It’s a great film, it is the best one to describe the mental illness, depicting it as something more than a medical disorder. Rossen is one of the great American directors, but he is not famous yet.
Beautiful the scenes in the water, the parallels between water and mind.
It should be better known, there are some beautiful elegant passages that have as much in common with arthouse European as American cinema i thought. I could do with seeing it again as it’s beguilingly strange, doesn’t take a moralising tone, maybe a bit confusing by today’s standards over mental health. I wasn’t quite sure how enlightened it was; an enigmatic oddity certainly. As you imply, Justin, it’s hard to pin down. I think the fine line between sanity and insanity is important, as society’s definitions of mental illness still lead to a clear separation of people who are disturbed and suffering from mental health problems that isn’t very helpful. The film seems to question such stigma and raises social aspects- as you say, Dan it doesn’t just reinforce the medical model.
I agree. It is one of the most amazing love stories I have ever seen. I think The Hustler is as good as Lillith. I find Fast Eddie one of the most tragic heroes of american cinema. I sincerely cannot count how many times I have seen both movies. I also love Body and Soul and All the King’s men. It beats me why he is not more considered… The conspiracy theory would be that because during the McCarthyism he actually handed over the names of many of his colleagues, he has been somehow forcefully neglected.
It’s disappointing to learn about his collaboration with HUAC. Not everyone is politically heroic or sacrificial, okay; but Lilith is such a forceful commentary on how society breeds alienation… Maybe it was his way of trying to make up for what he had done — at any rate, I feel more of a personal necessity behind it than I have felt behind his other movies.
good film
Now that you mentioned, Splendor in the Grass, which explores the same exacerbated love/metal illness relation, was made by another HUAC informant.
It is a good film, and it was Robert Rossen’s last. In his book ‘The American Cinema’ (1968), Andrew Sarris places Rossen in the ‘Strained Seriousness’ category of directors (“These are talented but uneven directors with the mortal sin of pretentiousness. Their ambitious projects tend to inflate rather than expand.” ), along with John Sturges, John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet and Stanley Kubrick, among others. This was pre- ‘Barry Lindon’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’, but definitely post- ‘Lolita’ and ‘Space Odyssey’.
Rossen was called before HUAC in 1951 and refused to name names. He was blacklisted an unable to work for two years. In May 1953 he appeared before HUAC and gave them 57 names. According to Rossen’s son:
“It killed him not to work. He was torn between his desire to work and his desire not to talk, and he didn’t know what to do. What I think he wanted to know was, what would I think of him if he talked? He didn’t say it in that way, though. Then he explained to me the politics of it—how the studios were in on it, and there was never any chance of his working. He was under pressure, he was sick, his diabetes was bad, and he was drinking. By this time I understood that he had refused to talk before and had done his time, from my point of view. What could any kid say at that point? You say, ‘I love you and I’m behind you.’”
Apparently on-set clashes with Warren Betty were what finally drove him from filmmaking. He said: “it isn’t worth that kind of grief. I won’t take it any more. I have nothing to say on the screen right now. Even if I never make another picture, I’ve got The Hustler on my record. I’m content to let that one stand for me.”
Lilith Fair ruined that name for me.
On TCM Aug. 21 or 22nd.
Thanks Matt — I guess Beatty was angry about Rossen testifying. I tried to start a thread once about how difficult it was for artists to leave Nazi Germany and maybe sacrifice their careers, or to say no to McCarthy and get blacklisted, and I encountered a lot of similar anger from people who I guess thought I was making excuses for Nazi sympathizers and McCarthyists. Which wasn’t really what I was trying to do.
Thanks Christi2n, I have it on dvd but it’s definitely worth checking out.
Jean Seberg loved her part, (even if Beatty didn’t), but the film failed at the box office:
“Lilith was for me the chance to try, in America, something in which i believed deeply, with someone whom i esteemed very much; this film allowed me at last to leave my usual character, to do something other than what people usually proposed to me. That is to say in what degree the financial failure of the film affected us, Robert Rossen, who was already very ill, as well as me. We had truly given the best of ourselves, and that, for an empty theatre. So Lilith was for me at once the most exciting of my experiences as an actress, and something rather sad.”
Reading David Thomson now, he rates it more highly than did Sarris, for Seberg’s performance, the casting, screenplay, sets and Eugen Shufftan. Whereas Sarris saw it as pretentious, Thomson thinks the femme fatale/devouring feminist godhead aspect may have contributed to its failure, but i’m also unsure if such mental illness tales are attractive consumer fodder, even in “arthouse” circles.
I like the film, it’s fascinating, but there’s a better one in English centred on mental health problems the same year, The Pumpkin Eater with Anne Bancroft.
Justin Vicari
An amazing film about alienation in America and the fine line between sanity and insanity in this society. Warren Beatty is at his best; Jean Seberg (with hair! and her own American accent! both of which take some getting used to) is more than terrific as the title character, a tortured but beautiful schizophrenic. Mental illness is depicted as sexual-romantic, a raw and predatory fire that consumes all it touches. Unbelievably slow dissolves are used to pull the viewer into a world of hallucination, where all the images are “loaded” and mean something more than what their surface suggests. Gene Hackman is great as the personification of Beatty’s disgust. Why didn’t Robert Rossen, who produced-wrote-directed in true auteur style, ever make another film this accomplished?