I had almost abandoned hope when I read TV guide's review. A straight-laced Episcopelian priest who is headmaster of a boy's school on the California coast (Burton) has a fling with a free-spirited artist (Taylor). The combination of Burton and Taylor alone was enough to scare anybody. "Divorce His, Divorce Hers"? They were having a gay old time of it in the 60s but the viewers were like the only sober guests at the party. Stated flatly, the story itself sounds like a Harlequin romance. But it's not that bad. It has a couple of good things going for it, despite the formulaic plot.
For one thing, the location shooting in and around Big Sur is truly impressive. It was in these southernmost redwood forests that Jack Kerouac had his first case of DTs, but if you're going to have DTs this is the place to have them. Interiors were filmed elsewhere and the set dressers flung themselves into their task recklessly. Taylor's beach house looks like a Hollywood hallucination. Towards the end, Taylor talks to her son about how -- now that her paintings are beginning to sell -- they might soon be able to afford to move out of it, this weathered-wood and crystal-glass palace by the sea. Yes, what a dump. I couldn't afford the insurance on the place and neither could you.
For another thing, there is the catchy theme song by Johnny Mandel, a talented composer. (The lyrics, by Paul Francis Webster, are rubbish.) Mandel did a number of other memorable scores, including "Point Blank." The trumpet that carries the tune under the titles is played by Jack Sheldon, affiliated with West Coast jazz, who partnered with people like Curtis Counce and Gerry Mulligan. Sheldon was an actor of sorts too. He was laid back and invariably spoke and acted as if stoned, whether he was or not. It's a pretty tune and Sheldon draws every melancholy shiver out of it.
The script is a joint product and is more thoughtful and intelligent than it has any particular reason to be. Of course, this is 1965, and the Antinomian Age is beginning -- the Beatles, pop art, Andy Warhol, the loosening of language and the parameters of body exposure in the movies. So we're all rooting for the atheistic Liz Taylor who derides and disregards all consuetudinary rituals. She hosts barbaric dances around the bonfire on the beach. The hell with conformity, as represented by Burton's perceptive but repressed male schoolmarm. Except that Burton is no dope. He's given some excellent lines. Why, asks Liz, should she send her young son to school just in order to learn rules that he'll later rebel against? Burton's reply is that maybe, by providing him with society's rules, it will prevent him from rebelling against hers. That reply points up a paradox. An insistence on "no rules" is itself a rule. The dialog sometimes lifts itself above the humdrum drama beneath it.
The performances are pretty good too. Burton has that rich voice and is sober throughout. Liz Taylor is gorgeous and seems to drape her hefty, half-naked body over the furniture. Charles Bronson -- as a romantic artist! -- produces crummy sculpture, and Taylor's paintings look as if they should have a slogan printed across the bottom: "SOUFFLE DE LA MER. Enjoy The Freedom! At a store nearest you." And it's interesting to see Robert Webber in a nicely conceived performance as something of a cad.
But, ignoring the story and the acting and all that, I don't know how bearable this would have been if, instead of being about two beautiful and smart and rich people on Big Sur, it had been about two middle-aged working-class schlubs in an industrial neighborhood like Kearny, New Jersey. It would have grated.
For one thing, the location shooting in and around Big Sur is truly impressive. It was in these southernmost redwood forests that Jack Kerouac had his first case of DTs, but if you're going to have DTs this is the place to have them. Interiors were filmed elsewhere and the set dressers flung themselves into their task recklessly. Taylor's beach house looks like a Hollywood hallucination. Towards the end, Taylor talks to her son about how -- now that her paintings are beginning to sell -- they might soon be able to afford to move out of it, this weathered-wood and crystal-glass palace by the sea. Yes, what a dump. I couldn't afford the insurance on the place and neither could you.
For another thing, there is the catchy theme song by Johnny Mandel, a talented composer. (The lyrics, by Paul Francis Webster, are rubbish.) Mandel did a number of other memorable scores, including "Point Blank." The trumpet that carries the tune under the titles is played by Jack Sheldon, affiliated with West Coast jazz, who partnered with people like Curtis Counce and Gerry Mulligan. Sheldon was an actor of sorts too. He was laid back and invariably spoke and acted as if stoned, whether he was or not. It's a pretty tune and Sheldon draws every melancholy shiver out of it.
The script is a joint product and is more thoughtful and intelligent than it has any particular reason to be. Of course, this is 1965, and the Antinomian Age is beginning -- the Beatles, pop art, Andy Warhol, the loosening of language and the parameters of body exposure in the movies. So we're all rooting for the atheistic Liz Taylor who derides and disregards all consuetudinary rituals. She hosts barbaric dances around the bonfire on the beach. The hell with conformity, as represented by Burton's perceptive but repressed male schoolmarm. Except that Burton is no dope. He's given some excellent lines. Why, asks Liz, should she send her young son to school just in order to learn rules that he'll later rebel against? Burton's reply is that maybe, by providing him with society's rules, it will prevent him from rebelling against hers. That reply points up a paradox. An insistence on "no rules" is itself a rule. The dialog sometimes lifts itself above the humdrum drama beneath it.
The performances are pretty good too. Burton has that rich voice and is sober throughout. Liz Taylor is gorgeous and seems to drape her hefty, half-naked body over the furniture. Charles Bronson -- as a romantic artist! -- produces crummy sculpture, and Taylor's paintings look as if they should have a slogan printed across the bottom: "SOUFFLE DE LA MER. Enjoy The Freedom! At a store nearest you." And it's interesting to see Robert Webber in a nicely conceived performance as something of a cad.
But, ignoring the story and the acting and all that, I don't know how bearable this would have been if, instead of being about two beautiful and smart and rich people on Big Sur, it had been about two middle-aged working-class schlubs in an industrial neighborhood like Kearny, New Jersey. It would have grated.