What an odd film. I really didn't know what to expect when I started watching. Didn't expect the name Evelyn Waugh to appear, nor Christopher Isherwood, nor Haskell Wexler, nor Hal Ashby, nor the various cast members... Presumably the reason this all passed me by is that The Loved One is, as I said, an odd film, and odd films just don't become famous. So here I was struggling with the open credits, and I just had this feeling. You know, lots of famous names, good score on the IMDb, but not that well known... it just felt like disaster was looming. The fact that it was in black and white really didn't help - an Englishman coming to LA in the mid-sixties and the world is black and white? Just doesn't work. Surely it has to be vibrant color. Another strike against it: if you're going to use "America the Beautiful" (or any such tune) in an ironic way, you have to earn it, as in, say, Silver City; you can't just fling it in at the start - it's a little too knowing. And yet another strike against it: it seems at first to have no clear idea what it's about. Starting out as some sort of Hollywood satire, it takes a loooong time before there's any hint as to why it might be called The Loved One.
So, yes, a lot of strikes against it. But somehow it hangs together quite well, for which we can presumably thank the various talents involved. I can't say that I loved the movie, but I did enjoy it, perhaps more so from a technical point of view than anything else. It is very much of its time, released the year after Dr Strangelove and The Pink Panther. I mention these specifically because you could attempt (but ultimately fail) to pigeonhole it with either, but the Waugh source adds something else (although I can't say how much as I've never read the original, or much Waugh of any description). For some reason Mr Joyboy's mother had a kind of Dickensian appeal - a sort of antithesis of the Aged Parent from Great Expectations, perhaps? It's those sort of odd connections that make The Loved One worthwhile. Un-pigeonhole-able films: that's what we need more of.
So, yes, a lot of strikes against it. But somehow it hangs together quite well, for which we can presumably thank the various talents involved. I can't say that I loved the movie, but I did enjoy it, perhaps more so from a technical point of view than anything else. It is very much of its time, released the year after Dr Strangelove and The Pink Panther. I mention these specifically because you could attempt (but ultimately fail) to pigeonhole it with either, but the Waugh source adds something else (although I can't say how much as I've never read the original, or much Waugh of any description). For some reason Mr Joyboy's mother had a kind of Dickensian appeal - a sort of antithesis of the Aged Parent from Great Expectations, perhaps? It's those sort of odd connections that make The Loved One worthwhile. Un-pigeonhole-able films: that's what we need more of.