"Five Days One Summer"

When I bought the 6-movie Boris Karloff Collection (all Columbia Pictures) the other day, I also bought Five Days One Summer (1982) starring Sean Connery.

I watched the Connery movie as soon as I got home.

Here's the gist of the movie from Wikipedia:

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.

Five Days One Summer was director Fred Zinnemann's final movie.

The movie was okay, with its outstanding feature being the scenery that included spectacular snow-capped mountains. I was expecting something with a little more bite, especially with the subject matter of a May-December romance, like Zinnemann's classic From Here To Eternity (1953). Connery was fine, but the script failed him to an extent. Betsy Brantley was good eye candy. Her role was better written.

At the time of its release, the movie was panned by the critics, leading Zinnemann to quit directing. I can see their points. I thought the movie was unrealistic in the way that people in a remote alpine village were very blatant about looking down their noses at Connery and Brantley over their age difference, or at least in the way it was presented. As one who was also in a "May-December relationship", I only encountered this once, and from a drunk woman at that.

The movie could have been better, but it was still good to see Sean Connery in a movie I've never seen before.

My grade: B-.