Echoes of a Summer (1976)

Director: Don Taylor
Writer: Robert L. Joseph
Stars: Richard Harris, Lois Nettleton, Geraldine Fitzgerald, William Windom, Brad Savage and Jodie Foster

Index: The First Thirty.

There are reasons why Echoes of a Summer is largely forgotten today. It feels just like a play, the staginess of much of the acting, especially that of Richard Harris, outweighing a handful of gems of dialogue in the script. It seems that it was indeed a play, Isle of Children, which was adapted by its author, Robert L. Joseph, even if the opening credits suggest that he wrote this for the screen.

Conversely, there aren’t a lot of reasons for Echoes of a Summer to be remembered, perhaps only one, but that reason is Jodie Foster. She’s young here again, I believe thirteen during the shoot, fourteen by the time it was released in a limited Canadian run, but her character needs someone able to look roughly her age but act a lot older and she does it with aplomb.

She’d already done that in Smile Jenny, You’re Dead and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, both her 1974 films, but she only played a relatively small supporting part in each. Here, she’s the point. In fact, she isn’t far from being the only point, because this is all about Deirdre Striden, closing in on her twelfth birthday, but without much hope that she’ll see her thirteenth.

You see, she got sick when she was nine and her heart isn’t going to hold out much longer. She knows that. Everybody else in the film but young Philip knows that from the outset and it isn’t too far in when she tells him. However, as an eight or nine year old, his take on the news isn’t close to anybody else’s.

As a play, the cast is tiny, merely six people until the final scene, at which point a bunch of kids arrive at Philip’s invitation to watch him help Deirdre’s parents perform a birthday play for her. None of them get any dialogue or any purpose beyond fleshing out the scene. They just join Deirdre on and and around a bench to cheer until it’s time for cake.

Initially, it seems like Deirdre is only here as a sort of human MacGuffin, so her parents can be torn apart dramatically by her loss before it even happens.

Her mother Ruth is in a state of denial. She’s always bringing in yet another specialist, even though Deirdre’s already seen plenty of them, just in case. I was reminded of the definition of madness being trying the same thing over and over again but expecting a different answer. Is Ruth mad? Probably not, but she’s stubbornly driving down that road by rejecting reality.

Her father Eugene, however, has accepted it but then subverted it. He knows his daughter’s going to die soon, so they’ve come to an island in Nova Scotia where she can be as carefree as possible until she’s gone. However, he’s built a fantasy for a Deirdre of the past to occupy, not the Deirdre of the present.

Before long, of course, we realise that it isn’t about Ruth and Eugene in the slightest. It’s all about Deirdre, who’s playing along with them both for their sakes. The adults are effectively being stubborn children and the actual child is being the adult, something that’s clear in how the actors perform.

Lois Nettleton is always serious, swamped in despair for a daughter she hasn’t lost yet but is unable to enjoy time with, because it sets off a fresh level of loss. Richard Harris, on the other hand, avoids despair. Most of his time with her is spent playacting and the few moments he’s serious are lost within that, as if they’re a part of the act.

In between is Geraldine Fitzgerald as Sara, a hard but caring companion tutor, and William Windom, the latest of the many doctors Ruth has flown out to the island to look at Deirdre. They’re much more grounded, but not without their own agendas.

And that leaves Philip, young enough to not have much of an idea what death is and so not conditioned to respond to it. Put simply, he’s a friend to Deirdre at a tough time and the only one she has. He cares about her now, not what she used to be or what she won’t be for long. A different film would use him as the catalyst for Deirdre to come to terms with her death and it may be that he helps, but I think she got there anyway, however good Brad Savage is.

So to Jodie Foster, who is an absolute marvel in this film. This was her eighth movie and her performance didn’t come out of the blue. She had hinted at this all along and especially once she graduated from being a child in children’s films to being a child in grown up ones. Every one of those plays her older than her years for a variety of reasons and she holds her own.

Here, however, she’s the lead and, even with actors of the calibre of Harris and Fitzgerald in the cast, she dominates. She isn’t content with holding her own against them, she steals those scenes. The one actor she can’t do that with is Savage, because his innocence is palpable, but, even though she was maybe three years older than him, it feels like a lifetime. She’s an adult in those conversations and he’s a child. In the kiss scene, she seems like twice his age.

Best of all, she feels natural. Harris hams up the boards like he’s in a pantomime. Nettleton and Fitzgerald find some subtlety, but both are clearly acting. They’re exercising technique or channelling experience, especially when they face off against each other. The back and forth in private between Eugene and Ruth feels like actors pleading for an award. Foster, however, feels like she’s inhabiting the body of a twelve year old who’s about to die.

Sometimes she’s happy; sometimes she’s sad or bitter or angry; sometimes she’s in obvious pain. She had hope but it went a long time ago and she’s become so adjusted to her fate that she spends most of her final days as a prop for her parents to help them cope better in what she realises is a tough time for them. The real magic is in us knowing that she knows that it’s harder for her. They don’t see it. We do.

I wasn’t particularly sold on the story and I was even less sold on how it ends. I don’t know what experience Joseph had with child illness and death, but it does feel like he had some. It simply came out more in occasional lines than in the grand sweep of the whole. The best one to me was Deirdre asking Philip, “Who’s going to look after them when I’m gone?”

And so Echoes of a Summer has drifted into an important backwater of classic film, the bay of otherwise disappointing films still watched for a single performance. Here that’s Foster’s and it seems like this was the real point where she staked a claim to an acting career, not in small supporting roles but as a very capable lead.