Showing posts with label
The Films of John Schlesinger.
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Showing posts with label
The Films of John Schlesinger.
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Directed By: John Schlesinger
Starring: Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey
Tag line: "Shame, shame, everybody knows your name!"
Trivia: Shirley MacLaine was originally cast as Diana, but dropped out
Julie Christie is one of my all-time favorite actresses. Her “hooker with a heart of gold” was the smartest character in Robert Altman’s brilliant McCabe & Mrs. Miller; and in Dr. Zhivago, despite being surrounded by such legendary actors as Omar Sharif and Rod Steiger, she managed to shine brighter than anyone.
With her excellent performances in these movies, as well as her turns in Shampoo, Don’t Look Now, Fahrenheit 451, and Away From Her, you would think that Ms. Christie has amassed a slew of Oscar statuettes. But the sad reality is that she only took that coveted award home once, for her portrayal of Diana Scott in 1965’s Darling.
Truth be told, not many actresses could take a character as morally bankrupt as Diana and make her fascinating, but Christie does just that in this John Schlesinger-directed award-winning, though ultimately flawed, motion picture.
Darling follows Diana’s meteoric rise to the peak of the fashion industry in 1960’s London, beginning with her days as a young housewife (married to her childhood sweetheart, Tony, played by Trevor Bower) through to the time she met and fell in love with writer / television personality Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde). Gold would abandon his wife and two kids to be with Diana, and she, in turn, left Tony to move in with Robert.
Yet despite her feelings for Gold, Diana eventually grew bored of her humdrum life, and while helping out at a charity event one evening was introduced to Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey), a powerful advertising executive. Miles would sweep Diana her off her feet.
It was Miles who helped Diana break into modeling, and her ambitious nature soon got the better of her. Once her affairs with Gold and Miles ended, Diana, vacationing in Capri, met Italian Prince Cesare della Romita (José Luis de Villalonga), who was so smitten with her that he immediately asked Diana to be his wife. For a girl like Diana, becoming a Princess was a dream come true, but was she ready to throw her career away and settle down?
Whatever affection we feel for Diana early on, when she falls madly in love with Robert Gold, slowly slips away over the course of Darling. By the time she becomes a fixture in the glamorous yet empty world of ‘60s fashion and begins sleeping with Laurence Harvey’s Miles (an affair that, the moment it begins, we know won’t last), I found myself hoping that Robert would discover her tryst and give Diana her walking papers. From her phony demeanor while chatting with the so-called “elite” of London society to the manner in which she leads on the Prince late in the film, Diana grows increasingly more loathsome as the movie progresses.
In the hands of any other actress, Diana’s antics might become tiresome, but Christie keeps us engaged by allowing a glimmer of humanity to occasionally peek through her character’s façade. More often than not, this “glimmer” is so slight that it is barely perceivable. But it’s there, and usually sticks around just long enough to remind us that Diana is, in reality, a lost soul, following her ambitions down whatever path they lead her. It’s a journey she takes often enough throughout Darling, yet rarely does it produce the result she desires. Diana Scott does some awful things throughout Darling, but Christie somehow fools us, however briefly, into believing there’s more to this young woman than meets the eye, and that alone is enough to keep us watching… and hoping.
Still, even with Christie’s tour-de-force performance, the excellent supporting work turned in by both Bogarde and Harvey, and the film’s progressive attitude towards such previously taboo subjects as abortion, promiscuity, and homosexuality (some of the movie’s best sequences involve Diana’s holiday in Capri, which she spends in the company of gay photographer Malcolm, portrayed by Roland Currem), Darling is a tough movie to recommend. It’s played far too straight to be a satire (which makes it all the more depressing), and the period it recreates (the swinging ‘60s) may be a bit too archaic for modern audiences.
In fact, I can’t imagine a time when I will want to sit through Darling again. Julie Christine has turned in numerous Oscar-worthy performances over the course of her career, and I’d probably choose any one of them over the role that actually netted her the award!
Directed By: John Schlesinger
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles
Tag line: "For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten it"
Trivia: Dustin Hoffman kept pebbles in his shoe to ensure his limp would be consistent from shot to shot
For a brief period in the mid 1980s, I considered Midnight Cowboy the greatest motion picture ever made.
Having discovered a copy of it at my favorite video palace (the one I described in my write-up of Scorsese’s Mean Streets), I was blown away by the movie’s tone, and how perfectly it conveyed abject poverty. When my attempts to purchase a copy of my own failed (at the time, VHS movies cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100, so you can imagine what a hard-to-find title like this would have set me back), I instead rented Midnight Cowboy over and over again, sometimes twice a week (I guess nobody else was interested in it; that VHS was always on the shelf when I went looking for it).
And regardless of how often I watch it, Midnight Cowboy still moves me to tears.
Tired of his humdrum life in Texas, Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a cowboy and self-proclaimed ladies’ man, packs his bags and heads to New York City, intent on becoming a high-priced gigolo.
After a few unsuccessful trysts (the first woman he hooks up with is Cass, played by Sylvia Miles, who, despite living in a penthouse, bilks him out of $20), Joe has a chance encounter with Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). A fast-talker with a bum leg, Ratso agrees, for a small fee, to set Joe up with Mr. O’Daniel (John McGiver), who Ratso claims is a first-class pimp.
When O’Daniel turns out to be nothing more than an aging homosexual with a religious fixation, a pissed-off Joe goes looking for Ratso, who he confronts in a coffee shop a few days later. Broke and with no place to stay (he was recently locked out of his hotel room for non-payment), Joe reluctantly agrees to move in with Ratso, who resides in a condemned building.
Together, the two do what they must to survive, and over time become the best of friends. But with the winter months fast approaching, a sickly Ratso talks more and more of heading south to Florida, convinced the sunshine and fresh air will cure his aliments
Can Joe raise the money to help his pal realize his dream, or will the city swallow them whole?
Jon Voight brings an “aw shucks” innocence to the part of Joe Buck, whose turbulent past is revealed by way of a series of flashbacks, presented during his long bus trip to New York City. Raised by his grandmother (Ruth White), Joe was once in love with a girl named Annie (Jennifer Salt), an affair doomed to end in tragedy (In one very traumatic flashback, we watch as Joe and Annie are both gang raped by a pack of thugs. Her psyche destroyed, a confused Annie tells the police Joe was responsible for the assault).
The moment he arrives in New York City, it’s clear that Joe is completely out of his element, making him the perfect dupe for a con man like Ratso Rizzo. As played by Dustin Hoffman, Ratso is an ornery cripple with a chip on his shoulder, yet despite having spent so much time on the streets, he’s not particularly good at raising cash. What’s more, his health deteriorates rapidly when the cold weather sets in, to the point he can barely walk without falling down.
Two years removed from his portrayal of Ben Braddock, the affluent but confused college student in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, Hoffman plays an entirely different sort of character in Midnight Cowboy, and in so doing established himself as one of the era’s finest actors.
Shining just as brightly as his two stars, director John Schlesinger brings a gritty realism to Midnight Cowboy, giving the film a documentary feel that serves its story perfectly (some scenes look as if they were lifted from a nightly news report). Focusing on his two main characters, tagging along as they traverse the harsh city streets, Schlesinger captures poverty in a way I had never seen before, making it palpable; Joe eventually manages to get his hands on some money, proudly announcing to Ratso that he has $8 in his pocket. Even by late ‘60s standards, $8 wasn’t a lot of money. Yet because we’ve experienced the lows right along with him (at one point, a desperate Joe prostituted himself on a street corner, hooking up with a homosexual teenager, played by a young Bob Balaban, who, in the end, didn’t have the money to pay), we can’t help but share in his excitement.
Sure, $8 won’t take them very far, but the fact that they have any cash at all is reason enough to celebrate.
While I no longer rank it as my all-time favorite movie, Midnight Cowboy is still high up on the list, and remains one of the most poignant exposés of poverty and loneliness ever committed to film.
