...die alles begehren

"The Sandpiper" is not a great movie but it has a certain appeal and is graced by some beautiful seascapes along the rugged Big Sur coastline. The opening sequence, a montage of steep emerald hills and deep blue sea shot from a helicopter, is particularly well done, featuring a deer dashing up one of the oak-covered slopes, building swells breaking on the rocky shore, and one or two fiery red sunsets. Similar scenes continue to bolster the sense of setting throughout the movie. The storyline, although interesting, can't quite live up to the dramatic natural location. The love affair between Richard Burton, a jaded Episcopalian priest and headmaster at a boys school in San Simeon, and Elizabeth Taylor, an alienated artist seeking peace and solitude at an isolated beach house, is reasonably convincing. Yet the priest already has a comely wife in the form of Eva Marie Saint and his motivation for stepping outside their marriage isn't well explained, except that he wants to recapture the idealism of his youth. When a local judge orders that Taylor's troubled son must attend Burton's school, he is almost instantly attracted to her and apparently there is nothing to be done about it.

Set in the mid-sixties, when sexual morays were loosening but we were still in the grip of a churchy moralism, this had to be a controversial film, and I vaguely recall that it was. You can visit the locations used in the movie because some are easily recognizable, such as the store/club/restaurant in Big Sur known as "Nepenthe." And of course, there are the famous stone bridges on Highway One spanning two or three of the rugged chasms. Coursing through the movie, especially during the several seascapes, is the theme "The Shadow of Your Smile." It's a nice movie, if not a great one, and worth seeing more than once.

Taylor's physical allure is best captured by the wooden sculpture done by Kara for the film. Burton reprises a similar role to his magnificent one of a defrocked priest in "Night of Iguana"--only here he is not eventually defrocked. Burton is superb at showing internal turmoil and it is a shame that so many good performances, many of which were nominated for an Oscar (7 in all), were all bypassed by the Academy.

Minnelli must have cast Burton for the role after Huston's success with Burton in "Iguana". Taylor's agnostic rebellious life and Burton's religious moral life explode on contact and tower over all the other actors in this movie. Though Minnelli is respected for his direction, this effort of his will not be considered a major work.

Eva Marie Saint's role is elegant but not developed beyond the obvious--where are her sons mentioned in the dialogues? What's her relationship with them? Minnelli obviously took interest in the main plot, not the subplots--which is strange for an accomplished director.

The screenplay at times is very strong, e.g., with Burton's clever intonations of his repartees quoting the "Book of Proverbs" and the young child innocently reciting Chaucer in "Olde English". In retrospect the film had good tools: a good script and a good cast. But the tools in the hands of Minnelli did not sculpt a great Kara statue.

Free-spirit Laura Reynolds (Elizabeth Taylor) lives in a beach house with her home-schooled son Danny. After some incidents, a judge orders Danny to attend a religious school run by Dr. Rev. Edward Hewitt (Richard Burton) and his wife teacher Claire (Eva Marie Saint). The Hewitts' stale marriage and professional lives give rise to Edward's affair with Laura.

This is definitely more compelling due to Taylor and Burton's real-life love affair. It's a quiet melodrama. There are some intensity usually between the couple. Otherwise, it's a low simmering romance that could push some buttons due to Hewitt as a religious figure.

Richard Burton dials down the angst quotient from his previous year's role as a defrocked priest in "Night of the Iguana", and Elizabeth Taylor begins warming up for her later role as Kate in "Taming of the Shrew". The music and the scenery make the film compelling enough to watch, but the psychological and theological ramblings are strictly for the soap lover. Eva Marie Saint, as the hurt wife, has a few good scenes but not nearly enough to salvage the drama. And it's fun to see a young Charles Bronson in a beatnik role. The whole effort ranks several notches above "The VIP's" and other Burton-Taylor vehicles but all in all, "The Sandpiper" is a long boring day at the beach.

It's fun to compare this to the other film where Richard burton plays a minister.... night of the iguana. Here, he is very much the old fashioned establishment, trying to defend his religion.and trying like crazy to stay dedicated to it. In iguana, he leaves (or gets kicked out of) his church right from the beginning, and has his own demons to fight for the next ninety minutes. In this one, Burton was actually married to his antagonist (Liz Taylor), who plays a single mom raising her son as an athiest. It starts out very adversarial, but they come to an understanding, for the sake of her son. They both make compromises that will affect their lives. Co-stars eva saint and charles bronson. The little boy is played by james mason's son, morgan. It's pretty good. Directed by Vincent Minelli; he won the oscar for Gigi.