Diana Scott (played by Julie Christie, in the accompanying image): “Imagine if...”
Miles Brand (played by Laurence Harvey): “What?”
Diana: “It took three.”
Miles: “Took three?”
Diana: “Sexes. To make a child.”
Miles: “Very entertaining.”
Diana: “Everything would be different, wouldn't it, quite different, with three sexes.”
Miles: “Haven't we got enough problems with two?”—Darling (1965), screenplay by Frederic Raphael, directed by John Schlesinger
A Hard Day’s Night, I believe, blew off, once and for all, the gloom accrued to Britain’s “angry young man” cinema of the early 1960s. But there was a hint the year before, in 1963’s Billy Liar, of similar possibilities. It was embodied in that film by the carefree walk of Julie Christie, representing all the youthful glamour of mod London.
On this day in 1965, the movie that would provide Christie with her sole Oscar to date, Darling, premiered. This cautionary tale of the rise to prominence of a model--and of the men she discarded along the way--was one of two of her films that made a huge splash that year (the other, of course, being Dr. Zhivago).
Cinema, like the memory of a long-ago friend, can freeze an image in time. For me, Christie will always retain the radiance of her twenties. I’m not sure, then, despite her extraordinary gifts, if I’d be able to accept the thought of her as an Alzheimer’s patient in Away From Her. I suspect that those closer in age to her will find this equally challenging to credit.
A Hard Day’s Night, I believe, blew off, once and for all, the gloom accrued to Britain’s “angry young man” cinema of the early 1960s. But there was a hint the year before, in 1963’s Billy Liar, of similar possibilities. It was embodied in that film by the carefree walk of Julie Christie, representing all the youthful glamour of mod London.
On this day in 1965, the movie that would provide Christie with her sole Oscar to date, Darling, premiered. This cautionary tale of the rise to prominence of a model--and of the men she discarded along the way--was one of two of her films that made a huge splash that year (the other, of course, being Dr. Zhivago).
Cinema, like the memory of a long-ago friend, can freeze an image in time. For me, Christie will always retain the radiance of her twenties. I’m not sure, then, despite her extraordinary gifts, if I’d be able to accept the thought of her as an Alzheimer’s patient in Away From Her. I suspect that those closer in age to her will find this equally challenging to credit.
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