It's been said that Peter Bogdanovich's ruin as a director was when he ditched his wife and artistic collaborator Polly Platt for ingénue Cybill Shephard. Platt had worked with Bogdanovich on all his early successes; after they parted company, Bogdanovich's career promptly slipped from the heights of a wunderkind to a has-been pursuing epic folly. "Daisy Miller" is one of his follies.
I found the film unwatchable, primarily due to the poor acting. I then tried to watch the film for Bogdanovich's commentary, since I find his books such as "Who the Devil Made It" to be very informative. It didn't help.
In his comments on the DVD, Bogdanovich praises Shepherd's performance and that of the juvenile James McMurty as Daisy's brother Randolph: both are execrable. Shepherd, at least, is a looker, but McMurtry gives an amateurish performance. Bogdanovich tells us that he cast leading actor Barry Brown after he and Shepherd interviewed him and liked him. He praises Brown's performance in the film, another bellwether indicating that Bogdanovich is -- and was -- painfully out of touch with the reality of "Daisy Miller." Brown promptly returned to obscurity after "Daisy Miller." You can see why watching his performance: He has no weight, and no voice, no real PRESENCE.
Obviously, Brown was cast so as not to overwhelm the relatively talentless Shepherd in her "breakthrough" role. (Bogdanovich, always the name-dropper, recalls that Orson Welles said that Shepherd was "born to play the role." Does he understand the irony of Welles' comment? That Daisy Miller is a flighty light-weight?) The name-dropping Bogdanovich points out that Cloris Leachman, who plays Daisy's mother, won an Academy Award. If you consider Leachman's career, you realize that that role was her sole outstanding work in motion pictures. While she won multiple Emmies in TV as a comedienne, TV acting in comedy is not equivalent to the rigors of dramatic cinema work: just check out the career of Shepherd, generally considered a talentless washout in motion pictures but honored as an "actress" in the TV comedy genre with four Emmy nominations. Leachman is not up to playing Mrs. Ezra Miller; she lacks the gravitas. Why isn't Joanne Woodward playing the role? Woodward or Lee Remick, so notable in the Ivory-Merchant-Jhabvala adaptation of Henry James' "The Europeans" (1979), could have brought some needed weight and class to the film.
There is nothing of weight in this film, aside from the lush costumes and beautiful scenery. This film needs to be anchored by fine acting to get across the psychology and internalized conflicts that are critical to James, but it does not get it from the principals. Shepherd was, and is, a fashion model in this film. There is nothing in the acting, aside from Mildred Dunnock, to attract and hold your attention.
Bogdanovich whines in his commentary that audiences just didn't "get" this film, aside from Harvard students (Bogdanovich is forever the snob) who saw a screening and who had read the James' short-story. He continues whining that it wasn't until much later, with the Merchant-Ivory films, that Henry James came into vogue (as if this was all a matter of fashion!). NOTE: There were 26 films and TV plays based on James' work before "Daisy Miller" appeared, and 39 more after-wards. Boggdanovich's film was one of four James works in 1974. So much for the audience not "getting" Henry James!)
Bogdanovich is as clueless as a commentator on "Daisy Miller" as he was as the film's director. The film is AWFUL and AWFUL precisely because of the director. He doesn't know how to bring out the film's theme.
Bogdanovich tells us that the main conflict is that the character of Winterbourne is guilty over the seductions he has made in the past, and that he assumes that the innocent Daisy is as corrupt as he is. (Bogdanovich also says that Winterbourne remains clueless throughout the story, a clear case of projection of the director's own state of mind about his own film, about his own "Daisy Miller.") In the scene, with Dunnock, in which this thematic point is "made," we watch Brown twirl his mustache to indicate his great experience with women, as if he were some 1920s silent-film Lothario. Dunnock has to do the heavy-lifting via dialog in the scene. Yet, nothing comes across as Brown doesn't have the chops to indicate the existential state of his character.
Brown is supposed to be WORLDLY! according to Bogdanovich. (In an early scene, Daisy's brother Randolph doesn't believe Winterbourne is American, mistaking him for an Englishman or a German. Was it Barry Brown's California accent that fooled him? For a person supposedly raised in Europe and schooled in Geneva, he sounds like he strayed remarkably little from Brown's hometown of San Jose.) Well, Brown's Winterbourne doesn't come across as worldly, or a guilty seducer; he comes across as a spoiled little boy, not much older emotionally than Randolph. Far from being a corrupter, he comes across as a brittle, timid soul who would be startled and severely off-put by the sound of a servant passing gas!)
Rather than being the cornucopia of riches that is a Henry James novella, Peter Bogdanovich's "Daisy Miller" is a sad sack film made by a sad sack of a director whose strings were unraveling without his collaborator Polly Platt to draw them tight.
This film should be viewed in film schools along with the Bogdanovich-Platt "The Last Picture Show" (1971) to debunk the "auteur" theory. Bogdanovich's career gives truth to the contention that film is an industrial process with many "authors," not just one (the director). If the auteur theory were true, Bogdanovich would have returned to form eventually and produced more good films, if not another masterpiece.
He didn't -- he didn't even come close. Bogdanovich will remain a footnote in cinema history, more valuable for his contributions to the literature of film than the medium itself.
I found the film unwatchable, primarily due to the poor acting. I then tried to watch the film for Bogdanovich's commentary, since I find his books such as "Who the Devil Made It" to be very informative. It didn't help.
In his comments on the DVD, Bogdanovich praises Shepherd's performance and that of the juvenile James McMurty as Daisy's brother Randolph: both are execrable. Shepherd, at least, is a looker, but McMurtry gives an amateurish performance. Bogdanovich tells us that he cast leading actor Barry Brown after he and Shepherd interviewed him and liked him. He praises Brown's performance in the film, another bellwether indicating that Bogdanovich is -- and was -- painfully out of touch with the reality of "Daisy Miller." Brown promptly returned to obscurity after "Daisy Miller." You can see why watching his performance: He has no weight, and no voice, no real PRESENCE.
Obviously, Brown was cast so as not to overwhelm the relatively talentless Shepherd in her "breakthrough" role. (Bogdanovich, always the name-dropper, recalls that Orson Welles said that Shepherd was "born to play the role." Does he understand the irony of Welles' comment? That Daisy Miller is a flighty light-weight?) The name-dropping Bogdanovich points out that Cloris Leachman, who plays Daisy's mother, won an Academy Award. If you consider Leachman's career, you realize that that role was her sole outstanding work in motion pictures. While she won multiple Emmies in TV as a comedienne, TV acting in comedy is not equivalent to the rigors of dramatic cinema work: just check out the career of Shepherd, generally considered a talentless washout in motion pictures but honored as an "actress" in the TV comedy genre with four Emmy nominations. Leachman is not up to playing Mrs. Ezra Miller; she lacks the gravitas. Why isn't Joanne Woodward playing the role? Woodward or Lee Remick, so notable in the Ivory-Merchant-Jhabvala adaptation of Henry James' "The Europeans" (1979), could have brought some needed weight and class to the film.
There is nothing of weight in this film, aside from the lush costumes and beautiful scenery. This film needs to be anchored by fine acting to get across the psychology and internalized conflicts that are critical to James, but it does not get it from the principals. Shepherd was, and is, a fashion model in this film. There is nothing in the acting, aside from Mildred Dunnock, to attract and hold your attention.
Bogdanovich whines in his commentary that audiences just didn't "get" this film, aside from Harvard students (Bogdanovich is forever the snob) who saw a screening and who had read the James' short-story. He continues whining that it wasn't until much later, with the Merchant-Ivory films, that Henry James came into vogue (as if this was all a matter of fashion!). NOTE: There were 26 films and TV plays based on James' work before "Daisy Miller" appeared, and 39 more after-wards. Boggdanovich's film was one of four James works in 1974. So much for the audience not "getting" Henry James!)
Bogdanovich is as clueless as a commentator on "Daisy Miller" as he was as the film's director. The film is AWFUL and AWFUL precisely because of the director. He doesn't know how to bring out the film's theme.
Bogdanovich tells us that the main conflict is that the character of Winterbourne is guilty over the seductions he has made in the past, and that he assumes that the innocent Daisy is as corrupt as he is. (Bogdanovich also says that Winterbourne remains clueless throughout the story, a clear case of projection of the director's own state of mind about his own film, about his own "Daisy Miller.") In the scene, with Dunnock, in which this thematic point is "made," we watch Brown twirl his mustache to indicate his great experience with women, as if he were some 1920s silent-film Lothario. Dunnock has to do the heavy-lifting via dialog in the scene. Yet, nothing comes across as Brown doesn't have the chops to indicate the existential state of his character.
Brown is supposed to be WORLDLY! according to Bogdanovich. (In an early scene, Daisy's brother Randolph doesn't believe Winterbourne is American, mistaking him for an Englishman or a German. Was it Barry Brown's California accent that fooled him? For a person supposedly raised in Europe and schooled in Geneva, he sounds like he strayed remarkably little from Brown's hometown of San Jose.) Well, Brown's Winterbourne doesn't come across as worldly, or a guilty seducer; he comes across as a spoiled little boy, not much older emotionally than Randolph. Far from being a corrupter, he comes across as a brittle, timid soul who would be startled and severely off-put by the sound of a servant passing gas!)
Rather than being the cornucopia of riches that is a Henry James novella, Peter Bogdanovich's "Daisy Miller" is a sad sack film made by a sad sack of a director whose strings were unraveling without his collaborator Polly Platt to draw them tight.
This film should be viewed in film schools along with the Bogdanovich-Platt "The Last Picture Show" (1971) to debunk the "auteur" theory. Bogdanovich's career gives truth to the contention that film is an industrial process with many "authors," not just one (the director). If the auteur theory were true, Bogdanovich would have returned to form eventually and produced more good films, if not another masterpiece.
He didn't -- he didn't even come close. Bogdanovich will remain a footnote in cinema history, more valuable for his contributions to the literature of film than the medium itself.