The greatest movie ever!

The greatest movie ever made..!

A Disappointing Continuation

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There are lots of reasons this is an excellent film. Jean Seberg is number 1. This is by far a great performance by the actress. She seems to be happy in this mental institution as a patient who is an extreme danger to grown men and a predator on young boys. Her past includes a brother's death which she says was because he would not pay attention to her which is means she might have killed him because of that. Mentally Ill indeed.Warren Beatty's Vincent character almost did not happen. Peter Fonda was supposed to have the inside track for this role, but wanted to be Stephen in support instead. Kim Hunter's Dr. Bea Brice seems to at times have eyes for Vincent and so does Jessica Walter (Laura). Gene Hackman (Norman) is a mystery for much of the film until one night when Vincent actually meets him. Vincent returns from the service to get a job in a private mental hospital. He meets and becomes too involved with Lilith, a patient there. She works on destroying him and at the same time has a fling with a female patient and tries to seduce a young boy. Her appetite seems to be insatiable. While there is lots of physical stuff between Vincent and Lilith, she is always longing for something more normal. She is happy but not satisfied. Vincent develops a horrible tangle with her, and Stephen (Peter Fonda) is trying to get her attention too. This film directed by Robert Rosen is an excellent character study about mental illness which at the time this film is made was still a mystery to most. Very well worth viewing for the acting and the subject matter.

A well-composed cast helps build the web of mystery and misery that is the cornerstone of this unusual story. Beatty is a rather aimless young man, a flunky at practically everything he's ever attempted, who is hired at Hunter's mental asylum and begins training as an occupational therapist. Once there, he meets various wealthy, but mentally disturbed, inhabitants such as insecure, fixated Fonda and austere, suspicious Meacham. His primary interest, however, is in Seberg, the title character, who stays locked away in her upstairs room, rarely venturing out, but who not only is very attractive, but often seems completely normal. She isn't though. She has her own world in which "people" speak to her and she has even created a language of her own. She also has a fascination with water and a fondness for pre-teen boys. As Beatty struggles to help her come out of her shell, he finds himself deeply attracted to her, something that isn't helped by her seductive gestures and remarks. Before it's all over, there is some doubt as to who is more in need of mental help, Seberg or Beatty! Beatty, in his physical prime, gives a halting, stifled sort of performance. Sometimes it works, but other times it is frustrating to endure. Fans of his will surely be more tolerant of his work in the film. Seberg is beguiling and captivating despite an awkwardly arranged fall that sometimes looks like a mullet. It's a brave, committed, varied performance, which ought to have garnered her more acclaim than it did. She is, at certain points, mesmerizing to behold. Fonda is bookish and vulnerable; a far cry from the rebel persona he would eventually cultivate as the decade ended. Hunter is a stable, knowing presence. Meacham is intriguing and mysterious. She would later go on to have a memorable run on "Another World" as the quirky maid to The Cory Family. Making her film debut, and turning in a memorably tense and dejected performance, is Walter as one of Beatty's former girlfriends. Her crass, doughy, obtuse husband is played to perfection by Hackman in an early role, which is basically his feature film debut as well save one previous bit as a cop. (It paid off when Beatty later remembered him and used him in "Bonnie and Clyde.") There's plenty of symbolism on hand from the start. Seberg seems encased in a spider web thanks to the chain link fencing on her windows. Notice, also, when Beatty takes her to a jousting tournament (!) in which he has to take a lance and guide it into increasingly smaller rings. The mood of the film is helped immeasurably by the musical score and by the striking black & white photography. Also, filming the story on location in Maryland provided an ambiance and atmosphere that couldn't have been achieved the same way on a studio set. Those familiar with Great Falls (and even those not) will enjoy seeing the footage of them during one of the patient picnics. The film makes a point of not giving the viewer all the information he or she needs in order to follow the story easily, though many baffling questions and situations are soon cleared up. However, there are still many moments left so ambiguous or confusing that one wishes for just a little more exposition here and there to help fill in the gaps. It might not be a wholly satisfying film, but it is nevertheless a captivating one. Busy character actor Auberjonois appears briefly as a horse wrangler who hands over the steed to Beatty.

Yes Norman and laura show how normal people live and also shows that V is becoming like Lililth in that he now inspires a sexual desire in another person (Laura) that can never be fulfilled or if it is it will wound a third person-- Norman- just like Warren was wounded and then suicided.Lililth strikes me more as nympho than schizo, most schizos have other symptoms like auditory hallucinations and the retreat into imaginary kingdom seems a bit contrived--Deborah did the same in I NEVER promised YOU A ROSE GARDEN, maybe its a device in the authors minds to show the patient retreating from a reality too horrid to bear in the real world--ie Ls guilt re causing brother to suicide over his incestuous desire. But where ere ls unseen parents while the L/brother affair was going on? If they had been more observant of their children they could have prevented the tragedy.I really would want a reply esp re the parents

When filmmakers are coming to the end of their lives, occasionally they make a film that transcends their place in cinema. Such a film is Lilith. Robert Rossen was a fine and highly competent director, but, even in 'The Hustler', there was no sign in his work that he could make anything quite as jaw-dropping as Lilith. Rossen was dying when he made this film, and his veteran cinematographer, Eugene Shufftan was also getting very old. It seems to me that they both thought 'we won't get another chance like this' and went for broke.Lilith shows the very best of Rossen, the very best of Shufftan and the very best of Jean Seberg - the 60s' most luminously beautiful star. I have read J R Salmanca's novel, and it weaves a wonderful spell. In the up-market asylum, Salamanca found a metaphorical island somewhat like that in 'The Tempest' where pure aspects of the human psyche could be explored - particularly that most precious and fundamental aspect, love.Indeed, the film deals in visual/conceptual metaphors in many ways - think, for example, of the analogy that is drawn between spiders and the inmates of the asylum. The Beatty character, Vincent, sees the beautiful Lilith as a victim of schizophrenia, being trapped in it, as if in a spider's web, but he ends up being trapped in her web.Rossen does a fabulous job in keeping this really very static story moving and ensuring our identification with the central relationships. Vincent seems excessively mannered, but, like Travis Bickle, he is just back from the war and is trying to integrate back into society. We rarely see Vincent other than in a hospital environment until he has completely fallen for Lilith, so his attempts to re-integrate into society are, in effect, attempts to integrate into madness.Seberg as Lilith is completely dazzling, her beguiling beauty hiding a gorgon in disguise as she plays each character off against the other until she has them helplessly reliant on her. She never looked, or acted close to this level before or after. Forget Breathless, forget Bonjour Tristesse or Saint Joan; forget even Birds Come to Die in Peru. This is essence of Seberg! It is the visual aspect of the film, however, that is so wonderful, and that visual splendour is such that seeing the film on a television barely gives a small reflection of its qualities in this respect. Shufftan's black and white cinematography would get my vote for the greatest black & white cinematography of all time (Seven Samurai comes close...). On a cinema screen, you get the impression of being able to see every hair on the head of the central characters and light becomes a vehicle of meaning and wonder as in no other film that I can remember.As the silent cinema came to an end, there was one monumental masterpiece that showed what was being lost in its passing - Dovzhenko's Earth. Now, as black and white cinema was coming to a close, Rossen and Shufftan showed what had been lost. There have been several major black and white films in the last forty years, but nothing that has the visual splendour of this magnificent work.