The Greengage Summer (1961)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Load of rubbish!!

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I finally got my copy of this movie after waiting TEN years from Scooter and I have to say that I LOVED it! The quality of the DVD is excellent so I was able to focus entirely on the film.The BAD thing about it was Susannah York who overplayed and was overly dramatic and worst of all a BLONDE which violated the entire idea that the rest of the family was pink and brown but Joss and Willmouse were dark haired and exotic.HOWEVER, Jane Asher, who played Hester was exactly right in both her looks and delivery!In the movie there are only four children while Godden had five in her book but this is no way detracts from the movie. I would seriously recommend that you get this movie for any Godden lover because it kept my attention and I truly enjoyed it. The actor who played Eliot was exactly right, while he didn't match my mental idea of his LOOKS, his delivery was spot on!While I am normally never satisfied with movies from books, (hated the Maeve Binchy movies and wasn't thrilled with Angela Lansbury's Shell Seekers and yet LOVED the books!) I have to say that THIS one was an exception. IF I gave the book to someone I would definitely include the DVD as well along with a box of Belgian Chocolates and some really GOOD coffee!

Susannah York is astonishingly good as a sixteen-year old British girl, traveling through France with her mother and three younger siblings, who falls in love for the first time with a handsome, older man (Kenneth More) who is harboring a guilty secret. The kids, who are left temporarily without their mum after she takes sick, arrive at their hotel in France's Champagne Country to an ill-wind: the two lesbian women who run the extravagant spread do not permit children, but one of the ladies is also involved with More and he takes the family under his wing. The complex relationship between the women, business partners who appear to have a great deal of history together, is handled without high drama (indeed, Howard Koch's writing is so subtle that the depth of these characters may elude many viewers). The kids get to stay, and everyone falls in love with dashing More, but with crystal-eyed Susannah there's bound to be heartbreak--and in that heartbreak, jealousy and a child's vindictiveness. A fully thought-out and realized film, adapted from Rumer Godden's novel, and played out amongst a gorgeous backdrop. The movie has a precocious nature and a wise child's sensibility--very little of the drama is hammered out for us--and the tone of the picture is kept dreamy-romantic. It is exceptionally well-performed (by the principals as well as by the children cast as York's siblings), with a sensitive direction ably steering the complicated narrative to its poetic finish. Beautiful, sad, enveloping, wistful; it's a perfect example of how a movie can be capable of absorbing its audience in much the same way a good book can enrapture its reader. A winner! ***1/2 from ****

Saw this film in a last-run unspooling at a neighborhood Los Angeles theater and was stunned by the overpowering sensuality of its cinematics. More than four decades later, I can still recall the sun- and moon-drenched humidity of a Midi summer, and the flowering of an adolescent Susannah York in the precincts of a charismatic Kenneth More, at his charming best. That this film is no longer recognized in latterday compendia of film is something beyond my understanding, even in the resumes of both stars. Someone, surely, should resurrect same in the DVD mode, completely "remastered," and I, for one, would cheerfully plunk down my admission fee. This one, and maybe "Reds" as well.

All the ingredients are presence in abundance for a nearly perfect film. Susannah York is majestic in her first leading role. Kenneth More is superb as a dashing jewel thief. Danielle Darrieux is brilliant as More's jaded lover. And, York's younger sibling are similarly cast perfectly. This is a sensitive, gentle, and delicate film to be savored as a fine wine. It improves with age.