Director John Schlesinger is so anxious to score points against the British that he almost forgets to make the leading character's childish angst worth watching. Julie Christie is lovely if one-note (perhaps intentionally) as a working-class girl who rises above the muck to become a princess...but life for her is still unsatisfying behind castle walls. Trenchant look at the classes: the bourgeoisie, the beatniks, the flashy homosexuals, the Royals. Schlesinger's visual commentary (particularly at the auction, when the speaker is talking about starving countries while an overweight woman is scarfing down her food) seems awfully obvious now, but was it ever funny? Christie won a curious Best Actress Oscar, though another performance she gave in 1965--as Lara in "Doctor Zhivago"--was perhaps stronger. **1/2 from ****
Review of Darling
