Darling

Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey are the triangle at the heart of Darling (1965)--currently completing a run at Film Forum. The threesome comprised of iconic figures of 60s cinema actually play odd man out. The movie, a satiric portrait of class and sexual mores, hinging on the creation of a happy advertising image--brilliantly turns on a dime, leaving its alternately glamorous and hapless characters to drown in their own self-created halos. Hindsight is not 20/20 when it comes to revisiting a classic like Darling since it's curiously difficult to suspend disbelief, swimming, as one does, in this school of talent. John Schlesinger’s direction complexly navigates the tightrope of tragicomedy weaving a latticework of reaction shots that counterpoint the entrapment of closeups. The big reveals are what these three image makers refuse to see.The tone of the film is flip to start. Bogart’s wife, a figure out of the kitchen sink school of British cinema, is blind-sighted by her husband. Then Schlesinger wields the cudgel of gravitas. Oedipus kills his father and sleeps with his mother. Christie sleeps with both men and ends up sentenced to life.

read "Double Exposure" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver