Daisy Miller | Cybill Shepherd, Barry Brown | Another 4 Plus 1 for Courage

Daisy Miller | Cybill Shepherd, Barry Brown | Daisy Miller is a masterpiece.

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Daisy Miller

	Daisy Miller Cybill Shepherd, Barry Brown Paramount, 2003 average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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An adaptation of the Henry James novella of the same name, DAISY MILLER stars Cybill Shepherd as the title character, a beautiful American girl whose headstrong ways create quite a stir in European society during the 1800s. Drawn to European aristocrat Frederick Winterbourne (Brown) and the suave Italian Mr. Giovanelli (Del Prete), Daisy?s American ways slowly clash with continental etiquette and concern her mother, Ms. Ezra B. Miller (Leachman), who tries to persuade her to act more like a proper lady. Ultimately snubbed by Roman high society, Daisy?s un-ladylike conduct eventually ends in tragedy.

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Another 4 Plus 1 for Courage

This film is remarkable. It is not James, however close to the original plot it may dance. I don't believe with others that this film is a masterpiece. Bogdanovich overlays Henry James with Oscar Wilde. It doesn't work perfectly, but it gives you a variation on a theme, especially intriguing with James. (A well-known author once averred to me that the success of television's The Golden Bowl came from the director putting the sex James had so meticulously avoided back in the story.) Daisy doesn't have the sonority of James. Yet, it is its own James, a cut at James. The filmmaker makes his own oeuvre.

-Excellent cinematography. The director has used the camera - as he did in The Last Picture Show, but totally changed here - to present scenes that flow with the story and imprint themselves on the mind. The silent scene in which Frederick is seen through the lace curtain of the door window receiving the news, the barely heard 'morto,' held a moment longer than usual is sheer art.

The acting all takes the same tone of rapid speech, almost patter, and the quality is superb, quite musical. It is not the kind of thing Americans would like. They don't understand anything that is not street-real or living-room postured. -Marvelous performances by Mildred Natwick, Cloris Leachman, and Eileen Brennan. Cybill Shepherd is remarkable. I never suspected she had that much talent. Barry Brown achieves the persona the director wanted, though he lacks the internal solidity - not maturity - of a Jamesian young man. Only at the end do you sense his awareness of his own and his society's corruption. He doesn't quite seem to earn his consciousness of it. But it still fits within Bogdanovich's framework.

I applaud any director of an American film willing to try a different brush, a new stroke, without the idiocy of affectation. Thus, I find it a four, and throw in a one for bravery. (I've done that before somewhere.) It is a film to be watched again, however flawed, just for the characterizations, and of course, if you are a lover of women, for the four beauties present, especially Cybill Shepherd. There are few presentations of the beauty of the American girl, at least the American girl in times past without the potty mouth and exposed belly, as rare as this. Her brazenness and innocence are balanced to a fault.

I just surfed up the acerbic reviews and biographies concerning this film, e.g. IMDB, and sense as in the past, almost every year viewing the Academy Awards - though not all - that Hollywood suffers most from what Bogdanovich is accused of - playing in its own appetites. I have led a long life and watched many interesting films die of American arrogance, gossip, prejudice, and nastiness. So be it. One of the lessons of my life has been how much good to excellent art has been flushed down the toilet of indifference of the times. Let me say that, if you leave your prejudices at the door, this film is well worth watching. And again to repeat - forgive me! - if you love women, you will see a range of beauty in the women in this film (most of them older) that is remarkable.

Finally, Peter Bogdanovich's career is not unlike a parody of his mentor's, Orson Welles. Cut down in his genius prime, Welles became a personality, but never made a great film after Citizen Kane. Bogdanovich got caught in love - and who can blame him? - and opprobrium early enough to send him reeling into worse and worse mistakes, until any value he had as a director was lost. But it was not - pace critics and pundits - Daisy Miller that really did him in.

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Daisy Miller is a masterpiece.

This is one of the greatest film made by Peter Bogdanovich. Daisy Miller is a profond, deep and sad movie. Made in the style of George Cukor. Better than the novel written by Henry James. There are so wonderfull scenes in that movie, like when Daisy Miller sings "When You and I Where Young Maggie". The cast is perfect, Cybill Shepherd, Eileen Breenan, Mildred Natwick, George Morfogen and the great Barry Brown. Daisy Miller is perfect, an incredible masterpiece. Peter Bogdanovich is one of a greatest filmmaker.

A Good Film but Not a Masterpiece

It seems people either love this film or hate it. I stand, somewhat in the middle. The movie is an adaptation of Henry James' 1878 novella of the same name. James had a great idea for his novella. The plot sets Daisy Miller, an unconventional young American against the norms of Victorian era society. Is she an innocent free spirit or a woman on the road to social ruin and scandal--or both?

The movie was filmed in the beautiful locations James mentions in the story. The director, Peter Bogdanovich, did an excellent job in setting the scenes. The cinematography is excellent. Cybill Shepherd is lovely and the acting is generally superior.

The problem with this film is that, as the movie progressed, I began to wonder what Frederick Winterbourne, the point of view character in the novella, saw in Daisy. Why would he continue to pursue Daisy as she sent him mixed signals and flirted with every young man who crossed her path? Henry James wrote Daisy as a not particularly bright girl but, in the movie, Cybill Shepherd plays her as an airhead chatterbox.

For fans of period movies this is one you will want to see but will probably not often watch.

Kyle Pratt

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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