Daisy Miller Dvd

Every so often a film commits suicide before your very eyes. You've heard the rumors of course, but when you see it start you don't quite believe it - after all, the film looks beautiful, the opening sequence is quietly wonderful and, if the leading man is a little stiff and mannered, a lot of that can be put down to the rigors and regulations of polite society in 19th century Europe. And then Cybill Shepard strides across the screen with all the poise of a bartender about to break up a fight in a Deadwood saloon and your heart starts to sink. Then she opens her mouth and you can feel the noose tightening around the film's neck. And as she continues it's not long before it's kicked away the stool and is swinging gasping for breath, choking horribly for the remaining 80 minutes... Daisy Miller may well be a character who is out of her place in old moneyed society, but even Henry James never intended her to be this out of place: if Shepherd were wearing a cheerleader's outfit, jumping on a trampoline and singing "Yay Mickey/You're so fine/You're so fine you blow my mind" she couldn't be more wrong as she effortlessly mangles her long stretches of dialogue with an ingenuous lack of awareness of just how horribly bad her performance is.

Admittedly it's hard to think of just who could have played the part in 1974 - a young Katherine Hepburn could have done it in her sleep, but she was far from young then - but even if there had been an obvious candidate they wouldn't have stood a chance thanks to Peter Bogdanovich's famous career-destroying infatuation with Shepherd that completely blinds him to how much damage she does to what is already a very slight and all too fragile piece. The framing is often exquisite, but it's almost like watching Da Vinci slap a Groucho moustache and glasses on the Mona Lisa. Rather than a beguiling siren whose unguarded charm blinds the jaded hero to her true nature as he walks a mental tightrope between what he wishes her to be and what society thinks she is, we get an irritating nag who won't shut up for a second as she races through her lines and who would make any halfway sane human being run for the hills as fast as their feet will carry them without a second thought.

On one level it's easy to see why this could have worked - a story about Americans playing at being Europeans and of failing to understand not just the rules of acceptable behavior but also the true nature of other people can be seen as mirroring Bogdanovich's situation as he plays Visconti with his new girlfriend. But the script at times feels more like a transcription than an adaptation, never gaining an inner life that could perhaps have mitigated its lack of a soul. Barry Brown's one note performance doesn't help matters. The lack of real connection between the leads could be forgiven if we could at least see through Winterborn's eyes and share his dilemma, but we're kept at arm's length. Only Mildred Natwick and a superb cast against type Eileen Brennan really shine, although Cloris Leachman's interpretation of Mrs Miller as Gracie Allen has a bizarre fascination. A cold film made with a passion its director never communicates to an audience, this was a career killer in 1974 and it feels no better today.

Bogdanovich still believes in the film, although his commentary and introduction on this DVD often seem to highlight how little he understood his material or what he was really capturing on film.

I have not read the James novel but this film like many literary films does prove the idea that films are dependent upon a coherent story and this one is very nineteenth century which makes it seems even older now in the century that follows its release...Bogdanovich naturally regrets its relative failure but at least its an interessant failure and I cannot agree with other reviewers that Shepherd is so bad given she must also be directed to play the role a certain way...She plays the Yankee ingenue quite well,just coquettish enough yet still naive and rebellious but the ending is too abrupt to fulfill the tragic note given the actual ineptitude of her potential lover to actually achieve anything,barely a kiss,in the films length... It's perhaps a period piece in two senses as I imply earlier and I think its a bookish film well worth a watch and Eileen Brennan plays her waspish snob role well...The extras are fair,too,a directors Intro and a commentary by same.