Darling chérie

Julie Christie is "Darling" in this 1965 film directed by John Schlesinger, and also starring Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey. Schlesinger does a beautiful job of showing us '60s London as it was, and yet he managed to make a film that is just as timely now.

Julie Christie is model Diana Scott, a gorgeous, ambitious young woman who moves from man to man without attachment and with the intention of helping her career.

She dumps her first husband and breaks up the marriage of a British journalist (Bogarde) and then moves on to a pleasure-seeking advertising executive (Harvey), and finally, marries an Italian prince.

It's one of those lives that sounds great - she has beauty, money, men, glamour, travels in the circles of the beautiful people. But she has no emotional attachments, no love, and nothing that she has feels right or is anything she wants. All the external trappings of celebrity, but it's a shell.

A really terrific movie, and I have to agree with the posters whose comments I read that Julie Christie is perfection in every way. Bogarde and Harvey give her excellent support. As an aside, Christie's wardrobe is stunning.

None of the characters are very likable, except perhaps Bogarde, who in spite of leaving his wife and family does truly love Diana.

Despite the cold realities of Darling, we're even more obsessed with celebrity today, which makes the film even more interesting. But when you look at a photo, see someone in a magazine or on the screen, you're only dealing with a persona, not the flesh and blood individual. It's a fantasy.

Darling shows the audience what's behind the fantasy - and it's not very pretty.

I had not seen this film since 1965 when I was a college student but remember how electrifying it was to see a young, charismatic Julie Christie at the beginning of her peak years. She's given some great scenes to show off her multi-faceted personality and she throws herself into the amoral model, Diana, who sleeps her way to the top. I can't imagine any other actress who could have done this without being repulsed by her naked greed and amorality. Christie had an inner radiance that makes her likable throughout this ground-setting import from London. England had become a hot movie center during this era, giving us such phenomenal movies like "Georgy Girl," "women in love," "Isadora," and many more. We can see this movie as a time machine which captures the raw energy of that era as our sexuality began to expand into new realms from the staid values of the past. This is a terrific movie to watch from time to time and watch an early phenomenon begin her golden career.

Darling is known generally as an iconic "Sixties" movie. It is at once a product of its time and a still-born anachronism. Though conceived and shot in 1964-65, there is nary a hint of the Beatles and their ilk, who by the time this film went in front of the cameras were unquestionably the major pop cultural phenomenon on earth, and certainly in Britain where this story takes place. The characters who parade before us in this slickly packaged satire are far more evocative of the earlier "La Dolce Vita" period. Perhaps the newly emerging youthful counterculture is absent because the groupings visited here are, in contrast to the many- millioned teenage Beatles fans, older, more rarefied and further up the social ladder in corporate boardrooms, haute-couture industry gatherings, mainstream television production units, the profit-driven B-movie exploitation industry, and the haunts of continental royalty. Sparkling and memorable as it is, the musical scoring by John Dankworth was also dated by mid-1965 when this film came out.

The satire is often from the finger-pointing, underscoring school. Best example: A portly dowager in furs at a charity function stuffs an hors d'oeuvre into her mouth with a bejeweled hand as a speaker pompously thanks those present for fighting the scourge of hunger in the world.

Screenwriter Frederic Raphael and director John Schlesinger organize their material in semi- documentary fashion with voice-over narration by the title character, Diana Scott (Julie Christie) in order to reveal her hypocrisy as she describes various episodes in her life while the unfolding screen actions ironically contradict her words. She portrays herself verbally as innocent, sensible and basically decent when in fact she's selfish, dishonest and miserable. The underlying causes of her selfishness, dishonesty and misery are neither explained nor explored, but she is presented in a way that encourages us to regard her as a micro-consequence of the crass, materialistic, soulless macro-society around her. The episodes in her bumpy road to despair succeed one another briskly enough to keep us diverted and shaking our heads at the imperfect human types on display. The arc of the story takes Diana higher and higher on the material plane until she can rise no more, only to find emptiness at the top. The point seems to be "looks, money and prestige aren't everything – but look how entertainingly we're presenting that platitude."

This film and Doctor Zhivago, released shortly after, made Julie Christie the most honored and publicized actress in the world for about a year and it's interesting to compare her Diana Scott with her Lara character in David Lean's epic. Lean, a stern and experienced taskmaster, got more solid acting out of her. Schlesinger's grip is looser, resulting in a more uninhibited but less disciplined performance. As one flavor of the media-created "It" girls of the Sixties (Ann Margret, Twiggy, Goldie Hawn being other flavors) she embodied a certain attitude toward life that was in the air in the industrialized world in those days, an informality of demeanor which some would call proletarian or others would call "beatnik"; hers was a looser, more naturalistic look, a beauty outside the parlor. Julie Christie was beautiful without a speck of makeup while the wind was blowing her hair in four different directions and seemed to be an entirely different person depending on which angle she presented to the camera or what kind of light was bouncing off her partly chiseled, partly soft and sensuous features. Her very presence lent a depth that may not have been written into the character. With another actress, one can only wonder how effective this film would have been. Her chief fellow players, Laurence Harvey and Dirk Bogarde, give splendid support, as does the rest of the cast. But the spotlight is definitely on Julie; it is her showcase.

Julie Christie deserved her Oscar. So did the scriptwriters--"Should Popes be ancestors?" And no on-screen sex when the film is considerably about sex!

When the lead character becomes a princess one is reminded of Princess Diana's own life. Both are Dianas. A very unusual, complex work from Schlesinger.

I did not appreciate the film when I saw it in the Sixties; now I do. What a great year for Christie--this and "Dr Zhivago."

The social commentary is hard hitting--young black boys serving snacks and drinks to perverted white adults, the facetious interest of the idle rich in feeding the hungry around the world as the rich gobble food they do not need to eat, of rich princes busy renovating their palace's washing closets.

This is a breakthrough film depicting what a female with a fairy tale-like upbringing experiences when she gets into the real world. Julie Christie is magnificent as the free-spirited, swinging role model for women everywhere. She has men falling right and left for her and even promises of wealth beyond imagination. But her unfulfilment is perfectly depicted in this daring and innovative film. She falls for a famous dashing tele-journalist, but realises soon enough that she is no match for his brain. She falls for a slick and smarmy executive, hoping to find her place with the jet set. She sees the shallowness of that existence soon enough! She does eventually find some taste of fame and is swept away to Capri, one of the most romantic and beautiful spots in the world. But there she sees only the shallow reflection of her outer beauty when confronted with the deeper beauty of elderly women praying with grace and humility at a local church. She does also manage to meet a prince who wants to marry her. He gives her wealth, a title, an enormous glamourous estate, a tailor-made family (from a previous marriage) and his deepest admiration. Unfortunately, his admiration is no more deep for her than it might be for his prize horse or Rolls Royce. She has everything but love.

The film has much to say about the illusions of glamour that women are compelled to fulfil. They are compelled to fulfil those illusions because they never had an inkling that there could be anything else. Women could rub shoulders (and other body parts) with men of brilliance, of power, and of wealth, but their own surface existence could never be a match. The film is essentially a tragi-comedy, for beneath the delightful exterior of the film is the harsh reality that a surface life is no match for a life with purpose.

This film is also amazing because it is one of the few films that actually shows characters living in a real world, not just a world that revolves around the characters. Schlesinger fills the screen with a myriad of realities. The man on the street pontificating his views on city life, a famous author, celebrities, bohemians, a gay photographer who is not traumatised about what he is, and even that great symbol of solid innocence - the elderly woman feeding the pigeons at Picadilly Circus, they are all essentially equal in importance. We in fact are mainly introduced to Christie's character as she is plucked out of the street in an indiscriminate interview. She is much a product of the world as anyone else.

The film is still timely today, since there are still so many women who cling to the images and myths of ideal womanhood (ie: an illusion without soul or intelligence). All the performances are smashing. And yes, it is true, that swinging sixties feel is irresistible!