Joanna

I saw it in 1968 in a theater in Willamette, Illinois and remember little of it now except for a dance line at the railway station and a sojourn in the desert. The reviewer ahead of me is probably right. Probably not a great movie but for some reason it struck me right at the time. I have been trying to find out anything about the film ever since. Only today did I find it here. I am happy to know it is not wholly forgotten. If anyone knows of a copy I would be very happy to see it

This film could almost be viewed as the "let's-get-real" answer to "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", a film that probably still could not get made in the U.S. As a snapshot of "swinging London" in the sixties, "Joanna" has it all. But Donald Sutherland absolutely steals this movie as Lord Peter Sanderson; his strange, wonderful, secular soliloquy on a Moroccan beach at sunset still provokes both goose pimples and tears. South African actress Genevieve Waite, who plays the wide-eyed heroine, was declared persona non grata in her native country after making this film, solely because of her love scenes with Calvin Lockhart (she later emigrated to the U.S. and married John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas). All in all, a strange, wonderful, campy, mystic trip to the sixties.

I remember absolutely nothing about this movie...but I will never forget the night that my wife & I went to see it. It was April 29, 1969. I was 22 years old, had graduated from college the previous June, married and had a 9-week old son. And my life was about to be turned upside down....and possibly ended in Vietnam....as I had to report to the local draft board to be inducted into the army at 9 AM the next morning. For some reason, we decided to go out for dinner and to see this movie. To say that I was in a state of total depression would be putting it mildly. With my mind the state it was in when I saw this movie, knowing that I was about to leave my job, my wife, my 9-week old son & my life as I knew it, I'm afraid that I can't help anyone with any kind of a review....but that night from 50 years ago lives in my memory as if it was only yesterday.

It is silly the way we talk about movies. They are not meant for the ages but for slices of time. Once in a great great while one captures something eternal...8 1/2, Third Man, etcetera, but films are social chewing gum. Here is a fine example of an English director of the 1960s doing some turns that were fresh seeming and of the time...playing to the camera in the post dramatic sequence...don't tell me that wasn't and still would be a kick. And Sutherland's lisping soliloquy in the desert, my first awareness of the Canadian actor. A memorable film, one with some fans, many deprecators. But that's what makes horse races. Does sit hold up to critical analysis? Probably not, certainly not in the context of a lot that has followed. But lovely and fresh and exciting at the time, just like that first date with the sweet fresh girl who is now the woman with the scar from the auto accident. We change, the cinema changes. Films are not for the ages, after all, but acts of commerce sometimes tinged with art and freighted with our associations.

I knew there was something special about this movie after my law school roommate asked me out of the blue how many times I'd seen Joanna. Turned out he had another friend who spent every weekend looking for this movie in the theaters (we're talking pre-video tape days here folks). I remember being carried away by the romance of this movie, feeling totally part of the London scene it portrayed, and I liked Donald Sutherland (whom I'd never seen act before) quite a lot. I guess Genevieve Waite never made it big as a film actress, but that picture of her clothed only in a necktie that ran in the New York Times ad for this film, with the trailer "Cult Film of the Decade," sure made an impression on me in my early 20's. Highly recommended.