Around the time that I got to high school, I began to realize that some people, in both my own age group and in my parents' generation, lived their lives in a manner that seemed somewhat shallow and empty from my vantage point. I soon also concluded, however, that an even more useless way to employ one's time was to sit around smugly, alone or with my friends, discussing the shallowness of people unlike ourselves. Some of what seemed meaningless to me might be precisely what others viewed as most important in life. Moreover, if I spent my time grousing about other people's shallow lives, hadn't I essentially lost the battle and permitted those shallow agendas to dominate my own existence? I concluded that the best way to ensure that my own life would not become engulfed in what I viewed as mundane was to busy myself in positive ways doing the things I judged to be worthwhile. Rather than turn up my nose at people engaged in what struck me as shallow activities, I would just ignore those activities.

That approach has worked pretty well for me over the years but, as a film lover and critic, it puts me in conflict with a certain type of movie. The films that I have in mind are ones that mainly satirize or mock characters that the screenwriter judges to be leading shallow lives. Examples that come to mind include Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel (1962), Truffaut's Day for Night (1973), and the present film, Darling (1965). All of these films are ones that I rate much lower than do most other critics. My question is: why would a viewer want to spend two hours observing the boring lives of shallow characters? Is it just to experience a snooty superiority from being above that sort of thing? Although Antonioni's brilliant L’Avventura (1960) might also quality as the same kind of film, it has such powerfully redeeming visual and expository qualities that it stands as a rare exception for me to my own rule. Schlesinger and scriptwriter Frederic Raphael provide no such redeeming artistic value in their stab at satirizing plastic, synthetic existences of the modern television and advertising age.

Historical Background: English director John Schlesinger first learned the cinematic craft as an actor, a television director, and a documentary director. His 1960 documentary Terminus won a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival and a BAFTA award. That led to his debut feature film, A Kind of Loving (1962). Schlesinger's second film was the first of three collaborations with actress Julie Christie. Schlesinger provided Christie with her first starring role in Billy Liar (1963), opposite Tom Courtenay. Then Schlesinger arranged with screenwriter Frederick Raphael to create a script tailor-made for Christie's talents, resulting in the present film, Darling (1965). The result was an Oscar trophy for Christie at a still early stage in her career. Then Schlesinger and Christie teamed up a third time for Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), an adaptation of a novel by Thomas Hardy. Schlesinger and Christie then went their separate ways onto successful careers. Schlesinger went to Hollywood to direct his greatest film, Midnight Cowboy (1969), starring Dustin Hoffman and John Voight, winning Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director in the process. The best of Schlesinger's later films included Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Marathon Man (1976), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Madame Sousatzka (1988), and Cold Comfort Farm (1993). He died in 2003.

The Story: Diana Scott (Julie Christie) is an ambitious young model looking to get ahead anyway that she can. We see an advertising poster that features her visage being pasted, symbolically, over another poster pleading for donations for starving people in Africa. Diana is married to a young man who bores her. When a young journalist, David Gold (Dirk Bogarde), interviews Diana on the street one day, she takes a vicarious interest in his sharp mind and intellectual life. Soon the two are having an affair, despite both being married to other people. Diana is thrilled when David takes her along when he interviews a famous elderly writer. David leaves his wife and children to move in with Diana. At first, she insists that he continue to spend time with his children, but soon she becomes jealously possessive of him. The sound of his typewriter begins to annoy her as well.

Diana soon begins an affair with a hotshot advertising executive, Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey) who leads life in the fast lane. He soon has her moving ahead briskly in her career. She's recreated as "The Happiness Girl," promoting various consumer products. Diana discovers that she is pregnant and decides on an abortion so as not to spoil her career. When David discovers that Diana is cheating, the two have a spat, and split. Diana and Miles attend a bizarre party and play a game in which various revelers take turns mocking one another. Diana becomes friendly with a gay photographer, Malcolm (Roland Curram), and the two head off to Italy together. There they play "brother and sister" and briefly share the same bisexual young man.

At a jet-set party in Capri, Diana meets Cesare, an Italian Prince, and, later, his son Curzio. Cesare, who's a good deal older than Diana, lost his wife recently. With Curzio's approval, Cesare asks Diana for her hand. She initially declines, but later changes her mind. Soon she finds herself trapped in the Prince's palazzo, basically playing the part of an ornament. While the Prince participates in important matters of state, Diana is idle and waited on hand and foot. Desperate to recover some sense of purpose, she escapes to London and tries to take up with David, but is definitively rejected, after one night "for old times sake." Returning to Italy, Diana resumes her empty life as figurehead princess. The film closes on the image of an old beggar woman in a busy town square belting out a verse of Santa Lucia, with all the conviction of a person with no glamor but plenty of heart.

Themes: Raphael really leaves little doubt about his script's message. This film is your basic satirical put-down of the sixties brand of yuppies, consisting of the jet-set, media tycoons, empty-headed plastic models, and conspicuous consumers. There are a few jabs at false charity and racism, but it's really all too heavy-handed to be especially entertaining or illuminating. We understand from the beginning that Christie's character will have to be a victim, in the end, of her own shallow selfishness and amorality.

Production Values: The problem inherent in the kind of script that aims at skewering the shallowness of insipid individuals is that the principal characters must be ones without much depth. We critics typically applaud films if they give us characters with depth and complexity, but here we are expected to content ourselves with a script that only skims the surface of characters that only have surfaces. In Darling, we're not trying to discover why the protagonist acts as she does. It's painfully obvious that the character simply lacks enough insight, self-reflection, or awareness of life to behave otherwise. The film effectively portrays Diana Scott as a vacuous character, but observing a vacuum for two hours is a rather tedious business. Christie's character is just too sordid and superficial to be worth either our attention or our compassionate interest.

The script is also badly flawed in another way. The bulk of the film is presented as an extended flashback, as Diana Scott describes her life and how she came to be the wife of an Italian Prince. Her voice pops up, now and then, as voiceover narrative. So, on the one hand, we are getting the story from her supposedly shallow point of view but, on the other hand, the story is revealed in a way that reflects an intelligent perspective and sense of distance. We have to imagine Diana speaking with a degree of insight that is precisely what she is incapable of experiencing. How can a shallow person insightfully relate the story of her own shallow existence?

Schlesinger takes a stab at a variety of distanciation techniques, apparently hoping to be mistaken for Bergman, Antonioni, or Godard. There are a lot of jump cuts, an occasional freeze frame, characters addressing the camera, and a semi-documentary segment involving street interviews, but it all seems haphazard and disjointed. The musical score, by John Dankworth, on the other hand, is reasonably successful.

Julie Christie was born on her father's tea plantation in Chukus, India and was educated in England and France. She studied acting at London's Central School of Music and Drama before joining a repertory company in 1957. After some bit parts in films, she got her first lead role in Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963). Her subsequent roles included ones in Doctor Zhivago (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Petulia (1968), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), The Go-Between (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), Shampoo (1975), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Hamlet (1996), Dragonheart (1996), Afterglow (1997), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Christie won an Oscar for her performance here in Darling. In disparaging the film, I don't mean to disparage Christie's fine performance. In fact, it's really the only reason to put this film in the player. At the time, some critics complained that Christie wasn't so much acting as just being herself in this role. Certainly the role was tailor-made for her talents. My appreciation for Christie's acting talent is deepened after seeing this film, but I still don't much care for her as a personality type or as a type of woman.

Christie got able support in this film from both Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey. Bogarde's other film work included Quartet (1949), Doctor in the House (1954), The Servant (1963), King and Country (1964), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), Providence (1977), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). Harvey appeared in I Am a Camera (1955), Room at the Top (1959), Butterfield 8 (1960), The Alamo (1960), and The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

Bottom-Line: The MGM DVD of this film offers an English soundtrack with optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles. The only special feature is the theatrical trailer. The film's running time is a tedious 127 minutes. In 1965, British cinema was in transition from the "kitchen sink" era into the "swinging sixties" period. Darling, falling on the cusp, might be described as kitchen sink meets swinging sixties, but it's not a successful amalgam. The British Film Institute lists this film as the 83rd best British film all-time. I'd give the film just two-stars except Christie's performance is enough to lift it to three.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age