I saw “E.T.” at a drive-in movie theater on Cape Cod in the summer of 1982. The film itself takes place in fall (remember when they cloak E.T. in a sheet so they can take him trick-or-treating?) but it’s forever suspended in summer for me, inextricable from the sticky back seat and the sticky humidity in which I saw it. But “Die Hard,” which was released in the summer of 1988, takes place on Christmas Eve and — for me at least — is a winter movie. I’m sure I saw it the July it came out, but the film’s content transcends its summer blockbuster status.
What makes a movie a summer movie? In 2000, Terrence Rafferty declared in The Times, “Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’ created the Summer Movie as we know it: the action-heavy ‘thrill ride’ sort of picture, aimed at sensation-hungry younger audiences, which moves into theaters around Memorial Day and remains there, partying hard, until the school year starts up again in September.” “Jaws” continues to be as bound up in the mythology of summer as Popsicles and beach balls, though a piece by Stuart Klawans in 2002 blamed it for turning the beach into “a site of isolation, anxiety and horror,” one that foreclosed the insouciance of “Beach Blanket Bingo” and its ilk, and gave way to “Cast Away,” “Titanic” and other pessimistic seaborne tales. (Those each came out in December, for what it’s worth.)
When I think about the movies that unfailingly evoke summer for me, I think of a feeling, a quality of light, an airy mood of expansiveness. The exemplar is the 1988 comedy “Mystic Pizza,” starring Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor and Annabeth Gish as three charming, brave, wisecracking pals working at their local Connecticut pizzeria the summer after high school. They each fall in love. They each have their hearts cracked, if not totally broken. They each presented to me, 14 when I first saw the movie, a romantic vision of what summer might look like when I was older, when I would have a job and go on dates and have my own heart broken.
When I asked people about their quintessential summer films, the answers weren’t surprising, but, aside from “Jaws,” they also weren’t Big Movies. They were the ones with an atmosphere of summer, the ones whose mentions fairly conjure the itch of a mosquito bite and the smell of a bonfire: “Meatballs.” “Little Darlings.” “Dirty Dancing.” “Do the Right Thing.” They’re films that, no matter when you watch them, transport you to some deliciously unattainable past. Unlike songs of summer, which are artifacts of one specific year, movies of summer are perennial, evocative of every summer all at once.