Customer Reviews

Darling

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This 1965 multi-award winning film is a riveting portrait of a woman who deviously claws her way to the top, in search of "happiness and completion". Julie Christe won an Oscar for her portrayal of Diana Scott, and manages to make this "trivial and shallow" woman interesting.
Frederick Raphael, who also won an Oscar for his work, wrote a story and script that is the basis of what makes this a riveting film to watch. Every scene makes sense, and every phrase has a purpose; there is not a single word that does not belong, or is unnecessary.
It is wonderfully photographed in a very crisp black and white by Ken Higgins, and has an unobtrusive but lovely score by John Dankworth.

Director John Schlesinger brings out the best in even the bit players, and most of all, from Dirk Bogarde, who gives a heartbreaking, brilliant performance as one of Diana's stepping stones. Laurence Harvey plays a vain and vile character with the snakelike coldness he is so good at, and of course, Christie is in her prime, and her beauty and talent shine bright.
Though the atmoshpere of the film is caught in the '60s, the story and characters are timeless; this film deserves to be viewed, for its tremendous performances, and as a portrait of how times change, but much of humanity stays the same, and selfish desires, even when satisfied, are but clanging brass.

Winner of the 1965 Oscar for Best Actress, the beautiful and pouty lipped Julie Christie gives a glowing performance as an amoral cover girl, Diana Scott, in the swinging '60s in London.

Diana, who is married, is having an affair with a married television correspondent, Robert Gold, played to perfection by the sexy and world weary, Dirk Bogarde. Eventually, they leave their respective mates and set up house together in swinging London. All is not hunky dory for long, as Julie goes on to have an affair with her agent, Miles, divinely played by Laurence Harvey. When Robert discovers her lies and infidelity, he leaves her.

Diana goes on to party hearty, and she ultimately meets a wealthy and widowed, Italian prince while on location in Italy shooting a commercial. After a perfunctory meeting, she meets up with him again, and he proposes. She thinks about his proposal, and ultimately consents to becoming Princess Diana.

Only after marrying him, a virtual stranger to her, does she realize how lonely she is. She finds herself being left in their palazzo with his seven children, while the prince is away, ostensibly visiting his mother without her. She realizes that she is living in a gilded cage, no more than a trophy wife.

She impulsively contacts Robert and flies to England to meet with him. After they make love, she realizes how much she loved him, and declares her feelings for him, only to be rebuffed. He then sends her packing, back to her empty life in Italy. Yet, he does so at great emotional cost to himself, as well.

This film is very representative of the swinging sixties and conveys a real sense of the joie de vivre of the period. It deals with subjects that were formerly taboo. There are subtle and sly references to homosexuality. Abortion and a woman's sexuality are issues in the film and dealt with in a way with which these issues were not ordinarily dealt. While it may seem tame by today's standards, this was very cutting edge in its time, and reflective of some of the changes which society, as a whole, was undergoing. This movie is definitely an oldie but a goodie.

Her name isn't Darling, but that's what they call her. She doesn't mind, just as long as they call her--men, that is--for dates, jobs, whatever. John Schlesinger's second film with Julie Christie (after her cameo as Tom Courtenay's dream girl in "Billy Liar") put them both on the map--and won Christie the Oscar as social-climbing model/actress Diana Scott. It's a stylish, yet poignant tale (also deservedly garnering the gold for costume design); of its time, yet timeless--and the parallels between Diana and real-life royals Princesses Grace and that other Diana only add to the poignancy.

Christie's beauty and brilliance aside, the contributions of Dirk Bogarde ("The Servant") and Laurence Harvey ("The Manchurian Candidate")--two other leading lights of swinging sixties British cinema--shouldn't be overlooked. Harvey has rarely been more cool and callous, Bogarde rarely more vulnerable and human. Diana uses one man and is used by the other, only to give up her playgirl lifestyle for something brighter, shinier--and emptier. "Darling" represents the peak of the Schlesinger-Christie pairings and is one of the finest films of the 1960s. Or any decade.

This MGM Home Video version of Darling (#1005693) is not a full version of the film. It was enjoyable but rings of media puritanism. A number of defining scenes, albe-them mildly risque, are missing. This is cultural and historical bleaching. We must discourage companies from ruining films. Do not buy it. I am now out the money and looking for the full version on DVD.

MGM's new release of DARLING looks beautiful and more pristine than the Criterion Collection's laserdisc edition from 1995. There are no features aside from the (very dated) trailer; commentary from Christie would have been a welcome feature and made this a great one for your collection. The greatest disappointment is in the brief editing within the Parisian brothel sequence: the standard VHS tape that had been floating around for years omitted Christie's nude scene, a couple of shots hinting at oral sex between she and Laurence Harvey, and the brothel sequence. The DVD keeps almost everything in tact except a shot of a man rushing into a room to 'perform' with his cigarette smoking female partner. What you're left watching is a close-up of Julie Christie's shocked face as she stares at a woman smoking. The impact of the scene is gone. Now, the only version of DARLING that is fully intact is the laserdisc from Criterion and late-night showings on TCM. What gives MGM? Are they afraid viewers might not be able to handle such 'shocking' material?

Forty years later and Darling is still as hip, daring, and as acerbic as ever. The absolutely ravishing Julie Christie won her much deserved best actress Oscar in 1965 for her role as Diana Scott a brazen, fickle, and swinging Londoner who is discovered by a reporter when she does a street interview, then rises through the European modeling/acting world by sleeping with every man she meets.

Light on plot but incredibly strong on character, Darling takes us from Diana's humble beginnings as she manipulates and connives her way up the social ladder, eventually becoming a darling of the jet-set high society. Diana has no specific ambition; and she has no particular talent; all she knows is that she refuses to be limited. She just wants to be happy, unfortunately though, she looks for happiness in all the wrong places.

Following the break-up of a teenage marriage, Diana drifts into the world of modeling and acting, where she meets television news reporter, Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), who leaves his family for her. They both find it terribly easy to cheat on their respective spouses with Diana admitting in a voice over that she did it because she can, and that she always places her momentary needs first.

Robert introduces her to a more powerful and wealthy set and soon she's fraternizing with somebody much more attractive: the cynical public relations mogul Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey). She becomes bored with Robert's bookish, raffish ways, preferring to hang out with Miles's vapid trendsetters, fashionistas, and pretentious artists. Robert eventually wises up to Diana's philandering ways and realizes she's using the same shabby trick against him, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Diana runs off to Paris with the utterly selfish Miles Brand, participating in an orgy, and when her feeble attempts to fool Robert don't work, she pretends she doesn't care. The moment he's too occupied with work to devote himself to her, she's off again getting into even more trouble. She even gets pregnant and is at first excited, but when she realizes that a baby would jeopardize her career, she ends up having an abortion because anything that interferes with her lifestyle has to be gotten rid of.

As she drifts backwards and forwards between Robert and Miles, she befriends a young photographer Malcolm (Ronald Curram) a gay guy, who promises to be her best friend in the whole world. After a round of shoplifting and an evening of drunken revelry, she takes him to Italy and he becomes the only man who she's capable of being honest with.

Diana is so busy taking; she never has to learn the lesson of what giving is. By the time she realizes that she has an attachment to Robert, it's just too late. He's gotten over her cruel rejection and has no further need of her. She's frantic for someone to lean on, so in desperation, she marries Cesare (Jose Luis De Villalonga), an Italian nobleman, and becomes a "Princess Diana." He keeps her at his villa with his children while presumably visiting girlfriends on the side. For Diana, this doesn't exactly spell true love or happiness.


Director, John Schlesinger perfectly captures the mood of the swinging sixties, brilliantly skewering the generation and decade itself -- innocent and guileless, but ultimately self-destructive. Christie is absolutely radiant as the modern jetsetter for whom beauty is the only ticket to fun and thrills. She's the embodiment of amorality and selfishness, but it is exactly this amorality that leaves her in an existential limbo of her own making.

Schlesinger and screenwriter Frederick Raphael don't exactly condemn Diana making her choices or for taking the route that she does, but they haven't anything positive to say about her either. Christie plays her as a spoilt, petulant little girl, too totally amoral to feel anything honest or meaningful for another person, or for that matter, to elicit a strong feeling from us.

Christie is eminently watchable and her stunning beauty carries the film. In fact, she's so pretty that her flaky character remains always interesting. Dirk Bogarde goes from happy to neurotic to vindictive, and Laurence Harvey maintains a smug winner's superiority that's very off-putting. If there is any downside to Darling, it's that there's ultimately nobody on screen worthy of our sympathy.

But Darling is ultimately a searing indictment of Sixties superficiality, all dressed up to look chic and sophisticated, in which the surface of things is readily available from a deluge of media outlets but nothing is explored in depth. It is indeed a classic film and can be viewed again and again.

By closely studying and scrutinizing Julie Christie's character, Raphael and Schlesinger were able to focus on poster girl, the pretty face we encounter every day on television that seduces us into buying products we neither want nor need. Perhaps the ultimate statement, and the theme of the movie, is that this type of character is as empty as the image itself.

At one moment, as she is caught by a camera from precisely the right angle, Diana Scott displays an almost classic beauty, startling in its intensity; a second later, all sorts of sordid, superficial emotions cross over her face, making her appear cheap and ultimately quite vacuous. Perhaps it's a testament to Ms. Christie's fine performance that she can make these emotions appear so real. Mike Leonard October 05.

"Darling", the brittle mid-1960s cult classic, was written by Frederick Raphael (he won an Oscar for the script) and directed by John Schlesinger. Like a handful of other interesting black and white films from this era written by authors like Raphael and Alan Sillitoe, "Darling" has dated somewhat, although not in a way that devalues its superb qualities. Think, for example, of "Morgan!", "Georgy Girl", and "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner". Although these are all very different films, each reflects something of Britain's mood during the early to mid-1960s as Britain questioned, particularly through the medium of theatre and film, issues of class loyalty, tradition, and values in a period of shifting social mores.

The film is most noteworthy for the excellence of the script and the performances of its two leads, Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde. Although Christie won a Best Actress Oscar for her role, in this reviewer's opinion, Dirk Bogarde's performance is even more memorable. This is not to belittle Christie's fine work; however, Christie was the startling newcomer and naturally attracted more attention than the established Bogarde, whose work here is so good as to be "invisible". It is easy to forget what a very, very, very fine actor Bogarde was until you revisit a film like this. It is a long way from Sidney Carton in "A Tale of Two Cities" to Robert Gold in "Darling".

Christie plays Diana Scott, a beautiful but curiously blank woman who uses her looks to attach a series of increasingly prominent and wealthy men, in hopes that each successive relationship will finally help her achieve the solid identity she craves. Christie portrays Diana as an empty canvas upon which she invites her lovers to paint, as she adapts herself, chameleon-like, to each one's values and tastes. But Diana selects her lovers on the basis of their worldly assets, which cannot help her clarify her own identity, any more than those assets wholly define the identities of the men who hold them. Diana never comes to understand this, and steps Gatsby-like over one man after another, evading responsibility for the emotional chaos she creates, yet never quite finding the one relationship that will make her feel real and complete. In fact, Diana Scott rather reminds one of a later charismatic, British, blonde Diana, who also tried to anchor a narcissistic, internal vagueness through external relationships - with equally little success.

Bogarde plays Robert Gold, a TV journalist who meets the pretty housewife accidentally and gives her a start in modeling - he falls hopelessly in love with her and leaves his wife and children for her. But, as Diana's career takes off, she begins to drift toward men who she believes have more to offer her than Robert does. Robert soon grasps the empty narcissism that produces Diana's vague amorality, but cannot shake free of his feeling for her, with tragic consequences for himself. Ironically, Robert is the one man in Diana's life who loves her for "herself" - the very "self" she is seeking in other places. As Diana joins the restless 1960s jet-set, the film highlights the equally narcissistic, quickly jaded characters and tastes of its members.

Christie's look is also redolent of the era: the heavy eye-makeup, thick hair, jaunty mini-skirts, and Couregges boots, all have the peculiar effect of deadening, rather than enhancing her beauty, so perfectly iconic of the 1960s.

The black and white photography is by Ken Higgins, and the supporting cast includes the always fascinating Laurence Harvey as the cold, calculating Miles Brand, another of Diana's lovers.

This is an expertly crafted film, from script to direction to performances. To say that it is "dated" is to use the term to express only its cultural specificity. The anguish of its characters and the quality of its script ensure that its specificity does not dilute its broader relevance.

"Darling" is a fine, if sad and unsettling film, a classic of the 1960s, containing marvellous performances by now-legendary actors.

I've said before I would pay to watch her sew a sweater, and I would. Aside frm "Don't Look Now," this is my favorite Christie movie and my second favorite Schlesinger outing.

"Darling" in ways is a sad, sad tale: it mourns the absence of an inner life in a narcissist, and not an evil one, mind you, just a personality swept away in her own lush dream, and clueless in the end as to why she is alone,alone,alone.

Darling is one of the best films of the 1960's, with its sharp direction, even sharper script, atmospheric black and white photography, and three outstanding star performances. The style of the film may seem somewhat dated, but its substance still packs a considerable punch.

The film involves its audience with genuine appeal to our emotions and intellect, rather than in the manipulative manner of many more modern movies. Darling makes us think and challenges us to feel. Although very much a reflection of its time, Darling still has very much to say to us today. It is sad, therefore, that some of those involved in its making tend to distance themselves from it now. Maybe their subsequent careers have made them resemble the film's targets more than its protagonists. If nothing else, Darling is populated by real people - some of whom are sometimes uncomfortably realistic.

It is perhaps difficult to realise now how shocking a character Julie Christie was portraying at the time - in those uptight days when free love and liberated women were only just beginning to surface into public awareness. The audience was asked to feel sympathy for this middle class girl who bed-hopped her way from model to princess with barely a hint of conscience. Perhaps she was intended to be another British anti-hero - a female cousin of Jimmy Porter, Joe Lampton or Arthur Seaton. Or maybe she was the prophetic face of the future - the sixties symbol that everything was changing. Whatever the intention, the character of Diana Scott made a definite impact, both on the men in her life and on the audiences who watched her with a mixture of fascination, disbelief, and quite possibly a touch of envy.

The film's solid foundation - some might say its heart and soul - lies in the wordly wise and wickedly witty script by Frederic Raphael. His characters are equally blessed with sarcasm and faults - they all have a knack for delivering wonderful one-liners in moments of crisis. Example - When Dirk Bogarde parts for the last time from Christie, he tells her that he intends to write a book about his life. Christie says that she played the biggest part in his life. Bogarde raises an eyebrow and replies quietly: "Certainly the most melodramatic".

It is precisely this contrast between Christie's emotional rollercoaster and Bogarde's coolly calculated underplaying that provides most of the film's best moments. Although Laurence Harvey also makes a significant contribution. I have always felt that Harvey was a seriously under-rated actor and here he proves just how effective he could be. Christies may have been the romantic face of a changing Britain, but Harvey was the realistic symbol of how things really worked - of the British obsession with class, appearance, self-interest and hyprocrisy that still exists today. It says much for Dirk Bogarde that he gives the best performance while playing the least believable character. Stranger still, that Gregory Peck was once considered for the role.

If I have gone on about the stars more than the direction or music or anything like that, it is because this is essentially a film about people. The plot is not so much about what happens to them but how these events affect and change them. The camerawork is occasionally flashy but never intrusive. Sometimes the film looks almost like a documentary, an illusion helped by a first-rate supporting cast. But, more than anything else, this is Julie Christie's film - she is as faultless as she is natural. She won an Oscar for playing Diane Scott. But Darling deserves more than awards - it deserves to be seen.

"Darling" is a searing look into the shallow life of a London girl during the mid-60's. It stars Julie Christie in the title role of Diana Scott and takes us through a few years of her life from mod-model to wife of an Italian prince. Dianna's messy life and total disregard for others is brilliantly shown through the convention of her telling "My Story" to a magazine while contrasting her tale with the actual facts of her life.
Co-stars Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey each serves the story in their unique and gifted ways. Bogarde as Robert Gold is Diana's one brush with real emotion and possible salvation is at the top of his form giving yet another fine performance in support of Miss Christie. Laurence Harvey is cold and calculating as the bored playboy Miles Brand. He has never been better or has his angular face been shown to be more sardonic and deceitful than here in this film.
The direction by John Schlesinger is razor sharp and never misses the truth behind each scene. Cinematographer Kenneth Higgins captures the feel of mid-60's London, Pairs and Italy in crisp and clean shots. His close-ups are nearly surgical in what they render visible to the eye.
John Dankworth executed the composition of one of the most haunting themes from the sixties, which plays over the brilliant opening credits. His score is perfect and underscores Diana's story so well.
Finally there is Julie Christie in her Oscar winning performance. What a revelation this film and Miss Christie were at the time. Movies were changing so rapidly from what they had been all along to a more adult and honest look at life. The cracks began to appear after WW II. They widened in the 1950's but by the time "Darling' came along the movie industry had changed, imploded then exploded into a new and freer form of expression. Riding this wave to triumph in 1965 was the nearly unknown Miss Christie. Her Diana is unapologetic, raw and wonderful. She never holds back in showing us the ugly side of this beautiful vacuous woman and by the last scene she commands the screen with the authority of a truly perfect performance.