Darling [DVD]

After his major success with A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar British New Wave director John Schlesinger triumphed again with Darling, one of the most trend setting films of the mid-sixties. It starred Julie Christie, whose role in the second half of Billy Liar almost stole the film and certainly made her someone to watch. With a very strong supporting cast she is completely believable as Diana, a popular model who is seduced by dreams of glamour and will do whatever it takes to make it to the good life. Though the character is self-centered and seemingly amoral, such is Julie Christie's charisma that one can't help feeling for her and hoping she'll find her way out of her unfulfilling life.The film is many things. it's a revelation of a new kind of media celebrity lifestyle taking place in the sixties as well as a satirical take on the Sixties itself with it's live for today attitudes and hedonistic pleasure seeking. It's a picture of a world where the main power women had was to be beautiful and the way to anything involved attracting powerful men. It's a snapshot of the Swinging Sixties though not exactly of Swinging London as some seem to think. Swinging London was not something that you could visit as one could the Haight Ashbury a couple years later. It was more of a set of people who formed a new hip elite and who went to certain clubs and parties. Though Diana's role as a top model would certainly have gotten her admittance to these circles, in London she has become attached to Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), a television journalist whose circle is that of news professionals and celebrated authors. With Miles Brand (Lawrence Harvey) she travels to Paris where the crowd seems to be one of the decadent rich. With Prince Cesare della Romita she finally attains social status but loses everything else as an aristocrat's trophy wife.Everything is spot on in this film and Schlesinger's scene setting is as imaginative as ever. Most memorable to me is the interlude of the trip to Capri she makes with her gay photographer friend Malcolm, where the atmosphere becomes truly lyrical and it seems that perhaps she will see things more clearly and try to set a new course. Even in black and white Capri looks truly radiant. She does not, of course, and seals her future. One still can't help but feel for her, as her fame after being picked out for a man in the street interview is suddenly thrust upon her and soon sweeps her away; hers is not a coldly calculated course like Lawrence Harvey's Joe Lampton in Room At the Top. At the very end perhaps she can't find love but is left with a life of many possibilities due to her wealth and social status from charity work to social entertaining or travel and of course, taking an active role in raising the children. I know most see her trapped in an empty life in the end (many people feeling rightfully), but I'd like to feel there is some hope there. I think, however, it's just that I like Julie Christie.

JULIE CHRISTIE is on quite a roll in Swinging London, Paris & Rome in 1965, making her way up the ladder of "Success" while partying & toying with the affections two older men - DIRK BOGARDE & LAURENCE HARVEY who play epic love interests, one easy going the other quite wild. If you like B&W European films that are well-made & edgy with a VERY sexy leading lady get this dvd - I LOVED it bc it just keeps going, moving from place to place as DIANA (Julie) plows her way through & becomes a popular model and actress & finally an Italian princess. GREAT movie!!

This is worth watching just for the feel of 1960s Britain/Europe. To me, the story was a bit mundane -- those actually, some scenes were extremely racy for the time. I love Dirk Bogarde -- he has the most expressive eyes. Julie Christie was fascinating to watch, though I am not sure that she deserved the Oscar for Best Actress for this role (the role was more about the writing than the acting I think). Anyway, if you are curious about or are of fan of British 60s culture/film, I highly recommend it!

Darling is the story of newlyweds , hentai manga artist Jun and his wife Miyuki being approached by magazine editor Mifuji who begs Jun to do a new manga series or she'll have to become her boss's sex slave , plus it'll have to be completed in 30 days . Jun and Miyuki feeling sympathy for the woman take the challenge and using his err .. umm .. 'super power' begin the task . Darling pretty much runs the gammut of popular anime and hentai scenarios . The scenes cover everything from a sexy spy , doctor and nurses , the obligatory cyborg and tentacle monster and more . One way over the top scene displayed a unique use of musical instruments . I think you can see where this is going , I'm just thankful the guy didn't have a tuba with him , but hey if the philharmonic tried this it might boost their declining membership . Darling is just a fun , silly romp in the anime hentai universe . The artwork is great , the girls are very cute . But if you are looking for a serious hentai anime , you'll want to look somewhere else .

Some five decades ago, as a teen, I was disappointed the charming Julie Andrews lost out for her 2nd straight Oscar to another Julie I had never heard of - in a movie I knew nothing about. Having finally just watched DARLING, now I get it - both her acting skills and the movie itself.It is set a bit before the true swinging 60s, but this detracts little. Christie is in virtually every scene and dazzles the viewer. We see her evolve and become vastly more complex than the young woman early in the film sleeping her way up society. Men's lust for her comes so easily that she is unable to distinguish her emotions, until too late.The men are excellent, especially Dirk Bogarde as Robert. He is alternatively drawn and repulsed by Diana. The more wily Miles, also superbly played by suave Lawrence Harvey, has less attachment to Diana, but his entry into her life changes all for her. The actual husband, late in the film, a minor Italian Prince, makes Diana feel how empty her life has been, An excellent vintage movie-tone type news reel adds a special touch. London is of course the main setting, but Paris and the Amalfi Coast add delightful backdrops.Christie is far better in DARLING than in her better known Dr. Zhivago, also from 1965.I am always enamoured by well made black and white films. That adds much to draw in the viewer. It barely makes the 5 stars I have chosen, but well worth a viewing or two, now 50 years after it came out.

Vedendo questo film molto bello di Schlesinger, mi è venuto in mente " Io La Conoscevo Bene " generalmente e giustamente considerato il capolavoro di Pietrangeli. Entrambi hanno come protagonista una bella ragazza in cerca di affermazione nel campo dello spettacolo ; entrambi questi personaggi passano da una relazione all'altra , vivono l'esperienza dell'aborto , portano con sè il suicidio. Ci sono anche le differenze : Adriana ,la protagonista di Pietrangeli, è sicuramente più sfortunata e forse anche più sprovveduta di Diana, protagonista di Schlesinger: non si afferma per niente, mentre Diana in qualche modo riesce a realizzare qualcosa ; gli incontri di Adriana sono uno peggiore dell'altro, quelli di Diana non sono tutti negativi. Il personaggio interpretato splendidamente da Bogarde è molto bello. Diana abortisce in modo piu tutelato e protetto, Adriana no. Diana sfiora il suicidio, Adriana gli va incontro in pieno. Il senso di vuoto e di solitudine è comunque lo stesso. In entrambi i film la rappresentazione dell'ambiente circostante e dei personaggi di contorno è perfetta, così come l'uso del bianco/nero.Tutti molto bravi gli interpreti. Da non sottovalutare il bel doppiaggio fatto da Valeria Valeri del difficile personaggio di Diana.

Très bien, mais pas de sous-titres en français et version en anglais ou italien

Julie Christie obtuvo un premio Oscar por su representación de una modelo que es capaz de todo por ascender rápidamente en su carrera y que aún así luce como una chiquilla insatisfecha y manipuladora

I'd never heard of this film and I thought Julie Christie's career was somewhat "provincial" but I'm not surprised that she won an Oscar for Darling. She carries the film throughout, playing Diana, a complicated character. She also looks amazingly fit! It's a complicated film and the nasty repartee of the "smart set" is of its time. Today, remarks like that would get you thrown out (bodily) anywhere but it used to be "quite the thing" to have an arsenal of put-downs as party talk (it kept out the riff-raff) and it throws Diana's different strategy into sharp relief - she does it behind your back and it isn't what she says, it's what she does - all the pain of the indecent woman. Some moments of quite ghoulish (even childish) humour slyly remind the watcher that he/she isn't so pure - one has been "pulled in" to Diana's world and is sharing the ill-gotten fun whilst disgusted with her self-justifying (also childish) narrative and it lightens the darkness somewhat. When the demise comes there's a sadness about it more than triumph - beautiful as she is, Diana becomes tiresome, her own worst enemy; she disappoints everybody. I'll almost certainly re-visit this film.All the cast, soundtrack etc is well "up to it".

This DVD was purchased as part of my collection of Dirk Bogarde movies. Released in 1965, Bogarde appeared second in the cast-list after Laurence Harvey, who was clearly more of a box-office draw at that time, a kind of Daniel Craig of the 1960s. Yet the Julie Christie-Dirk Bogarde relationship in the film is the longest and its centrepiece since it is to it that all the others re-act and return. John Coldstream, in his biography of Bogarde, mentions that the author and screenwriter Frederic Raphael saw Bogarde in the role of the TV interviewer from the start.`Darling' is about the social development of a young woman, played by Julie Christie in one of her earliest and best roles, through her relationships with four men. According to Coldstream, Bogarde said the film "contained the best part for a British actress in ten years ... a predatory beast who claws her way through four men, ruins them, finally ending up as an Italian contessa and is ruined in turn." A kind of 1960s Bess of Hardwick, then? Well, such a comparison is strictly unfair - often Christie's development is not consciously premeditated - and inaccurate, for unlike Bess of Hardwick, death and marriage barely enter the equation (save for marriage in the final one of the four).The four leading men reflect four different sides of character for the Christie role to engage with: the BBC journalist Dirk Bogarde provides intelligence; the advertising executive Laurence Harvey provides adventure; gay photographer Roland Curram fun; and Italian aristocrat Jose Luis de la Villalonga status. But each of the four betrays and is betrayed by Christie in turn, as each lacks all or some of what the others can provide. Christie and her men use each other and are used in turn, often at the same time.The film is replete with the so-called 1960s sophistication of the cultural demimonde. Set predominantly in the London of that decade, as observers from the twenty-first century we witness the new cars, the new furnishings, new technologies and cultural attitudes; the sexual and social promiscuity with plenty of irony. Coldstream writes, "If ever a film captured the zeitgeist of the mid-sixties it was `Darling' ". (It is interesting that the final Italian sequence shows Italy still with the feel of a more conservative 1950s.)Sequences in the film are well-plotted; the editing is noticeably good and there are imaginative shots reminiscent of the decade, combining and juxtaposing close-ups with long shots, as well as more traditional camera work. Director John Schlesinger makes the film also well-observed: see the yawning choirboy, the dead goldfish, the party invitations on the mantelpiece. All of these small details (and more), together with a good production team and fine performances by the actors makes this a superior British film that engages still with the modern day.There are, alas, no extras.