Nothing quite gets me off visually like a rich, luscious, black-and-white ’60s film. Particularly those wonderfully detailed flicks shot between the early to mid ’60s, when the competition from color TV was starting to breathe down everyone’s neck, which prompted certain dps to try harder or push it on some level. This Sporting Life, Sons and Lovers, Seven Days in May, The Train, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, A Hard Day’s Night, etc.
But for some curious reason, Kenneth Higgins‘ monochrome capturing of John Schlesinger‘s Darling (’65) has never quite done it for me. Appreciation sans levitation.
The lighting in some portions seems unexceptional, the details and textures don’t quite pop, here and there it almost flirts with humdrum. It’s a wee bit underwhelming.
But next week I’ll be giving Darling another chance at Manhattan’s Film Forum, which is showing a newish 4K restoration.
Julie Christie is incandescent, of course (Darling launched her into the stratosphere), despite the fact that she’s playing a shallow, opportunistic, fairly loathsome person. Dirk Bogarde is wonderful, as usual.
Wiki excerpt: “In 1971, New York magazine wrote of mod fashion and its wearers: ‘This new, déclassé English girl was epitomized by Julie Christie in Darling — amoral, rootless, emotionally immature, and apparently irresistible.”
