Neill returned, though Grimes reprised his role as Hermie. (Conant and Houser return, as well, portraying Hermie’s pals, but they remain in supporting roles.) Set during Hermie’s college years—which are heavily fictionalized extrapolations of Raucher’s real-life experiences—the bland and meandering picture primarily concerns Hermie’s romance with Julie (Deborah Winters), a high-strung coed. Julie comes off as difficult and domineering, and Winters’ performance is strident, so it’s difficult to get excited about the prospect of these two forming a lasting bond.

          Worse, Hermie emerges as a deeply ordinary collegiate who neither changes significantly during the course of the story nor has a major impact on those around him. Yes, he suffers a few coming-of-age blows, such as the death of his father, but these events feel trite compared with the transcendent experience Hermie had in Summer of ’42. The likeable Grimes does what he can with bland material, however, leavening the story’s inherent navel-gazing quality with admirable toughness. In sum, while the execution of Class of ’44 is more or less acceptable—particularly in terms of period details and production values—the whole enterprise feels perfunctory.

Summer of ’42: GROOVY

Class of ’44: FUNKY

The Pursuit of Happiness (1971)

          The Pursuit of Happiness is yet another middling drama about angst-ridden ’70s youth culture that ends up feeling less like a sensitive tribute to a thoughtful generation and more like a condescending satire of mixed-up kids. Gangly Michael Sarrazin plays William Popper, a New York City college student from a privileged family. He lives with hippie activist Jane Kauffman (Barbara Hershey), and he uncomfortably straddles her world of ideals and his family’s world of Establishment values. Driving in the rain one night, William accidentally hits and kills an old woman who steps into traffic. He’s arrested. William’s sensitive father, artist John Popper (Arthur Hill), arrives on the scene to help William through his legal troubles, but the family’s stern lawyer, Daniel Lawrence (E.G. Marshall), drips contempt for William’s screw-the-man attitude.

          Ignoring Daniel’s advice to keep his mouth shut, William makes a scene during his first hearing—he gives a naïve speech about how the legal system isn’t interested in empirical truth—and gets thrown into prison. All of this confirms William’s impression that society is broken; as William whines at one point, “There’s a nervous breakdown happening in this country, and I don’t want to be part of it if I don’t have to.” Also thrown into the mix is William’s loving but racist grandmother (Ruth White), the personification of small-minded Old Money.

          Based on a book by Thomas Rogers and directed by Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird), this picture means well but undercuts itself. William isn’t truly an idealist; rather, he’s a slacker uninterested in committing to anything. Thus, when William breaks out of prison and tries to flee the country, his actions don’t seem charged with us-vs.-them significance. Sure, the filmmakers communicate the central idea that William resents the game he’s being asked to play (feign adherence to Establishment values, and you can get away with anything), but William is so passive that he’s the least interesting person who could have taken this journey. Sarrazin’s perfunctory performance exacerbates matters, as does the blunt screenplay. The movie also leaves several promising storylines unexplored, so characters including a crusty detective (Ralph Waite), an imprisoned politician (David Doyle), and a mysterious pilot (William Devane) pass through the story too quickly. Each of them, alas, is more interesting than the protagonist.

The Pursuit of Happiness: FUNKY

Same Time, Next Year (1978)

          A tidy romantic dramedy that’s become a staple for regional-theater revivals, Bernard Slade’s play Same Time, Next Year is built around the simple gimmick of checking in with a couple every five years over the course of the two decades in which they meet for annual adulterous trysts. Both are happily married, and we’re meant to like them because they didn’t mean to fall in love with each other during their first chance meeting, so the play gives two actors equally sized roles that are sympathetic and textured. Whether the roles are actually substantial is debatable, and the superficiality of the piece is particularly evident in the film adaptation.

          Penned by Slade with few adjustments for cinematic presentation, and directed with characteristic sensitivity by Robert Mulligan, Same Time, Next Year stars Ellen Burstyn, a holdover from the Broadway production, and Alan Alda, a replacement for the stage show’s leading man, Charles Grodin. Seen outside of the confines of a live theater, where the combination of star power and Neil Simon-esque writing probably made the play go down quite smoothly, Same Time, Next Year seems contrived and shallow, even though it’s consistently entertaining.

          Since Doris (Burstyn) and George (Alda) meet in the early ’50s and the final scene takes plays in the mid-’70s, Slade uses the characters as prisms for historical milestones: Doris goes through a hippie phase before embracing Women’s Lib, while George transitions from uptight conservatism to mind-expanding liberalism after his family is affected by the Vietnam War. Simply by virtue of how much time they spend onscreen, Doris and George emerge as (somewhat) specific individuals, but they’re also vehicles for Slade’s vanilla speechifying about the Big Issues of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

          This introduction of sociopolitical heft into the story, particularly during the second half, is helpful because the cutesy trope of Doris and George meeting for sex once a year would have lost its romantic fizz otherwise. Echoing a problem found in Simon’s work, however, Same Time, Next Year ends up in narrative limbo, neither deep enough to be meaningful nor sufficiently uproarious to be a comedy classic. It’s merely pleasant, with an endearing core of reflection and sweetness.

          That said, the piece is elevated by expert acting: Burstyn infuses the movie with femininity and warmth, illustrating the myriad ways women’s roles in American life changed in the postwar era, and Alda delivers his signature mixture of gently neurotic intellectualism and pitch-perfect comic timing. Thanks to their work and Mulligan’s careful dramaturgy, there’s enough humanity amid the slick professionalism to make this film worthwhile.

Same Time, Next Year: GROOVY

The Other (1972)

          Considering that it’s an entry in the long and dubious genre of creepy-kid horror movies, The Other has an awfully posh pedigree. The film’s director is Robert Mulligan, of To Kill a Mockingbird fame, and the star is Uta Hagen, the revered acting teacher whose book, Respect for Acting, is a sacred text for thespians. Fittingly, The Other favors backstory and character development over straight-out scares, though the narrative is actually quite lurid.

          In Connecticut circa 1935, twin boys Niles and Holland Perry (played by real-life twins Chris Udvarnoky and Martin Udvarnoky, respectively) engage in boyhood mischief with an edge. Niles is psychic and Holland is sadistic, so they seem strange from the moment they’re introduced cavorting in bowl cuts and short pants. Their relatives are just as peculiar: The boys’ mother (Diana Muldaur) is a basket case who rarely leaves her bedroom, and their grandmother, Ada (Hagen), is a superstitious immigrant who teaches Niles how to sharpen his special abilities.

          As the story progresses, Holland’s violent side grows more dangerous, leading to a series of deaths, and Ada slowly realizes that Niles is complicit in his brother’s activities; this leads to a huge plot twist in the middle of the movie that shouldn’t be spoiled. There’s nothing egregiously wrong with the story, by actor-turned-writer Tom Tryon (who adapted the script from his own novel), but many questions can be raised about the way Mulligan tells the story.
          First off, The Other is painfully slow, and the picture drags through long and uninteresting idylls whenever Niles and Holland get embroiled in deep conversations. The Udvarnovky twins are fine, as child actors go, but Mulligan simply can’t make their surface-level exchanges compelling enough to keep the momentum going between jolts. Mulligan also seems preoccupied with creating nostalgic atmosphere, lavishing attention on details of clothing, décor, and furnishing. While it’s admirable whenever a filmmaker treats a horror story with as much care as a “real” movie, the priority is supposed to be generating tension, not showcasing production design.

          Still, the acting by the grownups is generally strong. Hagen is a bit florid, using stagey flamboyance as she speaks with a thick accent and suffers operatic emotional upheavals, and Muldaur is believably pained but underused. Victor French is similarly wasted in his role as the Perry family’s unlucky handyman, and John Ritter shows up in a minor role. The Other has its fans, and none can dispute that the film was made with care, but for many viewers, the picture will be far too slow and unsatisfying to justify digging for its hidden pleasures.

The Other: FUNKY

The Nickel Ride (1974)

          The sort of downbeat character piece that enjoyed a brief but thrilling vogue in the ’70s, this drama about a mid-level crime boss features one of Jason Miller’s only leading performances in a major film. Oscar-nominated for his very first movie, The Exorcist, Miller was a complex figure whose onscreen career was impeded by his literary ambitions (he won a Pulitzer Prize for his play That Championship Season) and by ferocious alcoholism. Furthermore, while Miller was capable of conjuring amazing intensity as an actor, he was just as likely to underplay scenes to the point that his emotions barely registered on camera.

          Both extremes are visible in The Nickel Ride, which is as inconsistent as its leading man’s acting. Based on an original script by future Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth, The Nickel Ride centers around Cooper (Miller), an ambitious but unlucky crook stuck somewhere in the middle rungs of the L.A. underworld. Cooper has spent years developing a grand scheme called “the block,” a group of warehouses that he hopes the city’s criminal element will use to store and transport stolen goods, but the project is on hold because the cops and criminals arranging protection for “the block” keep stalling. Thus Cooper not only overextends himself but also makes a deadly enemy of Carl (John Hillerman), a crime boss higher on the food chain, prompting Carl to enlist the aid of good ol’ boy Turner (Bo Hopkins), who may or may not have been hired to whack Cooper.

          As directed by sensitive dramatist Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird), The Nickel Ride has authenticity and atmosphere to spare. Mulligan generates a quiet mood of everyday normalcy with hints of menace bubbling just beneath the surface, and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth carefully highlights details and texture to create a strong sense of place in Cooper’s grimy neighborhood. The acting is uniformly good, even with the inconsistent energy level of Miller’s performance, so viewers feel like they’re firmly situated inside Cooper’s sad, small world. However the story isn’t as strong as the resources used to put it onscreen. Cooper comes across like a bystander in his own life until an extended sequence set at a woodsy resort, when gunplay raises the stakes for everyone involved. The narrative’s microscopic focus feels believable, but many sequences seem to meander because plot advancements are incremental.

          Still, there’s something poignant about watching Miller play a man incapable of realizing his potential, since the same was true in the actor’s brief life; by the time he died in 2001 at the age of 62, Miller hadn’t appeared in a major film for nearly a decade.

The Nickel Ride: FUNKY