Tonight's movie was "Lilith" (1964), starring Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg. Beatty plays a brooding ex-soldier, back home after the Korean War and living with his grandmother. He is idle and in need of a job, so with no other prospects he applies at the local sanitarium. Kim Hunter (the legendary "Stella"! from Streetcar Named Desire) plays the administrator of the institution. Though Beatty has no qualifications, he seems earnest so she hires him, promising to train him as an occupational therapist.
Right away, he connects with the patients on a surface level, but doesn't really understand what makes them tick. He meets an intellectually dominating lesbian, who lets him know he is out of his league, and also a high functioning autistic played by Peter Fonda in a performance that steals the show. I have to interject here to say that, while his sister Jane had the more acclaimed career, I am coming to believe that Peter was the better actor. Here, as patient Steven Evshevsky, he is stiff and fastidious, yet friendly. He speaks in formal, literate sentences. Steven is in love with a female patient who stares out her window from the second floor. This is the Jean Seberg character "Lilith". Lilith plays her handmade flute every afternoon, which hypnotises Fonda. She is incredibly artistic, and in addition to being able to play the flute, she can weave and paint, and has also invented her own language.
At first, it's hard to tell what's wrong with Lilith. She's sharp and articulate, not walking around in a fog like most of the other patients. She's also manipulative, and beautiful. Beatty is drawn to her right away, but is soon to discover the difficulties of becoming emotionally involved with a mental patient. During an outing at a wilderness park (filmed on location in Maryland), he observes the interaction between Lilith and Steven Evshevsky, and you can see the jealousy rise on his face. There is no reason for it. Evshevsky is non-threatening and likely asexual. But Beatty cannot detach himself from Lilith enough to act in a professional manner. As his feelings for Lilith grow, he will apply for permission to take her on outings by himself, under the guise of building her confidence. In truth, she is overconfident, a nymphomaniac and probable pedophile. In her mind she can act out anything because it's "who Lilith is"(she speaks of herself in the third person). There is a scene - shocking for 1964 - where she takes advantage of a boy on a streetcorner, not to an alarming degree, but enough to make Beatty pay closer attention to her influence on people, including himself. He's been treating her as his girlfriend, but she's insane. Beatty's relationship with Lilith will have serious consequences later on in the film, and of course I cannot tell you what they are.
We will also learn that she had a brother who "committed suicide". Whether or not she killed him is beside the point; her actions led to his death. This will also be a shocking revelation for the time period, and would be so even now. This may be the reason she is at the asylum in the first place. As Beatty loses his hold on her, he begins to crack up himself. He goes to visit an ex-girlfriend (Jessica Walter), only to discover that she is now married (to Gene Hackman, playing a real schlub). We learn more about Beatty's character during this visit, including some information about his mother that gives insight into his motivations. That's all I will say about the plot.
On paper, this should have been a great film. It did receive a reasonably high score on IMDB, 6.9, and Jean Seberg said it was her favorite of all her pictures. For me, however, I found it way too long, 115 minutes, and I felt that director Robert Rossen spent far too much time lingering on the romance. Certainly, it is the theme of the movie, but he could have told the same story at a faster pace. Instead, he follows Seberg around, often in closeup, the camera catching her every change in expression, and while she was indeed a striking woman, and a decent actress (but perhaps not a great one), I feel this gave her too much "face time" in which to emote. I don't know how to put it, except to say that there is something irritating about her performance. I don't think it's her fault, but Rossen's. After all, how many different looks of insanity can she be expected to show? We get it that the character is supposed to be intense and misunderstood. But with Rossen's camera in her face all the time, Seberg couldn't help but overdo it. Now, many would think she is terrific in the role, so perhaps it's a matter of taste. She's never been a favorite of mine, even in the classic "Breathless". For Beatty's part, he is called on mostly to react, which he does by wrinkling his brow to indicate deep thought. Again, he's a good actor too, and the movie's faults are not due to him or Jean Seberg but to Robert Rossen, who should've cut twenty minutes from the length. Had he done that, he'd have had a very tight and compelling motion picture, especially given the supporting performance of Peter Fonda and also Anne Meacham as the frosty lesbian.
"Lilith" is by no means a bad film. I just found it too long and meandering. I'd really like to give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, but I just can't do it. I'm gonna give it One and One Half Thumbs, and still recommend that you see it for yourself. You might like it better than I did. The black and white location photography is excellent, and the jazz score, while sometimes too breezy for the subject matter, is overall effective. One last note : I don't mean to pick on Jean Seberg. She had a tragic life, and was taken advantage of in Hollywood. Harassment by the FBI may have led to her death. I know they are currently making a biopic about her, which will give folks - including me - a better perspective on who she was. I'm sure she was a good person and a nice lady, it's just that I've found her onscreen persona to be a little off-putting. That is all. /////
We had good singing in church this morn, and the Rams were winning the last time I checked. Maybe I shouldn't check again, haha! Right now I am off to West Valley Libe (open on Sundays, yippee!) to scour the racks for unseen films. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment