I really wanted to review the book by Herman Raucher, but Mouthshut put my suggestion into the Movies section, and so here goes!This film, made in 1971 by Robert Mulligan, closely followed
the book of the same name, by Herman Raucher. It revolves around Hermie, a teenager struggling with his
sexual coming of age. It differs from any other similar work in the great finesse that both the creators bring into the thoughts, feelings and the teenage gaucherie of Hermie and his friends. With his friends, Oscy and Benjy, Hermie is heroically struggling to discover what sex is all about. When they take some
willing dates for a movie, Benjy runs away as he is too scared and Oscy winds up fondling his date’s elbows under the impression that it is her breast!
Around the same time, Hermie befriends Dorothy, a war bride, whose husband is away fighting the Nazis. Hermie loves Dorothy, he lusts after her, and he has no idea how to express his feelings towards her. The climax occurs when Hermie happens upon a stricken Dorothy, who had just been informed of her husband’s death in the war. What followed altered his understanding of himself and the world. In Raucher’s words,
’’In the summer of ’42, Benjy broke his watch, Oscy gave up the harmonica, and in a very special way, Hermie was lost forever’’. The film and the book start with a middle aged Hermie, coming back to the sea-side house of his childhood, and continues in a first person narrative style in the film, and third person in the book. Hermie has become a very successful businessman, but is still unable to forget his first love, and feels that Dorothy would have been proud of what he achieved in life. A life, that, alas, has little meaning without her love! Raucher and Mulligan have handled the trials and tribulations of teenage, and the angst of first love, exquisitely, making both the film and the book a wonderful experience.