Someone obviously likes "Petulia," the 1968 film directed by Richard Lester that I recently watched on video. Leonard Maltin, in his "TV Movies and Video Guide," calls it one of the decade's best films, and a few of the contributors to the Internet Movie Database heap praise on the thing. If it isn't already obvious that I disagree with the admirers of the film, let me lay it out as clearly and as diplomatically as I can: this movie sucks.
I should now express my gratitude to the woman who stood guard at the box-office on that long ago Saturday night when I, a mere lad eager to see "Bullitt," was refused entry to the second-run movie house where "Petulia" was the supporting feature on the grounds that one of these films (I know not which) was considered too adult for an 11 or 12 year old who looked even younger. The following summer I learned that "Bullitt" bit (what a dreary bore of an action film), and now I know that "Petulia" is just as bad. It's one of those semi-psychedelic, woefully pretentious "60's movies" about an adulterous affair between a middle-aged man, a surgeon played by George C. Scott, and a swingin' hip chick played by--who else?--Julie Christie. It's the kind of movie in which NOTHING happens. Because the lives of the principals are as dull and uneventful as the lives of any working stiff, well, it has to be art, right?
When I say that "nothing" happens in "Petulia," I suppose I'm exaggerating just a bit. The film in the camera was not defective. It did capture SOMETHING, but that something doesn't add up to a whole lot. What we get are a whole bunch of disconnected scenes that are devoid of meaning but cut in such a way as to suggest that some deep truth is being conveyed. We see Scott being hit on by Christie outside a party at which they meet. Suddenly, we glimpse a child under the wheel of a car. After cutting back to the couple's conversation, director Lester shows us Scott at work in an operating room while Christie, perhaps unbeknownst to Scott, watches him through the door. Richard Chamberlain and Shirley Knight are hauled out from time to time as the adulterous couple's spouses but nothing they say or do has any significance. And then there's Joseph Cotton looking as though he belongs on a slab in the morgue. The whole thing is as arty as the director's two films with the Beatles but pretentious in ways that those films are not. Fact is, there was more art in those wild leaps the Fab Four performed in "A Hard Day's Night" than in a single frame of "Petulia."
Director Lester started in commercials and judging by most of his output, he probably should have stayed there. Like a TV commercial, "Petulia" shows signs of technical skill but no matter how impressive it may be to the eye, nothing can change the fact that, like a commercial, it delivers less than what it promises. It's like a car commercial that uses sexy images to equate the product with youth, beauty, and affluence when, for most people, the vehicle will provide nothing more than a means to get to the grocery store faster than they could on foot. It's a con job. So is this film.
I should now express my gratitude to the woman who stood guard at the box-office on that long ago Saturday night when I, a mere lad eager to see "Bullitt," was refused entry to the second-run movie house where "Petulia" was the supporting feature on the grounds that one of these films (I know not which) was considered too adult for an 11 or 12 year old who looked even younger. The following summer I learned that "Bullitt" bit (what a dreary bore of an action film), and now I know that "Petulia" is just as bad. It's one of those semi-psychedelic, woefully pretentious "60's movies" about an adulterous affair between a middle-aged man, a surgeon played by George C. Scott, and a swingin' hip chick played by--who else?--Julie Christie. It's the kind of movie in which NOTHING happens. Because the lives of the principals are as dull and uneventful as the lives of any working stiff, well, it has to be art, right?
When I say that "nothing" happens in "Petulia," I suppose I'm exaggerating just a bit. The film in the camera was not defective. It did capture SOMETHING, but that something doesn't add up to a whole lot. What we get are a whole bunch of disconnected scenes that are devoid of meaning but cut in such a way as to suggest that some deep truth is being conveyed. We see Scott being hit on by Christie outside a party at which they meet. Suddenly, we glimpse a child under the wheel of a car. After cutting back to the couple's conversation, director Lester shows us Scott at work in an operating room while Christie, perhaps unbeknownst to Scott, watches him through the door. Richard Chamberlain and Shirley Knight are hauled out from time to time as the adulterous couple's spouses but nothing they say or do has any significance. And then there's Joseph Cotton looking as though he belongs on a slab in the morgue. The whole thing is as arty as the director's two films with the Beatles but pretentious in ways that those films are not. Fact is, there was more art in those wild leaps the Fab Four performed in "A Hard Day's Night" than in a single frame of "Petulia."
Director Lester started in commercials and judging by most of his output, he probably should have stayed there. Like a TV commercial, "Petulia" shows signs of technical skill but no matter how impressive it may be to the eye, nothing can change the fact that, like a commercial, it delivers less than what it promises. It's like a car commercial that uses sexy images to equate the product with youth, beauty, and affluence when, for most people, the vehicle will provide nothing more than a means to get to the grocery store faster than they could on foot. It's a con job. So is this film.