John Schlesinger’s quite brilliant, if savage, slashing attack on the new rich is a story of a young girl whose desire for the good things in life persuades her to give up the man who has left his wife for her love, only to drift into eventual loneliness and disillusionment.
Julie Christie sets off fireworks as the enchanting but self-centred Diana Scott.
Diana is a model who cuts a swathe through the trendy 1960s and the lives of nice, intelligent (but married) journalist Robert Gold (a melancholy, world-weary Dirk Bogarde), who fronts an earnest TV show about culture called Art and You, a not-very-nice but oh-so-cool marketing mogul Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey), and a single-parent Italian prince (José Luis de Villalonga).
Diana also befriends a gay fashion photographer called Malcolm (actor-turned-author Roland Curram), who accompanies her on holiday.
At the time, England was going through its mod “Swinging London” phase, and this scalding satire from Schlesinger remains a grand evocation of the times.
Impulsive, restless, self-absorbed and selfish, Julie Christie embodies the heartless heroine who uses men like Kleenex on her way to the top. All her dissolute encounters and abortion and divorce are notably presented without sorrowing dismay and disapproval.
Things fall apart for Diana in an undramatic and therefore convincing way. “Thank God, it’s never too late”, she says when she comes back to Robert Gold forever, she thinks. In fact, enraged by her betrayals, he’s just having a one-night stand with her as revenge. It is too late for her to make amends.
Christie won an Academy Award for her performance. The costume design and Frederic Raphael’s incisive script also won Oscars.
Robert Gold Dirk Bogarde
Miles Brand
Laurence Harvey
Diana Scott
Julie Christie
Cesare
José Luis de Villalonga
Malcolm
Roland Curram
Alec Prosser-Jones
Basil Henson
Felicity Prosser-Jones
Helen Lindsay
Director
John Schlesinger
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Diana is a model who cuts a swathe through the trendy 1960s and the lives of nice, intelligent (but married) journalist Robert Gold (a melancholy, world-weary Dirk Bogarde), who fronts an earnest TV show about culture called Art and You, a not-very-nice but oh-so-cool marketing mogul Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey), and a single-parent Italian prince (José Luis de Villalonga).
