Five Days One Summer

Five Days One Summer (1982)

Plot In A Paragraph: A middle aged Scottish doctor (Connery) and a younger woman (Betsy Brantley) go on a climbing holiday in the Swiss alps, when their Swiss tour guide takes a liking to the woman.

Director Fred Zinnemann's movie deserves to be much better known than it is. It is beautifully shot, has great locations and is well acted. I think I know why audiences stayed away like they did.

It seemed at first that the couple were father and daughter, then it seemed as if they were on their honeymoon (as the doctor was introducing the young woman as his wife) finally, it was revealed they wear in fact uncle and niece, and they were having an incestuous affair. Not your usual love story. And it plays like a big television drama, lots of unnecessary flashbacks and a very melodramatic ending, and there isn't really a lot of dialogue either!! Long periods of time go by without a line of dialogue being spoken.

Another Connery movie I paid a lot of money to buy on DVD, however this one is worth watching (unlike a few of the others I purchased without seeing) a perfectly fine lazy Sunday afternoon movie.

Budgeted at $15 million, Five Days One Summer grossed under $200,000 at the domestic box office. Zimmerman was so upset by the movies failure and the awful reviews, that he never directed another movie again.

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.

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.