It is not original to observe that nothing dates faster than last year's fashion, but in the case of John Schlesinger's Darling that observation is very apt. Time has not been kind to this three-Oscars winner, and as the years roll by, time gets ever more cruel. There are some films from 40/50/60 years ago which still stand up, for many reasons, each time you see them, but Darling is left far behind. Made in 1965, I suspect it was seen as 'daring' and 'modern' with its, for the time, open attitude to sex and its less than discreet treatment of homosexuality. The film was released two years before gay sex was decriminalised in Britain, but gayness permeates the whole enterprise. Schlesinger, Dirk Bogarde and Roland Curram were all gay, and even Laurence Harvey, who in his private life was also something of a heterosexual wolf and married three times, also batted for both sides and all too often comes over as camp a row of tents. The film is credited as being the brainchild of Schlesinger, Joseph Janni, the producer and Frederic Raphael, who also wrote the screenplay, and one feels that they were rather taken with the idea of being 'shocking'. Elsewhere this has been described as a 'satire' on swinging London, but if that is the case, whatever satire was intended pretty much passed me by. The trouble is that despite its three Oscars - for Julie Christie, for Raphael's script and for the costumes - it just isn't very good. The whole enterprise is two dimensional and there is no character development at all. We care not a jot for the characters (except, in my case, the Italian prince. There might be hints that he, too, is a bit of a cad and no one in his right mind would buy his explanation that when he is in Rome, he will be sharing a mug of Horlicks with his mum and watching the ten o'clock news. Nevertheless, I did feel sorry for him that he had landed himself with such a high-maintenance new bride.) Darling herself - Diana Scott - comes over as rather too nice to be the amoral model sleeping her way to the top, or if not 'nice' then 'well brought up'. You get the feeling that her idea of doing something really bad would be to forget to write a thank-you note. She also seems rather too dim to be a scheming hussy, and I don't for a second buy the idea that she was merely interested in her modelling career. She had wannabe shires housewife written all over her. As for Dirk Bogarde, am I really the only guy to think that he is all too often very wooden, that when he acts, he is all to obviously 'acting'? He was perfect for all those lightweight Doctor comedies which kept the British nation quiet in the Fifties, but when he branched out into 'serious' roles, he couldn't quite seem to cut it. It will not have been public knowledge at the time that Bogarde, too, was gay - as a former matinée idol, he had a formidable female following - but he remains wholly unconvincing as a 'wronged man'. And furthermore as a cad arts journalist who selfishly jettisoned his wife and three children to shack up with a spoilt model, he does not deserve too much of our sympathy. Every time he got upset or angry with Julie Christie, he just seemed like a middle-aged queen in a spat with his lover. Laurence Harvey, comes over rather better as the cynical and amoral seducer, but he, too, has too many quotable lines to make the part feel normal. (Incidentally, Janni was Italian and his background was much in the realistic school of film-making, so it is ironic that, despite its would-be trendy facade, Darling's heritage all to often comes over as the brittle, old-fashioned middle class stage drama the kitchen sink school was intended to usurp.) Raphael's script is far too full of attempted epigrams and quotable quotes. It is far, far too self-conscious and clever-clever for its own good. I only watched this film because I got hold of a free DVD of it at the office, and I don't feel my life would have been any the poorer had I not seen it. It simply isn't half as good in retrospect as it was thought to be at the time. These things happen. Sad, but true. If this comes your way, either on TV or stuck inside your daily newspaper, first of all see whether you might not have something better to do. Don't be fooled by the Oscars. Oh, and why is sodomy and odd sexual practice always associated with 'being sophisticated'. Does that mean the rest of us are plain old unsophisticated hicks?
Review of Darling
