The Loved One
by Tony Richardson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anjanette Comer, Dana Andrews, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Robert MorseDirector: Tony Richardson
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Haskell Wexler
Producer: Haskell Wexler
Producer: John Calley
Producer: Neil Hartley
Writer: Christopher Isherwood
Writer: Evelyn Waugh
Writer: Terry Southern
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-06-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Loved One
Movie Review: Black!Black!Black!.....but Superb!
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't give a wholesale recommendation to this film, because I'm sure it could get under the skin of some people in an unhealthy way. In fact I'm not a big fan of black comedy myself, finding much in that genre to be contrived and gratuitously offensive. What makes this movie stand head and shoulders above the rest, in my opinion, is the intelligent screenplay; perfectly choreographed camera-work, music, and action; and the universally high-caliber acting. Johnathan Winters steals the show with his outrageous(even for him) dual role as elite funeral director and pet-cemetery operator. Rod Steiger posts a strong second place in the outrageous department for his over-the-top Mr. Joyboy. Robert Morse is very good as the likable but callow and subtly subversive young English poet. John Gielgud adds an inimitable classiness in his role as the washed-up Hollywood insider. There are many other actors in this film whose names would not ordinarily entice me to watch a movie, but who absolutely shone in this film: Roddy McDowell, Milton Berle, Robert Morley, Liberace, Dana Andrews, to name a few. It is somewhat surprising to me that all these members of the movie industry seemed to enter so whole-heartedly and with such enthusiasm into their roles which point out the crass commercialism, insincerity, and downright inhumanity of the world of L.A./Hollywood. I have to say that I found this film's irreverent and biting satire of the funeral industry to be downright creepy. The heavy, smothering organ music and claustrophobic, cloying interiors inside the funeral home, and the cheaply sentimental,yet powerfully morbid, props and gimmicks of the cemetery could certainly impact in a very negative way someone sensitive to the subject of death. This film does not seem to me so much a satire on Hollywood and the funeral industry as on the shallowness of American culture in general. It just so happens that Evelyn Waugh, the original novelist, evidently through personal experience, saw these two manifestations of American life as epitomizing this shallowness he perceived as being integral to it. The screenwriter Terry Southern did an amazing job of transferring the crisp biting wit of Waugh to the screen. Strangely and redeemingly, in my opinion, there is still hiding underneath this expose of insincerity a sense of American vitality and purpose(for instance, the wackily amazing boy rocket scientist, played by Paul Williams)and also of a naive innocence(the sweet and trusting, though not terribly bright funerary cosmetologist, played by Anjanette Comer). One could certainly argue that The Loved One exaggerates the negative aspects of America and ignores many positive ones. But I would argue that it has much to recommend itself as an intelligent and witty satire on some extremes of our culture; besides which, it is extremely entertaining.
Summary of The Loved One
The funeral business gets a giant raspberry in this wickedly wacky, resplendently ridiculous farce based on Evelyn Waugh's macabre comic masterpiece and directed with inspired verve by Tony Richardson (Tom Jones). But the American way of death isn't the film's only target: sex, greed, religion and mother love are also in the crosshairs of its satirical shots. Robert Morse plays a bemused would-be poet who gets entangled with an unctuous cemetery entrepreneur (Jonathan Winters), a mom-obsessed mortician (Rod Steiger) and other bizarre characters played by such adept farceurs as John Gielgud, Robert Morley, Tab Hunter, Milton Berle, James Coburn and Liberace. If The Loved One doesn't make you laugh, call the undertaker!DVD Features:
Featurette:Trying to Offend Everyone
Theatrical Trailer
In olden days, as Cole Porter famously observed, a mere glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. So it's heartening to report that this 1965 black comedy still delivers on its billing as "the motion picture with something to offend everyone." Tony Richardson, fresh off the liberating Tom Jones, brings Evelyn Waugh's self-described "little nightmare" to the screen with all its sacrilegious shocks (and then some!) intact, courtesy of screenwriters Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove) and Christopher Isherwood. Robert Morse stars as Dennis Barlow, an Englishman abroad and a fish out of water in Southern California. Stumbling across the Hollywood landscape like a cross between Candide and Jerry Lewis. Barlow gets a unique perspective of the American experience when he finds employment at the Happier Hunting Ground, a ramshackle pet cemetery, and the flipside of the fabulously vulgar Whispering Glades. In a virtuoso dual role, Jonathan Winters costars as glad-handing Happier Hunting Grounds proprietor Harry, whose brother, Whispering Glades' Blessed Reverend, has some out-of-this-world plans for the "Loved Ones." The mad, mad, mad mad cast also includes John Gielgud as Dennis's ill-fated expatriate uncle, an artist unceremoniously booted from the movie studio where he has worked for 31 years; Anjanette Comer as Aimee, a Whispering Glades cosmetician torn between Dennis and embalmer Mr. Joyboy (an unforgettable Rod Steiger), who registers his broken heart on the faces of his corpses; a teenage Paul Williams as a science prodigy; Liberace as a funeral salesman peddling eternal flames both "perpetual or standard"; Milton Berle and Margaret Leighton as "a typical well-adjusted American couple" whose deceased dog puts a crimp in their dinner plans; and even Jamie Farr, seen fleetingly as a waiter. The Loved One anticipates the "New Hollywood" with its naturalistic cinematography by Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool) and "anything goes" sensibility (the dinner scene with Joyboy and his obese mother would not be out of place in a John Waters movie). By turns creepy and grotesquely funny, The Loved One will bury you. --Donald Liebenson
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