A Summer Story

A Summer Story (1988)

For every man and every woman there is that one great love. A love that touches the heart, fires the soul, and lingers in the memory forever.

A young lawyer from London, Mr. Ashton, and his best friend are hiking across Dartmoor. When he twists his ankle, Ashton is forced to seek help at a nearby farmhouse and stays there for a few days. Innocent beauty Megan David catches the attention of Ashton. He decides to stay longer, and he and Megan fall in love, much to the displeasure of Megan's aunt and her loutish son.

Date of release
1988-08-11
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (26)
Runtime
1h 35m
Genres
Romance, Drama
Director
Piers Haggard

Casting

Interesting facts

A Summer Story is a 1988 British drama film directed by Piers Haggard and written by Penelope Mortimer, based on John Galsworthy’s 1916 short story "The Apple Tree". Starring James Wilby, Imogen Stubbs and Susannah York, the plot takes place in 1902 and 1920, wherein a young gentleman visiting a rural area had an intense love affair with a village girl. Eighteen years later, he is passing that way again.

Production

In 1946, Jesse L. Lasky announced he would make a film of the story from a script by DeWitt Bodeen at RKO, but nothing came of it. In 1969, Kenneth Hyman said he wanted to make his directorial debut with a film version of the story, which would be made for under $800,000, but again no movie resulted.

In 1971 Peter Bogdanovich said he had wanted to make a film of the story "since he was about 16", but wanted to change the setting to Maine.

In 1987, production was at last funded, based on a script by Penelope Mortimer, and James Wilby, Imogen Stubbs, and Susannah York were cast in the leading roles. Despite being set on Dartmoor, the rural scenes were mostly filmed on Exmoor, specifically at Lyncombe Farm. Other scenes were filmed in Exeter, Dartmouth, and Sidmouth.

Penelope Mortimer had written the film script long before, in the 1960s, when she was working as a screenwriter. "I took the money and ran and totally forgot about it," she said in 1988. "I couldn't remember a thing about it", adding that "the last apple got written out [of the script] a week before shooting - it was the wrong time of year." She made some changes to the original story, including adding a sheep-shearing party ("I thought, somethin…

Mortimer called the character of Frank Ashton "very much a Galsworthy character, someone with the guilt of not living up to his own expectations. Such a bastard but with the best gentlemanly motives... such a yuppie. I'm sure there are still plenty of young men with their BMWs who act much the same way." She said the character of Megan was "a bit of a hoyden... pretty amoral really but with a lot of guts. And Imogen Stubbs... is sensational."

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