Five Days One Summer

source: Five Days One Summer

Trailer—Five Days One Summer

Five Days One Summer

I'll have to disagree with most reviews that emphasize the niece/lover girl is so young, barely legal, much younger as so many say. The actress was 27 when the movie was made & she looks about that! And since age differences of 25 years+ are quite common outside USA, especially Europe, this is not considered 'shocking!'. Also it needs to be made clear if she is actually his brother or sister's daughter or a niece by marriage which, of course, is no blood relation at all! But I suppose even that would be shocking to Americans!

The good points - beautiful scenery, and some viewers might appreciate the insight into mountain climbing in the 1930's. Bad points - the flashbacks are tedious, the ending obvious (to this viewer anyway)and - apart from Connery, who plays himself, as always - the acting uninvolving. And personally I don't care much about mountaineering in the 1930's, and this film didn't do anything to quicken my interest. There are some surprises, but I feel the movie really lacks from characters whom one can care about: in particular Betsy Brantley, who plays Kate, seems desperately out of her depth here. I found it to be pretentious and glacially slow. I'd rather have that ninety minutes of my life back.

In general this last film of the director Fred Zinnemann has not met with much approval, and it is not difficult to see why. The plot is extremely simple, whatever tension is established towards the end is soon dissipated; and the emotional tensions between the leads are not fully resolved. The scenery is nice; the climbing scenes interesting or scary according to one's inclinations; but overall it is not surprising that some people have ended a viewing by saying 'Is that it?' I still find it worth watching again after many years in the reissued Warner archive version, and not only for Betsy Brantley's big blue eyes - for example, there is a chance for Sean Connery to show more emotional range than usual in his roles, and the period detail has a good authentic feel of the 1930s.

Psychological melodrama goes a bit far combining the story of a complex and dubious love relationship with the thrills of dangerous mountaineering, but is mildly entertaining, if you can bear it.

What I loved of this motion picture is the attention to detail of 1930's mountaineering equipment, clothing, and practices. Now that there is interest in what happened on Everest in 1924 (Hillary & Mallory), maybe this great reel will be dusted off the shelves and shown again in theathers. There is even a reference to the British Himalayan expedition: Douglas, played by Sean Connery, says in the dialogue that he was a medical officer in that expedition. The pivoting moment of the story? Definitely when they find the body of a man that had disappeared 50 years earlier the day before his wedding day, inside the ice of a glacier. His face did not age, and still looks twenty years old. The swiss villagers take the now 70-years old bride to see the man's corpse, and the contrast of her aged face with the much-yournger his, symbolizes the age difference in the love story between Douglas and Kate, an older man and a very young woman.

A cinemagraphic masterpiece where all the relationships and tensions developed by the story (a tale of irrepressible love fulfilled, thwarted and betrayed) are conveyed in the exquisitely rendered images carrying the communications that you read as if they were a text; and with the verbal dialogue reduced to the barest minimum required.

This movie is dated and overly dramatic, but it also has its charms. The best part about it is the accurate portrayal of Swiss culture (yeah it does kind of exist, mostly mountain climbing and rigid traditions, but the occasional alphorn and yodle). Really, it is frighteningly accurate. Beautiful mountain scenery and discovering how old-school climbing gear worked are two of the other benefits of this surprisingly sweet movie.