Darling (1965)
Directed by John Schlesinger

Film Review

John Schlesinger's third feature, Darling, shows a dramatic departure both in tone and subject from the two films that preceded it.  A wry look at swinging sixties Britain, it is, however, every bit as astute and topical as the director's previous social realist offerings A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963).  In the film's central character Diana Scott we have the perfect embodiment of the crass, self-obsessed and thoroughly vacuous class whom we have to thank for the tawdry glamour of the 1960s and who brought into being the "me me me" culture that prevails to this day.  Darling is not as well regarded today as it was on its first release, when it was showered with critical praise and prestigious awards, and it is perhaps too consciously flippant to gain acceptance as a serious commentary of its time.  Imperfect though the film is, its unrelenting stream of caustic humour makes it one of Schlesinger's most amusing films, and to a degree it is almost as effective a social critique of the 1960s as his previous two films, despite the far from subtle influence of the director's French and Italian contemporaries, Truffaut, Godard, Fellini and Antonioni.

Julie Christie received an Oscar for her portrayal of the pathologically unsatisfied Diana Scott, and as a result became not only a world famous actress but also something of a sixties icon - Schlesinger and his screenwriter Frederic Raphael no doubt relished the irony of this fact.  Christie's inability to project genuine human feeling together with her seductive child-like persona make her ideally suited to play the egoistical model who ends up as a miserable paparazzi-stalked Princess Diana (how eerily prophetic).  There is nothing remotely likeable about Christie's character, and her constant voiceover narration soon becomes so irksome in its self-centred monotony that you wish Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey or one of the other unfortunate males who succumb to her spurious charms would have the common decency to pick her up and throw her under a London bus.  The names of modern equivalents of Diana Scott trip more readily off the tongue than your three times table, and no wonder since just about every section of the media appears to be obsessed with them, drawing out every facet of their completely meaningless existences whilst pandering to their over-developed insecurities and monolithic egos.

But it isn't just the Diana Scotts of this world that Darling goes after with scurrilous, lacerating mockery.  These pathetic examples of humanity are revealed as being merely the figureheads of an inherently sick and nasty stratum of society comprising powerful figures in the media and advertising that trades in dreams and gullibility to feed their obscene lust for wealth and power.  In one of his more worthy screen portrayals, Laurence Harvey brilliantly personifies this posturing super-class that enriches itself by promulgating the illusion of a brave new world where glamour, beauty and happiness pervade.  In the film's opening title sequence, a ragged poster for World Famine Relief depicting Africans suffering from malnutrition is covered with a massive portrait of Diana Scott - it is the beautiful dream that we all want to see, not the misery that lies beneath.  Midway through the film, a charity event becomes the thinnest of excuses for the rich and famous to come together and wallow in their sickening selfish debauchery.  The admen and media magnates know their art too well for us to resist the glossy, pain-free vision of the world they construct for us.  Whilst there are Diana Scotts to distract us, with their ready smiles and facile reflections on life, the brutishness and injustices of the real world happily go unnoticed.  Far from being out-dated, John Schlesinger's dark satire still feels spookily relevant.

Film Synopsis

In swinging sixties London, Diana Scott is a beautiful young model who appears to be on a perpetual quest to find meaning in her life.  At least, this is the impression she conveys in a taped interview in which she recounts her life so far.  A chance encounter with literary interviewer Robert Gold leads to an idyllic love affair that breaks up Robert's marriage and leaves Diana as unfulfilled as ever.  Without Robert knowing, Diana allows herself to be drawn into the fast-living media set and she soon begins an affair with high-powered advertising executive Miles Brand.   Miles's intervention does Diana's career no end of good, but still the model-turned-actress craves something more.  She finds her first real taste of happiness on the island of Capri, in the company of a gay photographer who is her only true friend.  A widowed Italian prince, Cesare, offers to marry Diana, but she declines, only to have second thoughts when she returns to London and sees her life for what it is: a hollow sham.  On her return to Rome, Cesare gladly accepts Diana as his wife, but the life of an Italian princess is hardly any better than that of a London model...