Customer Reviews

The Sandpiper [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Released at the dawn of the Hippie movement this film had a lot to say to kids of my generation. It espouses the then radical ideas of personal freedom, women's rights, new ways of seeking spirituality and sexuality. In other words, if viewed in the historical context of when it was made it is much better than it seams. Sure Burton walks through his part, Eva Marie Saint's talents are wasted, and Bronson is not much more than eye candy. But in Taylor's performance you see her commitment to her roll as a free spirited artist. A character she herself could relate to since she herself was a sexual rebel, and an independent woman in a time when that was rare.
Someone who had and would continue to show she was not afraid to stand her ground against popular moral opinion. "to know myself, be myself" as Laura says and both Laura and Taylor achieve that goal in the end. In many ways Laura is very like Miss Taylor or so it seems and this character must spoken to her in some deeper way. Her Laura also spoke to many of us just coming of age in 1965 in ways that were eye opening. On this level the film as a social historical significance. The biggest star in Hollywood was promoting a new way of thinking and living and the kids were listening. A movement was being born. You might even say Miss Taylor was the mother of the sexual revolution.
On an entertainment level it is pure Hollywood soap opera set amid incredible settings. It's all silly romantic fun that by the end is actually touching. Beautifully photographed and with a lush jazz score by Johnny Mandel it is a visual and auditory feast.

Ah, Big Sur in 1965... the world's two biggest stars descend upon this gorgeous town in California to film this travesty of a movie. But wait... There are redeeming features to this campy, excessively poorly-acted soap opera. There is Elizabeth Taylor at the age of 33, looking more gorgeous than in any film except "A Place in the Sun." She is overweight ("zaftig," as she preferred to be called), barefoot and dressed in frumpy caftans throughout this film, but who cares? Liz is still breathtakingly beautiful here. Richard Burton also never looked better. At 39, his pockmarked, booze-soaked face seems fit, tan and marvelously sexy. He overacts miserably and shouts lines which should be whispered, but when you look as good as Burton did in 1965, few would complain.

The actual plot of the movie is interesting: Burton is a minister who meets Taylor, an artsy Bohemian painter who sells her work once every Leap Year. One wonders how this starving artist can afford a multi-million dollar pad perched on the shore of Big Sur? Burton mightily struggles with guilt and wants to remain loyal to long-suffering wife, Eva Marie Saint (who is totaly wasted in this role), but of course he eventually succumbs and embarks on a passionate affair with Liz.

Predictably, there are oodles of love scenes between Burton and Taylor; they kiss reclining on the floor, the beach, standing in restuarants and carparks, in bed... in the surf... you name it. All titilating to the audiences of 1965, who followed the couple's every movement. Charles Bronson shows up as a beatnick and gives the only sane performance in the film. The script is wretched and offers up some incredibly campy moments, such as when Liz shouts wearily, "Men have been following me around since I was 11 years old!" Another hilarious scene has Burton stumbling from Liz's beachside mansion after kissing her and then beating the roof of his car with his fists, screaming, "I must not succumb to temptation!!"

The scenery around Highway 1 is spectacular, the "Shadow of Your Smile" remains a compelling soundtrack theme, but the real reason to enjoy this movie is to see Taylor and Burton in their only decent love story. Their chemistry is real and never forced and neither ever again was as beautiful as they were in this campy movie. Watch it and own it if you are memmerized by their debauchery and mutual beauty. Several scenes will have you in stiches, guaranteed!

This movie has stayed in my memory since the first and only time I saw it, as the best love story that I have ever seen

Like the previous reviewer, this film has haunted me since first seeing it at a Sacramento drive-in during the late 60's. But, not for the same reasons. The movie itself is interesting, but barely so. What is exceptional is the opening titles. A beautifully crafted montage showing the Monterey and Big Sur coastline while 's lush, haunting arrangements of "The Shadow of Your Smile" played in the background. WOW! Variations of the title theme are interwoven throughout the movie, making it a a worthwhile experience.

Whatever else you can say about this movie, Liz Taylor's presence in it makes all the difference. She was really a gorgeous woman in those days, and within the confines of the film, I thought her part was well-acted. That's not to say the film is believable, of course. But the movie is a great preservation (and reflection) of the culture of the sixties - in much the same way as another Burton film, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The Sandpiper is one of those movies that seems at first shallow and uninteresting, but then you can't stop watching it. Too bad it's not yet available on DVD.

Once you get past the uneasy casting of Richard Burton as an Episcopalian minister, and Elizabeth Taylor playing a free-spirited hippie artist, it's quite easy to enjoy THE SANDPIPER (1965) for it's fresh adult love story, but more so for the beautiful location photography, mostly captured at Big Sur itself.

Single mother Laura Reynolds (Elizabeth Taylor) lives in a ramshackle house perched on the Big Sur coastline. She has raised her son (Morgan Mason) as naturally as possible, so when he is expelled from public school and forced to enroll at the San Simeon boarding school, Laura--who rails against organised religion in any form--is horrified.

The school's headmaster, Dr. Edward Hewitt (Burton), is fascinated by Laura's views and asks her to provide some artwork to use for a stained-glass window in the chapel he plans to have built. Soon, Edward finds himself falling in love, despite being already married to Claire (Eva Marie Saint in a thankless role); and at last, Laura discovers the mutual passion that can be shared by a man and a woman, yet, like the injured sandpiper bird she has rescued, Laura realises that true love is ultimately learning how to fly free...

The love story itself is quite predictable and moralistic even for 1965 (a man of the cloth compromising his vows for an affair with an athiest; shades of "Sadie Thompson"), but THE SANDPIPER is one of the better titles from the lengthy Taylor/Burton screen partnership. Director Vincente Minnelli, who had previously guided Ms Taylor through one of her first big "adult" roles in 1950's "Father of the Bride" (and it's sequel "Father's Little Dividend" the following year), keeps everything as tasteful as possible. This was his third-last film.

Taylor comes off more successfully than Burton, who seems to sink under some particularly awkward dialogue and a rigid, sometimes unsympathetic character. The cast also includes Charles Bronson as a sculptor (the actual redwood statue of Elizabeth Taylor in the film was provided by Edmund Kara). Jazz composer Johnny Mandel supplies the Academy Award-nominated score, highlighted by "The Shadow of Your Smile".

The DVD includes two vintage promotional featurettes. Available exclusively in the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton Film Collection (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf 2-Disc Special Edition / The Comedians / The Sandpiper / The V.I.P.s) 5 Disc Set.

The 1965 melodrama, "The Sandpiper," stars Elizabeth Taylor as free-spirit/painter Laura. Her son gets in trouble and is sent to a strict private school run by the Rev. Dr. Hewitt (Richard Burton) and his wife (Eva Marie Saint). Laura dislikes all authority and flaunts her "wicked ways," much to the consternation - and delight - of the good Reverend. Their affair is a foregone conclusion, played out against the crashing Big Sur surf.

Burton is pretty good in his role, but is given such corny dialogue that he must have been embarrassed. Taylor overacts horribly, shrieking her lines, writhing with fake misery, and she does it all with a British accent, even though her character is from Indiana. The middle-aged crowd she parties with aren't very convincing as "beatniks," she wears way too much make-up, and sports silly caftans that were someone's idea of avant-garde fashion. The little subplot of healing an injured bird is sweet, but actually becomes laughable when the bird nests in Taylor's hair during a supposedly torrid love scene. Beautiful music and scenery; corny dialogue and mis-cast Taylor.

Kona

Not only in "Cleopatra" but in her next two films as well, "The V.I.P.s," and "The Sandpiper," Taylor was more the world-famous celebrity and less the conscientious actress than at any other time in her career... The three movies exploit the public's fantasy of what the lovers must be like: tempestuous, as in "Cleopatra;" quarreling, on the verge of separation, as in "The V.I.P.s;" illicit lovers, defying the moral norms, as in "The Sandpiper."

As the ancient Queen of the Nile, as modern day grande dame, or as a hippie artist, Taylor is Taylor, hemmed in by her spectacular fame... The international celebrity, the world's most famous lover, takes over from the burgeoning actress of the Fifties, and Taylor walks through the movies as the fabled beauty she'd become rather than the high-strung Southern belle she had been before Rome...

Playing an unmarried woman who lives with her son exactly the way she wants to live, in harmony with the California coast, Liz Taylor, for once, gets to talk about ideas: her character proclaims the joys of independence and self-expression... Taylor is no Jane Fonda, alight with radical fervor, but the role does express something of herself; it lets us see a side of her that differs from the standard screen Taylor...

Here she's a 'new' woman, free and wise, who teaches a thing or two to a rigid churchman... The film's symbol is the sandpiper with a broken wing which she offers as proof that every creature should be allowed to fly free...

We know too much about her to believe her as a hedonistic artist who would dress so fashionably in such an impossibly expansive beach house... The character's broad humanistic philosophy--her objections to organized religion and to formal schooling, her advocacy of free love and her celebration of the naturalness of physical love--are, oddly enough, at the film's center...

The story that interrupts the characters ongoing declarations about life is the old number of a minister tempted by a beautiful woman... Bombarded by the artist's charms, the man succumbs, only to depart at the end, weighed down by, guilt and vowing to seek the way of repentance and purification...The movie's morality is thus a mingling of the old and the new...

The movie plays it both ways, admiring the woman's freedom and righteous self-justification, but making the clergyman pay dearly for his indulgence in forbidden fruit... It's an old Hollywood romance trying to masquerade as a love story in the modern manner...

Burton's prude is impossible and he plays him in a harsh oratorical manner, as if he's deadening himself to the pain of it all, but Taylor's character almost approaches being a real rebel with ideas... The movie exploits the public image of her as a challenger of conventions, but the role also gives her a chance to sound reasonably articulate about matters other than love... Under Vincente Minnelli's graceful guidance, Liz is sweet if not entirely convincing...

I still love this movie! The story is dated, but, the cinematography is amazing! The California coast is beautiful and the music," Shadow of Your Smile", playing in the background, just great!
How can you go wrong with stars like: Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint and, of course, the magnificent Dame Elizabeth Taylor with her cleavage heaving!
She truly was beautiful as is this great, vintage, soap opera movie!
Grab your tissues and enjoy!

Liz T. as free-spirit Laura Reynolds may have succumbed to too many post-joint munchies, but oh, that face.
And then there are those magnificent canyons -- errrrr, I mean that craggy Big Sur coastline.

Decades before Brangelina, the Burtons were "the couple." One can only imagine the tenderness as they brushed the beach sand off each other.

Sure, the movie has its flaws, but they are easily forgiven, now that Burton and Taylor are gone. Oh, how we want to remember the way they were. "E" and "R" scrawled in the sand, forever.