OK, I'll admit it: I'm a Parker Stevenson fan.
Had a huge crush on him in the 70s, when he was Frank Hardy. Luckily, my sister was a Shaun Cassidy fan, and I got to peruse her teen magazines. She even had a large poster of Joe and Frank in her room. Joe Hardy (Shaun) was a drip, but Frank was dreamy as the smart one.
Anyway, I got a notion to see his first film again, "A Separate Peace", the first film version of the famous young adult novel. Didn't many of us read it when we were 12? Did I even understand the attraction between the main characters, Gene and Finny? I know I saw the film way back when. Turns out, it's not on DVD. So, I found a cheap copy of the VHS on Amazon that included a
free DVD transfer ! Score!
I watched it last night. For those who aren't familiar, it is a novel in flashback form, set in a New England boys' prep school in the 1940s, with WWII looming. Some see it as a loss of innocence story, others a kind of love story. It involves Gene (Parker Stevenson), an inhibited, bookish, smart and serious student and his friendship/rivalry/infatuation/confusion with Finny/Phineas (John Heyl), an atheltic free spirit with incredible charisma, who invents games, doesn't believe the war is happening. The book was narrated by Gene as an older man, looking back on a pivotal year in his life at "Devon".
The film is lovely, lovingly portraying the changing of the seasons at Devon, actually filmed at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire (where the author attended school). Beside Parker Stevenson, all of the actors were actually students or alumni of Exeter, providing both realism and naiveté in the acting.
The main characters are 16/17, younger than Jack and Ennis, but I found similarities nonetheless. The confusion of what they were feeling, the inability to express themselves directly. Some fighting/tussling scenes were very familiar. Parker as Gene has enormous Jack eyes, and Finny has Ennis's physicality.
A couple of pivotal scenes are not up to the book, likely lacking a necessary voice-over, but I found it an earnest and welcome adaptation.