Five Days One Summer
| Five Days One Summer | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Fred Zinnemann |
| Produced by |
Peter Beale Fred Zinnemann |
| Written by |
Michael Austin Kay Boyle |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Elmer Bernstein |
| Cinematography | Giuseppe Rotunno |
| Edited by | Stuart Baird |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 96 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Five Days One Summer is a 1982 American drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Sean Connery.[1] It was the last film that Zinnemann directed.
Plot
It is the story of an illicit romance, set in the Swiss Alps. Connery plays Douglas, a middle-aged Scottish doctor on vacation in the Alps in 1932 with a young woman, Kate (Betsy Brantley), whom he introduces as his wife. Douglas has brought Kate to the Alps for a mountain climbing trip. Douglas and Kate are absorbed with a psychological melancholy. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that Kate has been in love with Douglas since she was a little girl and that she seduced him away from another woman. The flashbacks also reveal that Kate is not his wife, but his niece. But then, in their mountain retreat, climbing guide Johann (Lambert Wilson) appears and he develops an attraction for Kate.[2]
Cast
- Sean Connery as Douglas Meredith
- Betsy Brantley as Kate
- Lambert Wilson as Johann Biari
- Jennifer Hilary as Sarah Meredith
- Isabel Dean as Kate's Mother
- Gérard Buhr as Brendel
- Anna Massey as Jennifer Pierce
- Sheila Reid as Gillian Pierce
- Georges Claisse as Dieter
- Kathy Marothy as Dieter's Wife
- Terry Kingley as Georg
- Emilie Lihou as Old Woman
- Alfred Schmidhauser as Martin
Reception
The film was a critical and commercial disaster. Zinnemann remarked, "I'm not saying it was a good picture, but there was a degree of viciousness in the reviews. The pleasure some people took in tearing down the film really hurt".[3] He never made another film.
References
- ↑ Maslin, Janet. "New York Times: Five Days One Summer". NY Times. Retrieved July 20, 2008.
- ↑ "Five Days One Summer". Retrieved June 21, 2016.
- ↑ Gritten, David. "A Lion in His Winter : At 85, Fred Zinnemann looks back on a life in film; his anecdote-rich autobiography earns the rave reviews his last movie didn't". LA Times. Retrieved October 5, 2013.