Darling (1965)

Darling is an adult fairytale about a woman who marries a prince but because this is a John Schlesinger film she doesn't live happily ever. Diana Scott is my favourite Julie Christie role, she's a 1960s cold "It" girl, not as openly malevolent as Meredith (Charlotte Rampling) in Georgy Girl, or as delusionally thick as Yvonne in Smashing Time but still with all the ticks in the right place to score 100% on an "Are you a Sociopath?" test. Superficially charming, impulsive, callous, she'll use you to get to the top, although because this is the 1960s and she's a woman, she's going to get used right back. The film is also an incisive look at the hypocrisy of the world of entertainment and celebrity. Perhaps not topics that require much effort to skewer, and Schlesinger doesn't pull punches. A posh charity dinner, backdropped with images of famine in Africa, has black children dragged up with 18th century wigs serving the food. One of the rich guests, Lord Grant (an effete background character) tells the organisers "I like your black boys, John. I suppose I can’t wrap one up and take him home?" He's jokingly warned that "they're numbered" and that's pretty much it. A simple synposis can't really do justice to a film like this, which is swept along on a froth of moments and fascinating cameo characters, many of whom feel like they have stepped into Darling from their own film and will go back there afterwards. Diana is one of those girls who gets picked for things, and early in the film it's earnest intellectual Dirk Bogarde's TV interviewer Robert Gold who picks her for a vox pop piece and before you know it, they're phoning getting one another to phone their respective spouses with excuses so they conduct a seedy affair (it might have been the 1960s but you still had to pretend to be a married couple and fill a suitcase with newspapers so the hotel owners wouldn't suspect anything). Diana's married to a nice but dull chap whose idea of fun is learning to speak foreign languages via his record player. Robert's got a wife and two kids but ruefully gives it all up when Diana starts acting like a bit of a stalker, so he can move in with her. It's a mistake he'll regret for the whole film, and he'll spend lots of time in an uptight funk of supressed rage, staring off into the distance as the truth dawns. An early abortion (just prior to it being legal) is everso well-justified but one of many warning signs that she's not in it for the long haul.

So Diana and Robert are happy for about five minutes of screen time but it's not long before she's bored again, and she embarks on another affair with advertising executive Miles Brand, an even nastier piece of work than she is (Laurence Harvey, not having to stretch much). The old telephone box trick is pulled out again, this time on Robert.

Miles is a match for Diana, perhaps too much, and during a trip to Paris, he is happy to see her humiliated among his boho friends - they play a game which is a bit like pass the parcel except it involves everyone putting on each other's clothes and then answer questions while impersonating one another. Despite the fact that she's getting out of her depth, Miles makes her the "Happiness Girl", getting her to front a big advertising campaign for chocolate, which catapults her to fame. Meanwhile, Robert leaves her. During the filming, at a bona fide fairy tale castle near Rome, Diana charms both the castle's owner, the Prince, and his grown-up son. However, it's the late-middle-aged Prince who asks her to marry him, and while flattered, she turns him down, instead taking off to Capri with her new best friend, fun but equally shallow Malcolm, who's the photographer on her shoots.

At least Malcolm's gay so there'll be no funny business, just brother and sister all the way, until of course they both end up sleeping with the same handsome waiter. No matter, Diana gives the distinct impression that she doesn't actually like sex at all, and they become bestest buddies, this part of the film feeling rather like a condensed version of a short story by Tennessee Williams called Two on a Party. The party involves shop-lifting at Fornums, and neglecting a pet goldfish until it dies, then conducting a super-camp funeral for it.

With things inevitably souring between Diana and Miles (is he making anonymous phone calls?), she freaks out, returns to Rome and agrees to marry the Prince. Suddenly, we're in Grace Kelly territory, although at least that seems to have been a happy marriage. For Diana, it's more like a Prince Charles situation. After the glamorous wedding, he doesn't even seem to like her that much and spends most of his time away from her, while she's left to wander the rooms of the castle, all alone and never so frustrated.

Darling won three Oscars, with Christie deservingly taking away best actress. Amoral she may be, but I found it hard not to root for her, especially when she tries a last-minute dash back to Robert in the final frames of the film. You know it's just another bad choice in a film that could have been called Bad Choices but I get the impression that he's the only one who truly loved her. No-one does lack of forgiveness like Dirk Bogarde though. For the mid-1960s, this film feels decades ahead of its time. This was a period where no-fault divorce didn't exist, homosexuality was a crime and abortion was illegal. Things were about to change, with Harold Wilson's Labour government liberalising the country. Darling is in a black and white, a choice which makes it feel like a post-war film rather than a Swinging 60s one. At one point Diana muses about what the world would be like if it took three sexes to make a child. The film never really answers what Diana's problem is - is she just a bad lot, did something bad happen to her, or is she just a reflection of a cruel image-obsessed society? The final shot shows her face on a huge advertising poster, while an overweight, old woman gives a pitch-perfect rendition of Santa Lucia nearby - all that glitters and all that.