SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

redanman 08.02.2010 was on TCM today as it was Julie Christie Day Interesting vehicle for a snapshot of the transitional time set in the very short time of the late 1960's to early '70's when the world fundamentally changed forever. Long before airport security, political correctness and at the start of sex without feeling and/or consequences our characters soldier on in a time capsule.It is a lovely little look at curious characters and a character who perhaps does not exist. It is a rare period piece of the period that garnered much more attention at the "New Extreme" rather than this hold on of the "Old Guard", an extension of former moralities with a creeping in of the new modern world, almost unaware that it exists.John Hurt plays a curious little man-boy who is very socially awkward whose role does not become clear until the last 20 minutes. Julie Christie is a divine little character living in a world that may or may not really exist and Michael Sarrrazin, well, he is an idealized character that Adrian Grenier's calls to mind or vice versa.In the end it was far too long a run for the very short hop. The snapshot of a very small part of that time is indeed captured well, but there really is no story and no metaphor, just a fantasy and not a drug-fueled one. Recommended only for Movie Nutcases.

tckmek1961 Well, I have always loved this movie. I saw it on TV as a youth in the early 70s. I ached to see it for decades afterward. I was thrilled when the Romance Channel played it a few years ago. I love the music in it. I wish they'd made a single of the theme song. I also like seeing the 60s European scenery. I originally saw it because I was a Michael Sarrazin fan. Because of it I came to be a fan of John Hurt. I've enjoyed watching John Hurt age and become a big star afterward. I also appreciate Julie Christie too. And I like Adolfo Celi! He just brightens up the whole thing. Don't be dissuaded from watching this. Check it out and form your own opinion.

mukava991 Contains Spoiler.This tale of emptiness, boredom and longing is empty, boring and long (even at 90 minutes, it's long). Co-scripted by Antonioni's collaborator Tonino Guerra (whose credits include L'AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE, BLOW UP) this film resembles that director's work superficially. It's about an idle rich girl Catherine (Julie Christie), whose father (Adolfo Celi) lures her to his fourth or fifth wedding in Geneva by telling her he will introduce her to a fascinating young American named Gregory. At the Geneva airport she sees a poster of an auto-ball player (Michael Sarrazin) and from there on she visualizes Sarrazin when she fantasizes about Gregory. All of the fantasy sequences are insipid and dull; they wouldn't even be worth watching as reality. In the course of the next hour she interacts with her somewhat incestuous, wimpy brother (John Hurt, several years before his breakthrough in THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT), her father, her father's new bride (Paola Pitagora) and various bit players in her frustrated search for Gregory. But the object of her romantic fantasy has always just left or was expected to show up but hasn't. At one point on her wild goose chase she ends up in a room containing crates of canned Alpine air(!). The warehouse employee opens one for her and of course it is empty. This moment seems to sum up the whole film. From the opening credits onward a pop song is either sung or played in various arrangements as instrumental underscoring. It's actually pretty catchy in a precious 60s sort of way. ***SPOILER***: Catherine finally gives up on meeting Gregory and heads back to Rome. At the Geneva airport she encounters Sarrazin and has a soulless tryst with him at the airport hotel. He is revealed not to be Gregory. After they separate she calls her brother who happens to be on another phone with the actual Gregory but doesn't bother to tell her so. The brother, an immature neurotic who cannot deal with complexity or challenge of any kind, puts the two phones down side by side and walks away, leaving Gregory and Catherine's disembodied voices buzzing at each other without their knowledge. It is then revealed that Catherine and Gregory are standing in adjacent phone booths at the airport (though the camera never lets us see Gregory's face). Catherine hangs up and steps onto an automatic sidewalk and glides away, alone in the huge, cold, impersonal airport. All this just to reiterate the trite observation that modern people are lonely and isolated? This pretentious piffle is worth seeing only because of the magnetic presence of Julie Christie who was at the height of her fame when it was filmed in the summer of 1968. It was deemed so bad by Universal that they delayed its US opening until the spring of 1970. It played in very limited release (definitely in New York City, but perhaps nowhere else) and then vanished until recently when it began appearing on cable channels.

vandino1 The always appealing Julie Christie and a very young John Hurt help this otherwise unworkable curiosity. It starts off badly with Brit pop star Georgie Fame warbling a second-rate ballad over the opening credits with a remarkably off-key voice. We begin with Julie Christie in Rome getting an invitation from her father to attend his fifth wedding (taking place in Geneva). But I must admit the invitation is delivered in one of the most bizarre bits I've ever seen or heard of. The invite is on a recording in the shape of a large postcard, and for some reason, Christie's friend has a turntable in the dashboard of his sports car, and he plays the postcard for her. It's so odd it's almost worth catching the film for this alone---and since it's in the first scene you can skip the rest of the movie.And the rest of the movie fumbles its central premise: Christie becomes obsessed with a man she never meets, the title character. Too bad he's embodied by the Lurch-like dullard Michael Sarrazin. This character should be dynamic and charming and all the things a woman like Christie's character should fantasize about, not a vacuous lump like Sarrazin. His casting sinks the film. If anything, it would've been better to have made Christie the object of a man's obsession---now that would be more believable. Still, it's a nice idea for a set-up, as the stories of Gregory mount up and turn him into a Harry Lime-like mystery man. But the confusion starts early as Christie sees a poster of Sarrazin at the airport and for some unknown reason seems to think that is Gregory (or is she already half-delusional and the film is really about a neurotic young woman?) This continues throughout as she fantasizes about Gregory with Sarrazin's face, even though there is no definite determination that Gregory looks like her Sarrazin-shaped mental picture (we never see the real Gregory). Then, as an illogical late-movie trick, she runs across Sarrazin at the airport and thinks it's Gregory (as do we) and takes him to bed. Turns out he's NOT Gregory, but a complete stranger, yet he looks just like the picture of Gregory in her head. That's the kind of weird idea that could work in a novel, but on film is all wrong. As is this film, including a second helping of Georgie Fame at the end, continuing his off-key warbling. Incidentally, this film was partly made by Universal Pictures U.K. branch but obviously looked like such a dud that Universal in the U.S. never gave it any kind of release here. No loss to cinema.