Joanna

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.

Michael Sarne wrote and directed this odd, sometimes-charming, sometimes-not chronicle of a wide-eyed art student in '60s London who falls in with a decadent crowd. Helium-voiced Genevieve Waite is like a cross between Anne Heche and Shirley Temple. She has fantasies of bathing nude in a pond full of lilies and being dried off by her girlfriend dressed as a maid, and later one featuring the same friend being strangled by her lover. "Joanna" is incongruous: Sarne is in love with old-fashioned trappings and modern techniques. Some of his shots are delectable (Waite crossing a bridge at sunset, or running down a pathway lined with trees), but the film's eye-candy needs something substantial to go with it. As to Waite's Joanna, I never understood the leading character or felt anyone on-screen did either (at one point, the girlfriend says to Joanna, "I don't sleep around as much as you do", but we never get the impression that Joanna is promiscuous--she seems only to want true love). Donald Sutherland gives the film's only solid performance as a fey Lord and the sharp, canny editing keeps the picture popping. Otherwise, the movie is just a mod bauble, and only a hint of true cleverness is left behind. ** from ****

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.

I remember this film as one which helped to define my life in college in the late 60's. I must have seen it along with my friends 10 times. We had the songs memorized and would sing them everywhere. I can't really understand the negative comments about this film. I would really like to find a copy out there somewhere so I could see it again. Does anyone have a copy?

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