Watch Joanna For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Wonderful Movie

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

I'd give this film maybe 4 stars for plot, but probably 8 stars for its original and experimental cinematography and production. It is a 1960s experimental film, but with a big-studio budget and real actors. I saw this on a college film series many years ago, and like most viewers had mixed feelings about it--not the greatest film ever made, but certainly a lot of original stuff. This is more a film of bits and scenes than a whole story. If you want to see a more coherent movie about a young woman in the big city--try "TWENTY"--good, realistic and fun and sexy too.One memorable scene from Joanna--Ms. Waite is discovered in bed with an older man when his wife unexpectedly turns up, suitcases and all, in the bedroom--caught! She deals with this by saying "Been away?" and then rushes out of the apartment in what seems to be her bedclothes. This is followed by an overwrought montage of her wandering through some lush urban park in slow motion. We do not see the psychological progression of her romance with her black lover. Just moments of them dancing together in a hallway, and then her crying after visiting him in prison.Some IMDb reviewers have panned Donald Sutherland's performance here, but I thought he was good, and original.. His whole subplot was great!--The trip to North Africa, the closeup of the setting sun--first time I'd ever seen that effect. Sutherland's death scene is done very originally. The camera pulls back about 500 feet from his bedstead when he dies--very exaggerated and surreal. Makes a point, but again kind of overwrought.The exuberance and experimental nature of this film make it a real product of the 1960s. It should be lumped together with the Beatles' MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR and later the Who's TOMMY. Not to mention the first 20 years of MTV in the 1980s and beyond. --Films inspired by art school classes and Italian movies by Fellini and Antonioni.No this is not a perfect work of art or of movie entertainment, but hurray for it's willingness to try new stuff! Two bits of info about the star--Genvieve Waite--she told people that she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe--even though she was clearly born before MM even died. Also--after this film, she was married for a few years to John Phillips of the rock band "Mamas and Papas." She underwent a grueling period of heroin addiction with him, and this is recounted at length in his autobiography "PAPA JOHN."

I saw this movie in 1968 and thought it was a hoot. I remember thinking how outrageous it was, but mostly was fascinated by the work Donald Sutherland and Calvin Lockhart. Of course, this is not a film that "wears well" as to look at it now, it seems rather campy and silly. Joanna, as a free-wheeling girl of the '60's seems more like a doormat in our "enlightened" 21st century eyes. However in 1968, relationships between white women and black men were much more taboo and this part of the film brought considerable controversy which would be laughable today. There are several homages to Fellini that don't really work in such a breezy little film. Unfortunately, they might not be see as recognizable homages at this point in time. My review is based on what I thought about at the time, but it is certainly worth a glance if one has never seen it.

This film could almost be viewed as the "let's-get-real" answer to "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", a film that probably still could not get made in the U.S. As a snapshot of "swinging London" in the sixties, "Joanna" has it all. But Donald Sutherland absolutely steals this movie as Lord Peter Sanderson; his strange, wonderful, secular soliloquy on a Moroccan beach at sunset still provokes both goose pimples and tears. South African actress Genevieve Waite, who plays the wide-eyed heroine, was declared persona non grata in her native country after making this film, solely because of her love scenes with Calvin Lockhart (she later emigrated to the U.S. and married John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas). All in all, a strange, wonderful, campy, mystic trip to the sixties.

It is silly the way we talk about movies. They are not meant for the ages but for slices of time. Once in a great great while one captures something eternal...8 1/2, Third Man, etcetera, but films are social chewing gum. Here is a fine example of an English director of the 1960s doing some turns that were fresh seeming and of the time...playing to the camera in the post dramatic sequence...don't tell me that wasn't and still would be a kick. And Sutherland's lisping soliloquy in the desert, my first awareness of the Canadian actor. A memorable film, one with some fans, many deprecators. But that's what makes horse races. Does sit hold up to critical analysis? Probably not, certainly not in the context of a lot that has followed. But lovely and fresh and exciting at the time, just like that first date with the sweet fresh girl who is now the woman with the scar from the auto accident. We change, the cinema changes. Films are not for the ages, after all, but acts of commerce sometimes tinged with art and freighted with our associations.