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*
Christie, Schlesinger and a milestone.
Author: M. J Arocena from New Zealand
6 July 2007
"Darling", as it happens with most genuine works of art, it grows, it develops over the years and acquires a sort of clarity that, with the benefit of hindsight I will dare to call it, prophetic, as a social observation of its time. But what matters most is the film as a film. Brilliantly thought, written, directed, photographed and, of course, acted. Julie Christie became a symbol. She, clearly a very intelligent woman, surfed the waves of fame with an apparent detachment that I'm sure it's a sure sign of maturity and of a great respect for her profession and herself. If you think I love Julie Christie, you're right. But my love for her has to do with "Darling" and the age I was when I first saw it. The 60's were already in the past then but I saw them in the future, an immediate future.I can't imagine anyone, from any age, who loves film could be indifferent to this tale of isolation in a world moving fast towards an acceptable cult for celebrity. Not to be missed.
*
More than just a wonderful time capsule
Author: Zen Bones from USA29 November 2000
This is a breakthrough film depicting what a female with a fairy tale-like upbringing experiences when she gets into the real world. Julie Christie is magnificent as the free-spirited, swinging role model for women everywhere. She has men falling right and left for her and even promises of wealth beyond imagination. But her unfulfilment is perfectly depicted in this daring and innovative film. She falls for a famous dashing tele-journalist, but realises soon enough that she is no match for his brain. She falls for a slick and smarmy executive, hoping to find her place with the jet set.
She sees the shallowness of that existence soon enough! She does eventually find some taste of fame and is swept away to Capri, one of the most romantic and beautiful spots in the world. But there she sees only the shallow reflection of her outer beauty when confronted with the deeper beauty of elderly women praying with grace and humility at a local church.
She does also manage to meet a prince who wants to marry her. He gives her wealth, a title, an enormous glamourous estate, a tailor-made family (from a previous marriage) and his deepest admiration. Unfortunately, his admiration is no more deep for her than it might be for his prize horse or Rolls Royce. She has everything but love.
The film has much to say about the illusions of glamour that women are compelled to fulfil. They are compelled to fulfil those illusions because they never had an inkling that there could be anything else. Women could rub shoulders (and other body parts) with men of brilliance, of power, and of wealth, but their own surface existence could never be a match. The film is essentially a tragi-comedy, for beneath the delightful exterior of the film is the harsh reality that a surface life is no match for a life with purpose.
This film is also amazing because it is one of the few films that actually shows characters living in a real world, not just a world that revolves around the characters. Schlesinger fills the screen with a myriad of realities. The man on the street pontificating his views on city life, a famous author, celebrities, bohemians, a gay photographer who is not traumatised about what he is, and even that great symbol of solid innocence - the elderly woman feeding the pigeons at Picadilly Circus, they are all essentially equal in importance. We in fact are mainly introduced to Christie's character as she is plucked out of the street in an indiscriminate interview. She is much a product of the world as anyone else.
The film is still timely today, since there are still so many women who cling to the images and myths of ideal womanhood (ie: an illusion without soul or intelligence). All the performances are smashing. And yes, it is true, that swinging sixties feel is irresistible!
*
Author: axlgarland from London, England8 July 2007
To see this 60's landmark film is quite something. In many ways could be considered a period piece and at the same time it could have been conceived yesterday. Julie Christie's performance is the insurance "Darling" has to ensure its powerful sailing through the years into the forever ever. She is extraordinary! Schlesinger lets himself be guided by something other than his British restrain and fear of sentimentality here. He is tough and poetic telling us the story of Diana Scott (could had been Lady Diana Spencer to a T) with understanding and compassion but without trying to make her a sympathetic character. Julie Christie takes care of that in what, time will tell, in fact is already telling us, one of the best performances on film, ever.
*
Author: trpdean from New York, New York25 October 2003
I find this movie unique. If you have read of, or can remember the mid-1960s, you know that the character Julie Christie plays was absolutely the one adored by everyone- by all who considered themselves "in" and "trendy" and "modern". And she is completely taken apart by this movie.
I can think of only one other movie at any time in any language that so thoroughly demolishes the pretensions of the very people whom the smart set aspired to be at the time the movie was coming out. Amazingly that movie was 'Alfie', that came out about that same year. (A movie like La Dolce Vita is in a different mode - the people are the new meretricious post-war haute bourgeois class - a frequent target through history, and in that way, like The Ice Storm or Interiors or American Beauty as an attack on such values).
Virtually all "serious satires" take on targets that the "chattering classes" consider suspect - the hidebound, the hypocritical, the "authority figures" whom youth wish to overturn. Not this one. Astonishingly, in the midst of mod London, the very middle of the swinging 60s, you get a movie that looks at its non-committal "live for the moment" hedonistic experimentation and blasts its moral character with a cannon.
This just doesn't happen in movies - compare say, "If" or "O Lucky Man" or say, "Network" (to name three I like), and you'll see the targets as the familiar powers that be - from school to television. But Julie Christie's character is what people thought was new and wonderful - and its superficiality is blown to bits.
It's as if a movie now were to look at a poor black woman raising a child alone - and blast her for any behavior that contributed to this state. It just won't be done - the sympathies are all running FOR that character. So were the sympathies for the Julie Christie character in that time - and the movie is very very brave in running so utterly against the current.
I just love the movie - it's a step up from Schlesinger's earlier ones -the script is superb, the performances are excellent without exception. (Lawrence Harvey is particularly good - but of course it's Christie's movie).Do see it. It's also full of wonderfully imaginative touches - such as the ending scene.
*
Author: James Hitchcock from Tunbridge Wells, England29 September 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"Darling" is a good example of that short-lived genre, the "Swinging London" film of the sixties. ("Georgy Girl" and "Blow-Up" are others that come to mind). The film is among London's high society, not Society in the traditional aristocratic sense but the new high society of the up-and-coming class of the era, the celebritocracy of film and television personalities, of pop and sports stars, of fashion models and photographers. "Blow-Up" was set in the same social milieu, but whereas Antonioni's film was concerned with more philosophical issues, "Darling" is a social satire.
The central character is Diana Scott, a glamorous young fashion model, and the film follows her complicated love life as she seduces one powerful lover after another in an attempt to sleep her way to the top. She abandons her young husband, Tony, for Robert Gold, an influential television journalist, causing the break-up of his own marriage. (Robert's surname is clearly intended to have a symbolic significance, emphasising that Diana is a gold-digger). Diana then moves on to Miles Brand, a film producer who offers her more in the way of advantages than Robert, and ends up marrying Cesare, an Italian prince. Feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage, Diana attempts to return to England and to Robert, only to find that he no longer wants her. (The film's references to a "Princess Diana", unhappily married to an older man, have in recent years taken on a resonance they did not have in 1965).
Another reviewer has commented that whereas most satirical films have attacked authority figures or the traditional Establishment, the satire in "Darling" is aimed at the swinging jet-set themselves. (British literature has a long tradition of satire written from a conservative viewpoint, from John Dryden and Alexander Pope to Evelyn Waugh and Michael Wharton, but there does not appear to be a similar tradition in the cinema). For most of the film Diana seems cold, heartless and amoral; only at the end, after the failures of her marriage to Cesare and of her attempted reconciliation with Robert, does she show any sincere emotion.
The other members of the celebritocracy that we see, with the partial exception of Robert, are equally shallow, selfish and given over to the pursuit of pleasure and self-interest. Cesare himself represents older, traditional values; the Italy that we see here is not the "Dolce Vita" world of Fellini and Antonioni but an older world of reserved, gentlemanly, Anglophile aristocrats. Cesare speaks a courtly, old-fashioned English, dresses like an English country gentleman and has decorated his palazzo in the style of an English stately home. Perhaps the fact that he is a foreigner has prevented Diana from realising what a conservative figure he is; given their completely different sets of values, the failure of their marriage comes as no surprise.
Julie Christie's Oscar for her role as Diana was in my view well deserved, but it seems to have come as something of a surprise, as Julie Andrews was expected to take the award for her role in "The Sound of Music". Certainly, "The Sound of Music", sentimental, warm-hearted and advocating family values, is the sort of film that the Academy have traditionally favoured. "Darling", by contrast, is an example of what in the sixties was a newer style of film-making: cool, deliberate and unemotional, taking a clear, cold-eyed look at society. (Another British film in this style is "Get Carter" from a few years later, which subjected the criminal underworld- a subject which in films is often glamorised or mythologised- to a similar scrutiny). Besides Christie, there is also a very good performance from Dirk Bogarde as Robert.
A term which is sometimes used about this film is "dated". Certainly, some of its aspects- the fashions, hairstyles, cars and slang of the sixties- have now all passed into history. It was among the last of the mainstream movies to be made in black and white, which in itself gives it an old-fashioned look to the modern generation, although in the sixties the photography was no doubt seen as crisp, clean and stylish. A modern film on a similar subject would doubtless be made in colour with more explicit sex scenes; references to matters such as homosexuality (it is implied that a photographer who befriends Diana is gay) and drug-taking would be more overt.
The subject-matter of the film, however, does not seem dated at all. Our own era has an even more all-pervasive cult of celebrity than did the sixties. Indeed, the very concept of celebrity has been debased. Whatever else it may have been, the celebritocracy of the sixties, the world of the likes of Terence Stamp, David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton, George Best, the Beatles and Julie Christie herself, was a meritocracy of talent, style and beauty. Today, television and the tabloid press are obsessed with the doings of people who have no greater claim to fame than being the ex-wife of a retired footballer, or a topless model, or someone who once took part in a "reality" TV programme. A modern remake of "Darling" might make for some interesting viewing. 8/10
*
Author: blanche-2 from United States16 February 2009Julie Christie is "Darling" in this 1965 film directed by John Schlesinger, and also starring Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey. Schlesinger does a beautiful job of showing us '60s London as it was, and yet he managed to make a film that is just as timely now.
Julie Christie is model Diana Scott, a gorgeous, ambitious young woman who moves from man to man without attachment and with the intention of helping her career. She dumps her first husband and breaks up the marriage of a British journalist (Bogarde) and then moves on to a pleasure-seeking advertising executive (Harvey), and finally, marries an Italian prince. It's one of those lives that sounds great - she has beauty, money, men, glamour, travels in the circles of the beautiful people. But she has no emotional attachments, no love, and nothing that she has feels right or is anything she wants. All the external trappings of celebrity, but it's a shell.
A really terrific movie, and I have to agree with the posters whose comments I read that Julie Christie is perfection in every way. Bogarde and Harvey give her excellent support. As an aside, Christie's wardrobe is stunning.None of the characters are very likable, except perhaps Bogarde, who in spite of leaving his wife and family does truly love Diana.
Despite the cold realities of Darling, we're even more obsessed with celebrity today, which makes the film even more interesting. But when you look at a photo, see someone in a magazine or on the screen, you're only dealing with a persona, not the flesh and blood individual. It's a fantasy. Darling shows the audience what's behind the fantasy - and it's not very pretty.
*
Author: Boyo-230 November 1998
This movie could go in a time capsule, and you would know everything necessary about what it was like to live in London in the 1960's...maybe you'd want to add something about The Beatles also. This is also one of the rare times when someone actually won an Oscar and deserved it! No one but the great Julie Christie could have played this part; she is perfection. The black & white cinematography only adds to the mood of the piece. And what a title! It says it all.
*
Author: mackjay from Out there in the dark2 February 2003
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
**May Contain Spoilers**
Immensely amusing and provocative, DARLING is also an important film, for the way it assumes an intelligent, adult audience. Director Schlesinger combines techniques from the British "Kitchen Sink" style and the French Nouvelle Vague to create a convincing and always involving parable of the myth of happiness.
Julie Christie plays Diana (the name of a Roman goddess) just as she was to become herself a screen icon of the 60s decade. Because of her looks, Diana has always had the interest of men and the envy of other women. She has never explored, or developed an intellectual or spiritual life. Fully the equal of her male co-stars, Julie Christie, who is herself an extremely intelligent woman, creates a remarkable, unforgettable character: a young woman who wants to be 'happy'.
The film is structured around Diana's involvements with a series of men. Each relationship makes an important point about her character, and also about human nature in general. For this latter reason, DARLING is a great film. neither dated, nor overlong. It requires time to explore each phase of the heroine's life and it uses the iconography of its period in ways that are universally comprehensible.
Told as a magazine interview, in flashback and with many amusing ironies, the film begins under the credits with posters depicting African victims of starvation being overlaid with glamor ads featuring Diana. Thus begins the idea of superficiality, as a cultural force, of which Diana has become an icon.
By chance, the heroine is interviewed by, and becomes involved with a TV journalist, David Gold (superbly enacted by Dirk Bogarde). Fascinated by Gold's intellectual life, Diana never probes below the surface of it. It is significant that, when they meet an aging, famous writer, Diana is given a small painting as a token, rather than one of his 'out-of-print' books. After breaking up David's own marriage as well as her own--to a young man attempting to learn Italian (there is a subtle Italian motif at work in the film)--Diana and David move in together.
In no time at all, she feels smothered by his quiet, intellectual life style ("There's something about the sound of a typewriter!" she complains). One day, to escape boredom, she attends an audition which she never undergoes. There is amusing irony here: the other women auditioning are required to announce the line "I want to dance! That's what you'll never understand. I don't want to THINK, I want to dance!"
Diana now turns to an affair with Miles Brand (a finely-tuned performance by Laurence Harvey), an advertising executive who manages to have her named "The Happiness Girl". Seemingly on a great career track, Diana dumps David, only to find that Brand offers her a life that goes, unacceptably, in the very opposite direction: dissolute sensuality, mindless pretense and cynicism.
Now desperately unhappy without David (whom, she suspects, offered her something emotionally real), Diana befriends a gay photographer, Malcolm (Roland Curram) who accompanies her to Italy. Malcolm represents a counterpart to Diana, but with more self-possession and insight. He has no ethical problems with promiscuity, and he maintains a satisfying career. In the fairy-tale paradise of Capri, where 'Santa Lucia' and other Italian folk songs ring through the streets, Diana is pursued and proposed to, by a real Italian prince. After a deeply cynical sequence involving a one-night stand with a waiter, Diana agrees to marry the older man.
Again desperately unhappy and 'incomplete', trapped in a gigantic palazzo, she returns to London and is rebuffed with finality by David. All she can do is return to Italy, to live a lonely life as a figurehead of nobility. The film closes with an indelible image: an aging beggar woman in Piccadilly Circus sings 'Santa Lucia' at full volume.
*
Julie Christie gives a raw, jagged performance as Diana Scott, a free-wheeling model/actress/whatever whose bedhopping exploits among the upper British classes cause her own self-destruction.
Quick zooms, freeze frames, and stop-motion effects aside, Darling holds up just as well as the other international hit about immoral behavior among the rich and semi-famous (La Dolce Vita) and makes a nice beginning for director John Schlesinger's adult trilogy. (Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday followed.)
The film is a fascinating time capsule and Christie's wonderfully expressive eyes, the handsome Dirk Bogarde's masterful underplaying, and Laurence Harvey's cold sexuality make Darling a swinging '60's classic that still packs a cynical punch and is yet another example of a fine lost film that's almost unavailable in any format. DVD please?
*
What a delight. Possibly the best of the British New Wave and one of the finest British films of all time. The story follows Julie Christie's rise up the social ladder by a succession of affairs and social posturing – she's infuriating, but you can't resent her behaviour, she is so natural and full of joie de vivre – impossible to keep in a cage. She first appears walking along the street swinging her handbag – the same entrance as she made in "Billy Liar" and surely an indication that we are dealing with essentially the same character. Bogarde, a television journalist, is the first man she takes up with, and is as serious as she is reckless, yet somehow they are well-suited and their relationship, with some painfully familiar ups and downs, is touching.
The emotional core of the film is Bogarde and Christie's visit to an old writer. This, her first step up the social ladder, gives her the thrill of being somewhere, doing something. It is also a gently melancholy and thoughtful scene. Humour and emotion come in equal measure throughout, and every exchange crackles with meaning:
Christie: "You used me!" Bogarde: "You used me. It's a moot point."
Christie really earned her Oscar for this. Her performance is full of humour and irony, but she's mainly being herself and she has a genuine sensitivity and humanity that lifts you and carries you along. Only some slightly flippant scenes with her photographer friend (especially the shoplifting scene which was too much like "Breakfast at Tiffanys") were a little out of alignment. But Schlesinger does special things throughout. Every scene is like a little self-contained story, so sharply done you can almost hear a snap at the beginning and end as it falls into place.
This is a big film, almost as big as "La Dolce Vita" which it sometimes echoes - better, perhaps, on account of the razor sharp script by Frederic Raphael which is so accomplished, smooth, intelligent, witty and ironic that it has an almost poetic quality while still being thoroughly down-to-earth. The ending is unexpectedly downbeat, and doesn't feel like the real end, just a line they had to draw somewhere - which is perhaps what the film really was all about: the lines that we have to draw at certain points in our lives that rule some things in, other things out, that enable us to go on, for better or worse. Really splendid stuff.
