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Rating:  - movie not dated
Amazon.com's reviewer said that New Wave filmmaking is dated and that in turn "Darling" is dated. I wish I could think of a witty rebuke, but New Wave filmmaking with Agnes Varda, Truffaut and Goddard is hardly dated and this movie is very good.
Rating:  - "It was so boring, that I could scream!"
This line, spoken by Julie Christie to Dirk Bogarde in "Darling" just about sums up my feelings towards this movie. Although I am halfway done with this movie I think this is one of the most boring films I have ever seen and I am stopping this movie when it gets to the scene where Christie looks at herself in the mirror as she removes her clothing. I am done with this movie (believe it or not) and it only got worse: Christie's character Diana Scott marries an Italian man who hello, is old enough to be father! And oh yes, he's an aging prince (in what had to be a ripoff of what happened to Grace Kelly and what would happen to Jacqueline Kennedy and the announcer in the newsreel that calls her "Princess Diana" almost made me laugh). That nearly made me grab a gun and shoot my TV (a la Elvis Presley) considering that this is the same setup that occurs in "Georgy Girl" and that is spoiled British girl living in Swinging England marries older man (Three words: Anna Nicole Smith). Also, I would like to know what are these reviewers smoking in saying that Christie deserved the Oscar for Best Actress? She didn't at all because it should (and I mean SHOULD) of gone to Julie Andrews for "The Sound of Music" (my pick for the best movie of the 1960's) because not only did she overtake her performance of "Mary Poppins," for which she won the Oscar, she pulverized every performance by a female that year including Christie. And there's a problem with the Academy: They can't seem to pull the trigger in giving back-to-back Oscars to the same person.
I'm not alone in this arugment: In Danny Perry's book "Alternate Oscars" he picks Andrews for Best Actress of 1965 and states that the reason why the AMPAS gave the Oscar to Christie was not because it was 'The British Invasion,' but they saw it as a way to give an Oscar to Christie's other film "Doctor Zhivago" which was T.S.O.M.'s rival and added to the fact that "Zhivago" had no acting nominations. There's another Oscar problem: They don't know when to be hip.
Also, does it seem like Dirk Bogarde and Lawrence Harvey were the two worst actors in film history? Because it seems to me that every movie that I have seen with them are bad; weather it was this movie, or "The Manchurian Candidate" with Harvey, or "Modesty Blaise" with Bogarde.
In conclusion, I think some moviegoers should change their mind about buying this movie because this has to be the worst performance ever to win an Oscar. Or as what Bogarde said to Christie: (a fitting way to close this review since that I end where it begins) "I don't take taxis that are filled with whores!"
Rating:  - the best of those english working class films of the era
this one was a shocker to me, especially after my usual ranting against the english movies of this period, and anything with laurence harvey in particular. that said -- i loved this movie, and damn if julie christie didnt DESERVE that oscar over julie andrews! she is great as a vapid self-involved ditz who uses her looks in climbing up the social ladder, finding herself in progressively more vile situations. dirk bogarde is one of her lovers, laurence harvey another, but the movie really is the property of miss christie, who gives a performance as breathtaking as her looks.
Rating:  - Was she really darling?
This movie was a good example of what was swinging at the time but not great. I saw Shampoo at the same time, oh my. Worth seeing however.
Rating: - "I don't get into taxis with whores!"
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.
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