Five Days One Summer **** (1982, Sean Connery, Betsy Brantley, Lambert Wilson, Jennifer Hilary, Isabel Dean, Anna Massey, Gérard Buhr, Sheila Reid) – Classic Movie Review 10,647

Producer-director Fred Zinnemann’s 1982 drama of incestuous love Five Days One Summer is a gorgeous looking 1930s-set Alps soap opera in which ageing, respectable married Dr Douglas Meredith (Sean Connery) and a young lady whom he introduces as his wife (Betsy Brantley) go on a climbing holiday in the Swiss Alps. However, she is actually his niece, and he is having a secret consensual incestuous affair with her, but she soon becomes more interested in their dashing Swiss mountain climbing guide, Johann Biari (Lambert Wilson).

This marvellous romantic weepie melodrama of danger and forbidden love in the old style – neglected, underrated and quite beguiling – is handled beautifully by director Zinnemann, realising a lifetime’s ambition to complete this project in his final film. It was a misunderstood box office failure, costing $15,000,000 and grossing only $199,078 in the US.

It is beautifully shot in Technicolor and Panavision by the masterly Giuseppe Rotunno, with superb mountain climbing scenes.

Five Days One Summer runs 108 minutes, but Zinnemann later created a 96-minute TV version for its 1987 CBS television network premiere, which adds pace for impatient audiences.

The screenplay by Michael Austin is adapted from Kay Boyle’s story Maiden, Maiden.

Also in the cast are Jennifer Hilary, Isabel Dean, Anna Massey, Gérard Buhr, Sheila Reid, Georges Claisse, Kathy Marothy, Terry Kingsley, Emilie Lihou, Alfred Schmidhauser, Jerry Brouer [Jerry Brouwer], Marc Duret, François Caron, Benoît Ferreux, Alexander John, Frank Duncan, Günter Clemens, Robert Dietl, Skil Kaiser-Passini and Michael Burrell.

It is produced by Cable and Wireless Finance and Major Studio Partners and The Ladd Company, and released by Warner Bros (1982) (US).

Brantley and Wilson both received ‘introducing’ credits despite previous film roles.

RIP Sir Thomas Sean Connery (25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020). He died peacefully in his sleep of pneumonia overnight at home in Nassau in the Bahamas. His son Jason Connery said he had been ‘unwell for some time’.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,647

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