Darling
by John Schlesinger
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dirk Bogarde, José Luis de Vilallonga, Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey, Roland CurramDirector: John Schlesinger
Brand: CHRISTIE,JULIE
Cinematographer: Kenneth Higgins
Writer: John Schlesinger
Producer: Joseph E. Levine
Producer: Joseph Janni
Writer: Joseph Janni
Producer: Victor Lyndon
Writer: Frederic Raphael
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-12-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Darling
Movie Review: "I don't get into taxis with whores!"
Summary: 5 Stars
Forty years later and Darling is still as hip, daring, and as acerbic as ever. The absolutely ravishing Julie Christie won her much deserved best actress Oscar in 1965 for her role as Diana Scott a brazen, fickle, and swinging Londoner who is discovered by a reporter when she does a street interview, then rises through the European modeling/acting world by sleeping with every man she meets.
Light on plot but incredibly strong on character, Darling takes us from Diana's humble beginnings as she manipulates and connives her way up the social ladder, eventually becoming a darling of the jet-set high society. Diana has no specific ambition; and she has no particular talent; all she knows is that she refuses to be limited. She just wants to be happy, unfortunately though, she looks for happiness in all the wrong places.
Following the break-up of a teenage marriage, Diana drifts into the world of modeling and acting, where she meets television news reporter, Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), who leaves his family for her. They both find it terribly easy to cheat on their respective spouses with Diana admitting in a voice over that she did it because she can, and that she always places her momentary needs first.
Robert introduces her to a more powerful and wealthy set and soon she's fraternizing with somebody much more attractive: the cynical public relations mogul Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey). She becomes bored with Robert's bookish, raffish ways, preferring to hang out with Miles's vapid trendsetters, fashionistas, and pretentious artists. Robert eventually wises up to Diana's philandering ways and realizes she's using the same shabby trick against him, and there's nothing he can do about it.
Diana runs off to Paris with the utterly selfish Miles Brand, participating in an orgy, and when her feeble attempts to fool Robert don't work, she pretends she doesn't care. The moment he's too occupied with work to devote himself to her, she's off again getting into even more trouble. She even gets pregnant and is at first excited, but when she realizes that a baby would jeopardize her career, she ends up having an abortion because anything that interferes with her lifestyle has to be gotten rid of.
As she drifts backwards and forwards between Robert and Miles, she befriends a young photographer Malcolm (Ronald Curram) a gay guy, who promises to be her best friend in the whole world. After a round of shoplifting and an evening of drunken revelry, she takes him to Italy and he becomes the only man who she's capable of being honest with.
Diana is so busy taking; she never has to learn the lesson of what giving is. By the time she realizes that she has an attachment to Robert, it's just too late. He's gotten over her cruel rejection and has no further need of her. She's frantic for someone to lean on, so in desperation, she marries Cesare (Jose Luis De Villalonga), an Italian nobleman, and becomes a "Princess Diana." He keeps her at his villa with his children while presumably visiting girlfriends on the side. For Diana, this doesn't exactly spell true love or happiness.
Director, John Schlesinger perfectly captures the mood of the swinging sixties, brilliantly skewering the generation and decade itself -- innocent and guileless, but ultimately self-destructive. Christie is absolutely radiant as the modern jetsetter for whom beauty is the only ticket to fun and thrills. She's the embodiment of amorality and selfishness, but it is exactly this amorality that leaves her in an existential limbo of her own making.
Schlesinger and screenwriter Frederick Raphael don't exactly condemn Diana making her choices or for taking the route that she does, but they haven't anything positive to say about her either. Christie plays her as a spoilt, petulant little girl, too totally amoral to feel anything honest or meaningful for another person, or for that matter, to elicit a strong feeling from us.
Christie is eminently watchable and her stunning beauty carries the film. In fact, she's so pretty that her flaky character remains always interesting. Dirk Bogarde goes from happy to neurotic to vindictive, and Laurence Harvey maintains a smug winner's superiority that's very off-putting. If there is any downside to Darling, it's that there's ultimately nobody on screen worthy of our sympathy.
But Darling is ultimately a searing indictment of Sixties superficiality, all dressed up to look chic and sophisticated, in which the surface of things is readily available from a deluge of media outlets but nothing is explored in depth. It is indeed a classic film and can be viewed again and again.
By closely studying and scrutinizing Julie Christie's character, Raphael and Schlesinger were able to focus on poster girl, the pretty face we encounter every day on television that seduces us into buying products we neither want nor need. Perhaps the ultimate statement, and the theme of the movie, is that this type of character is as empty as the image itself.
At one moment, as she is caught by a camera from precisely the right angle, Diana Scott displays an almost classic beauty, startling in its intensity; a second later, all sorts of sordid, superficial emotions cross over her face, making her appear cheap and ultimately quite vacuous. Perhaps it's a testament to Ms. Christie's fine performance that she can make these emotions appear so real. Mike Leonard October 05.
Summary of Darling
Julie Christie turns in an astonishing, OscarÂ(r)-winning* performance in this "sensitive and stunning tale" (Cue) about wanting it alland getting exactly what you wish for. Directed by John Schlesinger from an OscarÂ(r)-winning* screenplay by Frederic Raphael, Darling is "a slashing social satire loaded with startling expositions and lacerating wit" (The New York Times). Ambitious model Diana Scott (Christie) uses her relationships to turn a low-rent career into a high-gear smorgasbord of jet-setting, love-making and the pursuit of hedonistic happiness. But as she moves from one fiery tryst with a TV writer (Dirk Bogarde) to another with a suave playboy (Laurence Harvey) and yet another with a crown prince, she finds that happiness is the one thing that may elude her forever. *1965: Actress (Christie), Original Screenplay, Costume DesignJulie Christie's miracle year of 1965 (she was also in Doctor Zhivago) was capped by a best-actress Oscar® for this sardonic take on Swinging London. Looking about as gorgeous as women get, Christie ascends the ladder of social success, trampling everybody in her path--an ascent that allows writer Frederic Raphael and director John Schlesinger to slash away at the morally bankrupt world that would enable such a person to triumph. Cynics might suggest that Schlesinger's approach, rife with the experiments of New Wave filmmaking, is nearly as empty and showy as the world it describes... which may be why this movie seems more dated than, say, Richard Lester's films from the '60s. Still, with Christie getting generous and suave support from two of the top British stars of the day, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, Darling remains a watchable missive from a volatile era. --Robert Horton