Customer Reviews

Lilith

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

" 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!

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.

LILITH was made by the American director Robert Rossen after a period of having been blacklisted, or graylisted at any rate, and a tremendous comeback with THE HUSTLER starring Jackie Gleason. I remember thinking, well, LILITH might not be the ticket for a permanent comeback for Rossen and indeed this turned out to be the case. It's a failure, but an ambitious one and the kind of movie that makes you long for it to be just a little bit better.

Its stars are incandescent. In LILITH Warren Beatty shows for the first time that he's more than just a pretty face. He plays a troubled vet who takes a job as a "counsellor" at a swanky sanitarium, He's almost as messed up as his patients. I wonder if they called him "Vincent Bruce" to sound like "Vincent Price" because he exhibits all the signs of erotic obsession we associate with Price's AIP Poe films, though Beatty isn't as over the top. And playing the "Barbara Steele part" is Lilith herself, Jean Seberg, looking utterly beautiful and enchanting and evil. Peter Fonda is also in it, almost too young to believe, looking good and acting his ass off as another mental patient who falls for Lilith's wicked ways. And then, for fans of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT on TV, you can spot Jessica Walter, the mother of the clan, here playing Laura, the former girlfriend of Vincent Bruce. He goes back to visit her, even though she married Gene Hackman, in a scene that seems very reminiscent of the end of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, where Beatty also had to confront the fact that his girlfriend is hitched up with someone else.

And KIM HUNTER is in the movie too, like Rossen also a victim of HUAC and blacklisting. Here she is a kindly older psychiatrist with a little bit of a thing for Beatty. Well, who wouldn't! Kim Hunter played one of the apes in Planet of the Apes and a memorable "final girl" part in THE SEVENTH VICTIM by Val Lewton and Mark Robson. She's wonderful to watch.

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Salamanca's novel of the same name, I had very little hope that the film would catch the unsettling nature of the novel. I was wrong.

Rossen captures Lilith's spirit even in the opening credits, as an abstract drawing reveals what appears to be a spider breaking away from its web. Is this symbolic of Lilith leaving the mental home? Or of Vince, the main character, leaving his ideals of himself? Whatever it might mean, the "dreamy" music and the stark black and white film convey the mood of the book quite well, and borders on what one might perceive as a "horror" film. And viewed in this light, the grounds of the mental home (where most of the story takes place) are both comforting and disturbing.

Lilith, played with absolute conviction by the wonderful and beautiful (sans god-awful wig) Jean Seberg, really made the film enjoyable for me. Just witnessing Seberg's performance was inspiring. Hackman has a small character role (in what was his first) as a "hack" husband to Vincent's teen-romance girlfriend. And Peter Fonda is here too, in an almost unrecognizable role as an overly sensitive man at the hospital, competing with Vincent for Lilith's love.

Let's say all is good, almost great, with this film, excepting Beatty's cardboard performance. I can't imagine why Beatty, given a very defined and complex character like Vincent to portray, couldn't be less stiff than he is here! He didn't ruin the picture for me, but his inability to convey ANY emotion, and just stare numbly out into nothing in most of his scenes, simply frustrates. His performance makes you want to kick him in the pants and say, "C'mon, man! Get it together!" through most of what is otherwise, as I've cited earlier, a successful film.

Kudos to Rossen for not shying away from the somewhat controversial subject matter found in the book, and for capturing the elusive quality of Salamanca's story. Congratulations to Seberg for an amazing performance, and a visibly furrowed brow to Beatty for his sleepwalking.

I am going to break away from the pack and call this one a five star movie. It is a slow movie, unless you are constantly analyzing the actors, and why they did this or that, or played it this way or that way, which is the way I viewed it. I found the performances riveting and could not take my eyes or mind off the Peter Fonda character--such great acting as a pale, insecure, asylum inmate. Warren Beatty does not have a huge body of work--has restricted himself--so you take a greater interest in the parts he plays and why he plays them. He is always good. This movie about asylum innmates and the medical staff is fascinating. Made in the sixties, it is a great groundbreaker for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Awakenings." The added ingredient would be romantic obsession. If you have never seen "Lilith" you may find it interesting in a retro-Sixties way.

The opening credits of "Lilith" are accompanied by a haunting, jazz-inflected score and beautiful artwork / graphics. This film is the kind of art house / intellectual / European-influenced picture that went out of vogue after the 1960's. "Lilith" provides an accurate depiction of what was then referred to as an "asylum"; Poplar Lodge could be more precisely described as a "plush sanatorium". It's the kind of mental institution that would have caught the eye of Diane Arbus; at one point, there's shot of empty white wicker chairs on the spacious front lawn. The patients have too much time on their hands, and no-one's having any fun.

Having also seen Jean Seberg in "Breathless", and "Bonjour Tristesse", I conclude that "Lilith" is the superior performance of those three films. It is a complicated role worthy of Seberg's talents, to which she brings nuances of expression (both verbally and non-verbally), depth of feeling, and an understanding of the Lilith's "rapture" (the term "rapture", it is explained in the picture, meant "madness" in Shakespearean times). As Lilith carefully observes Vincent (Warren Beatty), her face remains mysterious, impenetrable. She exhibits a strange, predatory interest in pre-pubescent boys, that may be related to the death of her brother; that event probably being the one that sent her to the asylum. Water and Lilith's fascination with it is an ongoing metaphor, be it a quiet stream, a raging river, or an aquarium; a metaphor for the patient in danger of "going under". In Chapter Four of this DVD, the atmosphere of the staff meeting is poetic, as Dr. Lavrier (James Patterson) presents the latest theories about schizophrenia. Dr. Lavrier reveals that schizophrenia is not just a condition of the superior mind, but one that also one that affects non-humans; animals, even insects.

Warren Beatty gives a mature, credible performance as Vincent, reflecting his compassion, confusion, and reflective torment, caused by his "principles". But once Vincent realizes that he has fallen in love with Lilith (the staff warns him that patients and staff have been known to fall in love with each other), all objectivity is lost. Vincent may even have as many secrets as Lilith. At one point she asks him, "What was your mother like?"; Vincent doesn't answer. Jessica Walter and Gene Hackman, in the supporting roles of Laura and Norman, portray a couple stuck in a bleak marriage; Laura being Vincent's ex-girlfriend. Vincent visits them one night, and the stilted conversation reveals how ill-suited their lifestyle is for romantic, unconventional Vincent. Kim Hunter is also excellent as Dr. Brice, and this is the best work by Peter Fonda (Stephen Evshevsky) that I've ever seen.

In closing, the following quote by Lilith (speaking to Vincent) sums up the essence of the film: "You're ill at ease, and adventurous people are always a little ill at ease, they're shy. They aren't bold the way people think they are. They go stumbling around, breaking things, being scolded. Always looking for a place where they feel they'll belong. They have that crooked look, of not really matching anything."

Stephen C. Bird, author of "Hideous Exuberance: A Satire"

The story sounded good, and the pictures made it look like a thriller. But the movie moved slowly, was confusing, and a bit boring. Maybe I'm just a spoiled 21st century movie-goer.

"Lilith" is worth a viewing on two levels. First, it was an early platform for a number of talented actors who later became stars. The protagonist is a young Warren Beatty, playing a World War II veteran returning to his home town to work as an occupational therapist at a private mental hospital. There he becomes entranced by a psychotic patient, Lilith, played by the lovely Jean Seberg. Another patient, also fascinated by Lilith, is the young Peter Fonda, while Gene Hackman, in an early role, plays a local hick who married Beatty's girlfriend while he was away at war. All these actors do a creditable job.

The other fascinating aspect of the film is its portrayal of mental illness. Anyone who has spent time with the mentally ill will groan at director Robert Rossen's hackneyed portrayal of the patients at the hospital, who portray every cliche in the book. Rossen manages to introduce some kinkiness by showing Lilith as a bit of a nymphomanic, with little discretion in the objects of her affection. But the film also projects what were some common views of mental illness in the 1950s and 60s, well before pharmaceuticals became the standard treatment.

The film is based on a novel by J.R. Salamanca, who had worked at Chestnut Lodge, a private mental hospital in Rockville, Maryland. Chestnut Lodge appears to have been a font of literary inspiration, because it was also the setting for the novel "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." In both Salamanca's book and Rossen's film, the name of the institution is changed to Poplar Lodge, but nevertheless portions of the film were shot in Rockville. The real Chestnut Lodge closed in the 1990s, a victim of changing trends in treatment and insurance reimbursement. There is no record that it ever had a patient named Lilith.

This is a 5 star movie, but only a 2 star DVD.

This DVD could have been just amazing, but it is completely bare, not a single extra to be had. If only it had an audio commentary or a good retrospective documentary on the making of the film. This is one of those films that Criterion should get a hold of and really treat right, it's a classic.

It's a big missed opportunity to me, such a shame. Hopefully it will be corrected with Blu-ray