DVD Review: LILITH / Robert Rossen (1964)
December 27th, 2009 by Scott Marks
Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg
Lilith (1964)
Written, Produced and Directed by Robert Rossen
Based on the Novel byJ.R. Salamanca
Starring: Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter, Anne Meacham, Jessica Walter, Gene Hackman, James Patterson,
Director of Photography: Eugen Schüfftan
Edited by Aram Avakian
Production Designer:Richard Sylbert
Set Decorator: Gene Callahan
Music Composed and Conducted by Kenyon Hopkins
Running Time: 114 min.
Rating: 
Dave Kehr called “Lilith” a complete contradiction of director/social critic Robert Rossen’s career. Others claim that Rossen was dying when he wrote and directed “Lilith” and view his final film as compensation for his behavior during the McCarthy witch hunts. Rossen originally refused to testify at the HUAC hearings, but later admitted to being a member of the Communist Party. He eventually named 57 names.
Variety accused Rossen of adapting J.R. Salamanca’s novel “with obvious attempt to shock.” The film received such a hostile reaction from US critics that an aggrieved Robert Rossen pulled it out of contention at the Venice Film Festival and delayed its release in the UK by two years.
I’ll argue that every Hollywood film about the mentally ill, particularly those involving insane asylums, is meant to shock the audience. From “The Snake Pit” forward, no matter how well intentioned, films about the insane tend to follow three plot paths: Expose the truth, pity the poor simpletons and there but for the grace of God goes the viewer. The last one is key to ensuring audiences a better feeling walking out than they had going in.
Take away the investigative reporting angle and “Lilith” shares the same basic premise as Sam Fuller’s “Shock Corridor”: A man has a job to do in a mental institution and by the time his work is completed he’s crazier than those he came to help in the first place. The main difference is Fuller knew the story was hackneyed going in. Rossen appears to be reinventing the wheel.
Vincent Bruce (Warren Beatty) drifts into frame from out of nowhere, as though he stopped home after the Korean war long enough for a shower and a change of clothes before once again taking to the woods this time in search of a job, not the enemy. Vincent treks from out a wooded glade to find his future place of employment, a strictly upper-crust mad house populated by wealthy, more sedate retardates who come from otherwise “good stock.”
This is the type of Laughing Academy where the patients are better dressed than the staff. Joe Kennedy would have been proud to banish daughter Rosemary to a swanky nut house like Maryland’s Poplar Lodge. A native of Stonemont, Vincent always had a fascination with the place.
Dr. Brice (Kim Hunter) conducts the job interview/site walk through and introduces shy Vincent to a vast and sundry gathering of patients. There is a grinning giant, Mrs. Meaghan (Anne Meacham) a beautiful paranoiac who confesses to having “many enemies,” a lefty egghead burnt out on Dostoevsky, ping-pong players, and a middle-aged hausfrau whose use of the headmistresses’ name in every sentence is enough to drive any sane-thinking person up the wall. Even though Vincent is hardly qualified for the job, Dr. Brice hires him because she senses in him a willingness to help humanity. As an occupational therapist Vincent will oversee the cleanest, smartest, most physically attractive and well groomed bunch of mental defectives ever put on film.
None are lovelier than Lilith.
In order to further distance the doctor from her prospective employee, Rossen waits to position his players at a refreshment stand before Dr. Brice braces Vincent with news that the job is “dirty, often degrading” and “sometimes dangerous.” These three terms also perfectly describe Vincent’s infatuation with our lead lunatic Lilith (Jean Seberg). Brice asks, “Somehow insanity seems a lot less sinister to watch in a man than in a woman, doesn’t it?” And in Vincent’s eyes a whole lot sexier! The interview ends abruptly when a nurse comes to fetch the head doctor much in the same manner she’d remind a patient to take their meds.
While waiting for a bus in a rainstorm, former girlfriend Laura (Jessica Walter) spends more time looking over her shoulder than she does at her ex. Underscored by a perfectly timed cut-in to Vincent, Laura manages to slip in a caustic dig about never mentioning a future between them in one of his letters from the front. In less than a minute, she manages to exculpate herself from blame, prove her choice of Norman over Vincent to be a sound one and catch her bus!
Outside it pours, but inside Poplar Lodge days are sunny and bright. Compare it to Vincent’s home life with grandma. The ominous low-key lighting transforms a quiet dinner scene into something out of “Night of the Hunter.”
Kim Hunter & Warren Beatty.
Continue reading DVD Review: LILITH / Robert Rossen (1964)
Tags: Creedmoor, Jean Seberg, lilith, Mental Institution, Movies about mental patients, movies about the mentally handicapped, movies about the mentally ill, retard movies, Robert Rossen, Warren BeattyNew Photos Added: Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, BENJAMIN BUTTON, The Marx Bros., NORTH BY NORTHWEST, REAR WINDOW, Frank Sinatra, etc.
January 4th, 2009 by Scott Marks
Autographed cast photo from YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938).
Jean Arthur - 7 photos added.
Jack Benny - 1 candid photo added of Jack and Mary attending the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Milton Berle - 1 candid photo added of Uncle Miltie, Tony Curtis and Dean Martin.
George Cukor - 2 photos added with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand on the set of Let’s Make Love.
David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - New gallery with 59 photos added.
Zsa Zsa Gabor - 2 photos added of Zsa Zsa and George Sanders at 1952 Academy Awards.
Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino - New gallery with 39 images added.
Cary Grant - 5 photos added.
Audrey Hepburn - 5 photos added.
Alfred Hitchcock - 32 photos added.
Bob Hope - 6 photos added.
Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen’s Jellyfish - 8 photos added.
Julius Larosa - 1 photo added. (Thanks to Rob Martinez.)
Jerry Lewis - 6 photos added.
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Anne Hathaway, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Evan Rachel Wood, Frank Sinatra, George Cukor, gran torino, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Jayne Mansfield, Jean Arthur, Jean Seberg, jellyfish, Jerry Lewis, juliette lewis, julius larosa, Milton Berle, New Photos, north by northwest, Orson Welles, Otto Preminger, rachel getting married, REAR WINDOW, speedway, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Marx Brothers, THE WACKNESS, to catch a thief, walter matthau, zsa zsa gaborFiled Under Image Blog
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