Product Details

• Actors: Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter, Anne Meacham
• Directors: Robert Rossen
• Writers: Robert Rossen, J.R. Salamanca, Robert Alan Aurthur
• Producers: Robert Rossen
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: May 19, 1998
• Run Time: 114 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0800129245
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,218 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Few actresses are adored by the camera as much as Jean Seberg is in the brooding, 1964 psychodrama Lilith. The legendary American and European star (Godard's Breathless), playing Lilith Arthur, fixes one's attention on her every nuance in Robert Rossen's tale of a beautiful, sexual omnivore and psychotic patient at a New England mental hospital. Withdrawn into her small world of dolls and fantasies, Lilith responds to the attention of a laconic, Korean War veteran, Vincent Bruce (Warren Beatty), who is trying to find himself by working as an occupational therapist. Burdened by a murky, guilt-ridden past (involving his mentally ill mother), Vincent gradually falls into an unnervingly passionate affair with Lilith--much less a romance than a shared journey toward mutual implosion. Rossen's severe, sincere, stark black-and-white drama is sometimes lost in a muddle of undefined character motivations, but it's quite a ride toward the film's last-minute epiphany. Watch for Gene Hackman in a small role. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars crime and passion, April 18, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lilith [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a slow, delicate film. There are no car crashes, and no muscle bound hero to save the earth from some impending doom. What you will see is a brilliant study in how the weakness of one man, Warren Beatty, can cause so much harm. His misdirected passion causes the mental collapse of one, Jean Seberg, and the death of another, Peter Fonda. All cast members give excellent performances. This is a haunting film that has stayed in my memory for many, many years.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beatty in Prime?, April 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lilith [VHS] (VHS Tape)

" Lillith" is the type of film Warren Beatty used to tackle decades ago. This is a very probing and well acted film about a novice counsellor falling for a very disturbed and lovely young girl. It was in this film that Beatty met actor Gene Hackman in a small role. ( later cast as his brother in Bonnie a Clyde) Peter Fonda plays a very 'disconnected" young man who is also in love with " Lillith" in his own twisted way. An interesting film experience!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars John Keats and his fairy woman, come to life, September 3, 2009

By 

Thomas A. Burk (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lilith (DVD)

There is a remarkable synergy that occurs if one reads the book and also watches this movie. No matter how enchanting the author found the original Lilith (and of course there was one), it is hard to believe any living female could capture the essence of Lilith Arthur better than Jean Seberg. Miss Seberg was made for this role. I can not imagine a single Hollywood actress in the 45 years since this movie was made, who could come anywhere close to capturing the allure, the mystery, the marvelous femaleness of Lilith than Jean Seberg at the height of her powers. Warren Beatty is a stiff (but how do you portray sensitivity?), and Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter, Gene Hackman and Jessica Walter are all good. But Jean Seberg makes this movie. Her sheer presence is luminescent throughout the movie. How could any young man, presented with this un-ignorable force who is Jean Seberg, possibly not succumb to her magnificent, yet dangerous, allure?

The book fills in the details in a most amazing way. I had no idea that literature (and J. R. Salamanca is a literate author of the highest order) could portray human feeling in such a powerful way. In fact, when I first read this book at age 18, it was a revelation to me that anyone could experience life in such a sensitive and romantic way. I still am blown away by this book, 33 years after I read it (seeing the movie the night before, I had to find the book one January day in 1976). I remember in detail driving from La Jolla into San Diego and finding a copy of the hardback in a big, beautiful bookstore in downtown San Diego. For the next 2 days, life was suspended for me as I carefully reveled in this book with the image of Jean Seberg still in my mind as I read it.

The movie ends in a very fine, albeit incomplete, way. The book is more satisfying, yet even it left me wondering about the story. What was left out? Can this really be fiction? How could anyone imagine such events? Having since read interviews with Mr. Salamanca, I believe there is even more truth in this story than I ever could have believed. If you want to be seduced by the allure of romance in an absolutely realistic way, read the book and see this movie. Especially men. Despite the known weakness for gothic romances that some women are prey too, only men can be entranced by the opposite sex in this particular way. This movie, and the book the movie was based on, define male romantic longing in the most poignant and powerful way imaginable. And we must all get up and live our lives tomorrow. But we can never quite be the same again.