The stylish, and grossly underappreciated film-fantasist, John Guillermin's intoxicating, visually ravishing, darkly-dreamlike melodrama, 'Rapture' (1965) demonstratively remains one of the more tangibly magical, soul stirringly sensual, earnestly performed, exceptionally exquisite coming-of-age dramas in my extensive film collection. And if that 'aint enough grist for your thrill-craving mill, the delicious weirdness of feral, saucily unkempt, wickedly windswept, dark-eyed young terror-beatnik, Joseph's (Dean Stockwell) fateful union with his no less fascinating paramour, Agnes, affecting played by the fragile ingénue, Patrizia Gozzi, are an irresistible pair of doomed misfits. In summation, if one's heart is not powerfully moved by the film's evocative climax then, quite frankly, all hope for mankind is lost! - Eerie, ethereal, and blissfully sad, maestro, John Guillermin's majestically monochromatic, tantalizingly strange masterpiece makes for uncommonly rapturous cinema, the elegiac 'Rapture' is aptly named!
Review of Rapture
