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Touches You

The Worst Film Ever

Beautiful, moving film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I don't care what this movie is about - I just want to watch the Big Sur beaches, that bouquet in Elizabeth Taylor's beach house and Burton and Taylor exchanging silly lines that seem like out of the Women's Studies textbooks. They say everything that adulterers long to hear when they want to feel better about themselves. Elizabeth looks silly in her hippie clothes, but I like the pastel colors. Charles Bronson is miscast as one of Taylor's bohemian friends. And he can't sculpt. Eva Marie Saint plays Burton's elegant wife whom he dumps when the goddess of nature appears one day in his office wearing a violet blouse without a bra and we can just enjoy the two most vulgar and most talented actors of their generation being scandalous on beautiful locations for the rest of the film.

Liz Taylor plays a pre-hippie who lives in a "shack" (prime real estate in real life) by the sea. She paints already-finished works of art. The sandpiper is an injured bird whose wing she helps to heal, although the sandpiper is an obvious metaphor for for the free-spirited Liz.She hangs around in designer clothes with her hair perfectly coiffed, which makes it hard to take seriously her role as free-spirited nonconformist. At one point she shows up at her son's school in a fashionable yellow dress and large white hat. After seeing the interior of her "shack", I couldn't help wondering where she keeps all those clothes. Blue jeans and T-shirts (braless) would have been more realistic as attire for her beach-bum life style. Oh well.Richard Burton cannot resist her allure despite his religious convictions and his marriage to Eva Marie Saint.They fall in love, all the while spouting soliloquies about life, love, the existence or non-existence of God, etc. In one scene, where they are on the beach, Liz is espousing philosophy and the wind keeps whipping her hair into her face and I couldn't help but wonder why they didn't pin in back for that scene. In another scene, as Liz is pontificating again, the sandpiper perches on her head! (How did they get it to do that? ha ha ) Liz is made out to be the wiser of the two, Richard Burton being tied down to such terrible things as responsibility and fidelity.Despite being madly in love in real life, I couldn't see a lot of chemistry between them.I watched this because I read the book "Furious Love" - a really good book by the way. The movies they made together are documented in it so I was motivated to watch their films. So now I have seen this one and it's on the "Taming of the Shrew."

So let me go ahead and diverge from the main body of critics who pooh-poohed this mid-60's film entry!! To me, it's a thoroughly poignant and enjoyable romp through the Monterey CA life style during that time. Opening with Johnny Mandel's haunting "The Shadow of Your Smile" and the video setting of the Big Sur coastline, you are immediately transported to another place in time and space. All the usual moral and religious challenges/ambiguities that were taking place during those pivotal years get duly scrutinized and developed here. Liz & Richard do a masterful job in their respective roles as the free-spirited artist lady and the pompous, semi-self righteous minister/dean of a prestigious religious school. After their initial ideological combativeness, they begin to absorb and understand each others' seemingly contradictory viewpoints and proceed to fall in love, in a most tender & heartfelt manner. Not so good, however, for the minister, who is already married with 2 boys. The moral dilemma that ensues provides more than ample fodder for our scrutiny.Aside from the two aforementioned lead characters, the supporting cast including Eva Marie Saint, Robert Webber, James Edwards and Charles Bronson more than amply fulfill their thespian duties. Great directing by Vincent Minnelli and screen writing by an excellent team help in no small manner to propel the thrust of this film. My last and my most heartfelt kudos, however, are saved for the masterful work by Johnny Mandel on the sound track, in general, and on the awesomely bitter-sweet and gorgeous aforementioned theme song, specifically. Without that sophisticated and absorbing musical ambiance, the movie's impact would have been severely diminished!!

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton star in "The Sandpiper," a 1965 film also starring Morgan Mason (James Mason's son) and Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson, and Robert Webber.Taylor plays Laura Reynolds, a free-thinking single mother living and painting in Big Sur with her young son (Mason). Her son gets into trouble, not for the first time, and this time, the judge orders him to San Simeon School, headed up by an Episcopalian priest, Edward Hewitt(Burton) and his wife (Saint). From the first, Edward is struck by Laura's beauty and finds himself at her house more often than necessary. Laura has a man, Cos (Bronson), around her who is doing a nude sculpture of her, and Edward finds out about that, and that someone he knows (Webber) has a past with Laura. Edward and Laura fall deeply in love, and it presents problems.The sandpiper in the title refers to Laura's rescuing of a wounded sandpiper and caring for it until it is able to fly free - freedom is a strong theme in the film, freeing oneself of the bonds of religion, marriage, rules, and what people think."The Sandpiper" is directed by Vincente Minnelli, but it's really not up to his usual standards, except for the glorious Big Sur scenery. Of course he usually worked with better scripts than this one. The film is responsible for the huge hit, "The Shadow of Your Smile." Seeing Taylor and Burton together is always fun, knowing how much in love they were, and they have good chemistry here. Taylor, her hair down, is beautiful and tanned -- she was 33 at the time of filming -- though she's not totally convincing as a hippie type. For one thing, her clothes are too beautiful. She is, however, convincing as a woman in love. Burton, with that incredible voice, is good in his role, but for the most part, Burton was wasted in the movies. Having grown up so poor, he liked the money he made from film and never minded if the script wasn't equal to his great abilities.This movie isn't fun like "The VIPs" or trashy like "Boom!" or excellent like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" It's just a Taylor-Burton vehicle. For some of us, that's enough.