Julie Christie won her only Oscar for her performance in John Schlesinger's Darling, and it's easy to see why. Her Diana Scott commands the screen, with Christie's iconic beauty becoming a fixation for men and women alike as she sleeps her way around the London scene. She goes through many different affairs, from the mature and emotional journalist played by Dirk Bogarde to the cynical ad executive played by Laurence Harvey and several others, none of them being enough to keep her grounded in one place.
It's a tale of a woman sleeping her way to the top, moving from circle to circle and losing herself along the way. Diana Scott is a deplorable character, moving around from man to man with no regard for the consequences of her actions, constantly bored and doing whatever she wants just to keep company around her, but Christie manages to make her compelling rather than grating. She has a transfixing presence that keeps your eyes glued to her even when you want to reach in there and slap her across the face.
Schlesinger's style is a clever mix of dark drama with the swinging style of London the '60s, effectively combining several genre elements into a well-paced product. The dynamics in the film seem commonplace now, but I was impressed by how innovative some of the approach was for this kind of understated drama. Like he did a few years later in his films Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday, Schlesinger paved the way for homosexuality in mainstream cinema here, presenting characters of all sexual orientations (straight, gay and some seemingly in the middle) as bluntly as any other. One wouldn't take notice of it now but for it's time period and it's prominence, Schlesinger made some bold moves here.
The film is Christie's show, but the supporting cast does strong work as well. Bogarde commands the screen whenever he's on it and steals the most dramatic scene in the film from Christie, a smoldering display of rage and passion. Harvey's character is cold and detached, but he plays it with a smug coolness that is endlessly watchable. There's nothing about the film that resonates too strongly, but it's an impressive work all around, building around a shallow and amoral character to a film that is anything but.
It's a tale of a woman sleeping her way to the top, moving from circle to circle and losing herself along the way. Diana Scott is a deplorable character, moving around from man to man with no regard for the consequences of her actions, constantly bored and doing whatever she wants just to keep company around her, but Christie manages to make her compelling rather than grating. She has a transfixing presence that keeps your eyes glued to her even when you want to reach in there and slap her across the face.
Schlesinger's style is a clever mix of dark drama with the swinging style of London the '60s, effectively combining several genre elements into a well-paced product. The dynamics in the film seem commonplace now, but I was impressed by how innovative some of the approach was for this kind of understated drama. Like he did a few years later in his films Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday, Schlesinger paved the way for homosexuality in mainstream cinema here, presenting characters of all sexual orientations (straight, gay and some seemingly in the middle) as bluntly as any other. One wouldn't take notice of it now but for it's time period and it's prominence, Schlesinger made some bold moves here.
The film is Christie's show, but the supporting cast does strong work as well. Bogarde commands the screen whenever he's on it and steals the most dramatic scene in the film from Christie, a smoldering display of rage and passion. Harvey's character is cold and detached, but he plays it with a smug coolness that is endlessly watchable. There's nothing about the film that resonates too strongly, but it's an impressive work all around, building around a shallow and amoral character to a film that is anything but.