ThiefHott Too much of everything

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

chazz46-2 CONTAINS SPOILERS -- While a freshman in college in 1965, I saw the movie "Lilith" and I was awestruck by the characters, the black and white screen with mystic lighting from prisms in windows, and Vincent, played by a new actor (Warren Beatty) whose character was quiet, pensive, observant, sensitive, empathetic, and searching for something meaningful to become after fighting in WWII. Being raised in a small town that had a high class asylum that was never considered an anathema to that community led to his searching for a job there. Here is where our schizophrenic blond beauty, Lilith (Jean Seberg) resided and the story of his improbable success as an on the job occupational therapist. Lilith was an incorrigible patient with whom nobody on the staff could ever make favorable headway. Vincent, a handsome, athletic, and intelligent (but naive unproven "professional") member of the junior staff was drawn to Lilith to the extent that he was foolishly in love with her. Lilith blackmailed him to carry on lesbian relationships and presumptive soft core pedophilia in public while under his attending responsibilities. He anxiously awaited his "turn" during the week for her total attention to him (and of course, sex). I thought is was quite ironic towards the end when the author's prosaic descriptions of Vincent's delusions gave the appearance that Vincent was experiencing psychotic symptoms. As he realized he was snared by Lilith and unable to do anything but whatever she commanded him to do, the only thing that was left to confirm that his thinking was organized was his ability to maintain steady control of his favorable reports regarding Liilith to his supervisors. .......but even this was tainted by the fact that the subterfuge was so implausible for any normal person to carry out. The book, which I read later, ended differently than the movie, by allowing Vincent to leave his employment after Lilith was transferred out by her parents and another patient died from his total abrogation of his professional responsibilities. The book does not allow Vincent to succumb to his progression of delusions and he enjoys living with his grandfather in town no longer associated with the asylum and presumably quite sane. But I loved the movie's ending.....in which Vincent, in his last moments at the asylum as a therapist, walks out of the front door with the mutual understanding of his supervisors and himself that his working there was not a good idea and that he had failed. But then Vincent stops, and turns around, and the camera does a closeup....where his last words of the movie is......"Help me." So, I believe the movie and the book present strong considerations for a serious nearly psychotic breakdown for Vincent. When I rotated med students in my practice 25 to 35 years ago, I often recommended this book as an entertaining way to demonstrate to the students how dangerous it can be to allow any romance in a professional relationship with patients. The descriptions of Vincent's many delusional episodes are evident after he realizes Lilith is in control. When he realized that he was a "loathsome procurer" for Lilith, he described his mindset in this way: " If I try to think about it rationally, my mind becomes a cauldron of hysterical remorse". He had long commentary of nearly autistic insights on the difference between air and water on their interactions with their surroundings, talking about falling in air but the buoyancy of water not allowing such dynamic movements, etc. I found the prose of Salamanca part of the mystical and mesmerizing qualities that made this book different from all the rest. In fact, I was surprised at how much the dialogue in the movie followed the book verbatim. Salamanca was compared to JD Salinger, but Salinger's intellect had to be light years beyond JD's based on the much deeper and highly prosaic descriptions of many truths we all experience in life. A great book that never got the highest critical acclaim it deserved. Chazz46

howardeisman The mental institution in this film, called "Poplar Lodge" I believe, is modeled on Chestnut Lodge, a Bethesda, Maryland institution famed for early attempts to establish interpersonal relationships with (rich) psychotic patients. This fits the institutional style depicted in this film. Hopwever, the main characters do not seem to be mentally ill so much as metaphores for the madness es in our society. The perception that sexual expression represents evil or crazy behavior, not changed all that much from the time this film was made, frequent wars, and the way sensitive people are brushed aside as others hustle toward dubious goals, are all personified as forms of madness. Okay so far.But the film does not quite work. The character played by Anne Meacham, seething with barely suppressed sexuality, works, but Lilith, played as a golden haired all American, girl next door beauty, doing and saying odd things, making up her own language, seeing herself as an outside observer of our society, is a character which doesn't hit home. She seems more quirky than mad. That she drives men into destructive actions seems somehow unlikely. At the most, she may be a catalyst for their weaknesses to be expressed.Jean Seberg doesn't personify madness. She seems just bemused. Warren Beatty conveys a lack of inner direction, a developing depression, and strange longings by looking blank, seeming inarticulate, and acting as if he has no idea of the direction his next step will take. All of this slows this film down to a very languid pace, frequently accompanied by a relaxed bop-along jazz score. Thus, the film is too slow, a long windup for a soft pitch. It is hard to feel much tension, even though it is clear that there is supposed to be a lot of tension. Nice try, but no cigar.

edwagreen Dreadful neurotic film dealing with wealthy people in a sanitarium. Perhaps, I'm being too nice. It's really the nut house.Hollywood just seemed to exploit these films. "The Snake Pit," and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" were far better because they dealt with why people ended up in the way they did as well as an answer to what was going on. This mess of a film did not.Gene Hackman's brief role was impressive and probably got Warren Beatty to think several years later that he would be perfect for the part of Buck Barrow in "Bonnie and Clyde."Jean Seberg and Peter Fonda play residents of this house of loony tunes. The group therapy sessions are memorable with accusations being made while people scream out. This is pure insanity and hell at the same time.As Dr. Brice, Kim Hunter makes a huge error in hiring Warren Beatty to work at this place. Where were his references? Are they trying to show that nobody really wants to work in these kind of places? We eventually get to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" as it becomes increasingly obvious that Beatty belongs there as one of the residents. Seberg does quite a wonderful job as the sexually oppressed, neurotic woman unable to deal with reality about her. Ditto for Fonda, who gives a gem of a performance as an intellectually repressed individual. When Vincent Bruce (Beatty) falls for Seberg, he sees Fonda as a rival so tragedy results.The black and white texture serves as a reminder of the dreariness and hopelessness of life in these mental institutions.The writing has a lot to be desired. We hear references such as: "Is insanity sadness?" or "My mother cried all the time." Response: "Was she sad?" She might have been had she gone to see this frustrating, tedious film.

Balthazar-5 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 .As the silent cinema came to an end, there was one monumental masterpiece that showed what was being lost in its ing - 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.