DARLING

Diana Scott, a young model, tells the story of her life to a reporter. After a boring marriage with a boy her own age, she met in London Robert Gold, a TV reporter who she fell in love with. Diana left her husband. Robert left his wife and children and they went off to live together Diana began to work for Miles Brand, the head of an advertising agency that launched her as the "happiness girl". When Diana finds out that she is pregnant, she has an abortion. After a while she is bored with her quiet life with Robert and secretly accompanies Miles on a trip to Paris where they meet sophisticated people and take part in a drug party. Robert discovers everything and leaves her Diana goes on vacation in Italy together with her friend Malcolm, a gay photographer. Here Prince Cesare della Romita, a rich widower asks her to marry him. At first, Diana refuses. Then she decides to accept. But she gets tired of the rich and boring life and goes back to London, after having let Robert know she was coming. They make love together but when Diana starts making plans to go back with him, he rejects her Diana returns to Rome to her husband.


"In a certain way Darling stigmatizes a time, a society and a way of file. It anticipates the climate and atmosphere of Sunday, Bloody Sunday. The protagonist is an uneasy man "restless', as they say in English. He is irresponsible, almost like Billy, or better like Bob will be. (Bob is the kinetic sculptor who abandons everything to get away to America), Further it is here that we first encounter the theme of homosexuality traceable in his later works in Schlesinger. Particularly there is the love 'triangle' of two men and a woman. We find this again, at a more mature and developed stage, in Sunday Bloody Sunday. Finally, it is also here that someone (Robert) decides to go to America. These are only nuances, humors, sensations, but Schlesinger's structure is becoming more and more dense, decisive, and selfaware. Maybe Diana is a dated character that does not hold up over time, but from a certain perspective this is exactly her strength: to be the image of her years, of that London, of that 'Englishness'." (Claver Salizzato, John SchIesinger, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1986, pp. 7778)

Director: John Schlesinger.
Plot: Frederic Raphael, John Schlesinger, Joseph Janni.
Screenplay: Frederic Raphael.
Director of photography: Ken Higgins.
Editor: James Clark.
Art director: Ray Simm, David Folkes, Ted Barnes.
Music: John Dankworth.
Sound: Malcolm Cooke.
Cast: Julie Christie (Diana Scott), Dirk Bogarde (Robert Gold), Laurence Harvey (Miles Brand), Roland Curram (Malcolm), Alex Scott (Sean Martin), Basil Henson (Alec ProsserJones), Helen Lindsay (Felicity ProsserJones), Tyler Butterworth (William ProsserJones), Pauline Yates (Estelle Gold), Peter Bayless (Lord Grant), JoseLuis de Villalonga (Principe Cesare Della Romita), Jean Claudio (Raoul Maxim), Ernst Walder (Kurt), Lucille Soong (Alie), Sidonie Bond (Gillian), John G. Heller (Gerhard), James Cossins (Basildon), Lydia Sherwood (Lady Brentwood), Georgina Cookson (Carlotta Hale), Brian Wilde (Willett), David Harrison (Charles Glass), Irene Richmond (Mrs. Glass), Ann Firbank (Sybil), Richard Bidlake (Rupert Crabtree), Trevor Bowen (Tony Bridges), Helen Stirling (governante), Annette Carell (Billie Castiglione), Hugo Dyson (Matthew Southgate), Angus Mackay (Ivor Dawlish), Margaret Gordon (Helen Dawlish), Jane Downes (Julie), Carlo Palmuci (Curzio), Dante Posani (Gino), Umberto Raho (Palucci).
Production company: Joseph Janni per la Vic Films/Appia Films.