Adeus às Ilusões

The story in this film is worth telling, but the script seems to take forever to tell it. Lots of explanatory dialogue bogs the film down, and there's really only enough story for maybe a one-hour television drama. One good aspect of it is it would be very easy to make this a one-sided film in which the Big Bad Headmaster (with a Soft Spot) takes away the child of sweet, free-spirited Elizabeth, but Taylor and Burton play their characters in ways that we could sympathize with either of them--or not.

Unfortunately, "or not" is a very distinct possibility. First of all, the boy in question does not exude a persona that's engaging in any way. (And what he does in his first scene certainly does not endear him to the audience.) And secondly, there's nothing really compelling enough about any of the other characters either. (Eva Marie Saint's character would be a possible exception if she had more screen time.) They're just varying degrees of liberal and conservative clichés.

While Vincente Minnelli was really incapable of making a truly awful film, given his talent--and the talent we would see in Taylor and Burton the following year in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--this can't be seen as anything but a disappointment. But it's not a total failure either. If you're initially interested, Maybe you'll stay with it. If not, you'll be totally bored.

Note: This film gave us the Oscar-winning song, "The Shadow of Your Smile." But none of the characters smile much, so it makes little to no sense when the Studio Singers perform it over the end credits. But it works as a score.

The story may be banal, and the dialogue may often seem too studied and affected. But this glossy MGM production still offers some of the pleasures of the "old-fashioned", straightforward moviemaking: first-rate performances by the three leads, good narration, gorgeous cinematography and a refreshingly unhurried pacing. (**1/2)

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.

"The Sandpiper" was the second in a number of films ("The VIPs" was the first) made together by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Their romance, which had begun on the set of "Cleopatra", had both enthralled and scandalised the public, and the studios wanted to make the most of their notoriety. The public perception of Dick and Liz as a glamorous but scandalous couple can only have been increased by the subject-matter of "The Sandpiper". At one time a film about a clergyman engaged in an adulterous affair would have been an unthinkable violation of the Production Code. By 1965, however, the Code, although not quite dead, was no longer in robust health, and a film on this subject, although still highly controversial, was no longer impossible.

Taylor's character, Laura Reynolds, is an unmarried mother who works as an artist and lives with her nine-year-old son Danny in an isolated California beach house. (The film's title derives from an injured sandpiper which she rescues and nurses back to health thereafter and becomes a symbol of freedom). Danny's behaviour, however, has got him into trouble with the law, and a judge orders her to send the boy to a local boarding school. Laura is reluctant to do this; she is a free spirit who distrusts any form of institutionalised education. To make matters worse from her point of view, the school is run by the Episcopalian Church, and she is an atheist whose attitude to religion is one of positive hostility rather than mere indifference. Nevertheless, she realises that she must comply with the judge's order or risk losing custody of her boy.

Burton plays Dr. Edward Hewitt, an Episcopalian priest and headmaster of the school. Although his values are very different from Laura's, Edward is something of an idealist and is becoming disillusioned with his life at the school, feeling that he is neither a priest nor an educator but merely a fund-raiser. (The school is currently engaged in a major fund-raising drive to build a new chapel, something Edward feels is unnecessary). Edward takes a great interest in Danny's progress and finds himself increasingly drawn towards Laura, possibly because she is so different both from him and from his wife Claire. Claire is attractive and supportive of her husband but rather staid and conventional compared to the bohemian Laura. Eventually Edward and Laura begin an affair, even though he is a married man. (This plot line reminded me of Iris Murdoch's novel "The Sandcastle", published a few years before "The Sandpiper", which also dealt with an adulterous affair between a married older schoolmaster at a boarding school and a young female artist).

Danny himself does not play a major role, being more of a plot device than a character in his own right. I felt that this was a weakness, given that one of the themes of the film is two different philosophies of education. Laura's view is that all formal educational establishments, particularly conservative boarding schools like Dr Hewitt's, are undesirable because they exist in order to turn children into conventional conformists. Her own solution, however, home-schooling Danny in a remote part of the world away from any other children and without a father-figure in his life, struck me as being likely to turn him into a self-centred loner, although the film rather shies away from criticising Laura on this point. The opening scenes in which Danny shoots a deer strike a particularly jarring note. It seemed to me highly improbable that a woman like Laura, whose whole philosophy seems to be one of living in harmony with nature, would allow her young son to have a rifle and then, when he uses it to kill an animal out of wanton curiosity, shrug the whole thing off as a harmless youthful escapade.

Elizabeth Taylor looks stunning, but neither she nor Burton are really at their best here. Burton is certainly not as good as he was as the world-weary spy in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", also made in 1965. The relationship between Edward and Laura is not based simply upon sexual attraction, but upon a growing realisation that despite their differences they are kindred spirits. The unbeliever Laura, paradoxically, has more in common with Edward's Christian idealism than does the conventionally pious Claire. The trouble is that one never really senses in Burton's performance the idealistic religious believer hiding behind the mask of the formal and pedantic schoolmaster. Taylor always comes across as slightly too glamorous to be altogether convincing as a proto-hippie.

The film contains some attractive photography of the Californian coastal scenery (although the colours in the indoor scenes are often rather dull) and there is a notable musical score, including the song "The Shadow of Your Smile". As a psychological and emotional drama it has its points of interest, but overall it is a rather dated sixties period-piece, most interesting as a record of that decade's official Golden Couple. 6/10