John Schlesinger
Winner of three Academy Awards® and four BAFTAs, including Best Actress for Julie Christie, Darling is the fabulously lavish and critically acclaimed motion picture set in London in the heart of the swinging sixties.
Darling is the story – based on fact – of a goodtime-girl of the era. She’s a freelance female who moves from bed to bed on the presumption that fidelity means having only one man in it at a time, and opportunistically bends her ambitions to take advantage of whatever (or whomever) the moment offers her. There are three men in her life, each of whom willingly or involuntarily helps her on her way to the top: Dirk Bogarde plays a TV interviewer, an honest man striving to tell illusion from reality; Laurence Harvey, an advertising executive, totally cynical about manipulating society’s values; and Roland Curram, a gay magazine photographer feeding parasitically on glossy society. There is also a ‘fourth man’ – the one whom Darling marries, only to find herself a prisoner of the smart world she has conquered.
One of the coolest and most defining films of the sixties, Julie Christie and Dirk Borgarde were perfectly cast, immortalising onscreen their status as the ultimate 1960s screen icons.
Written By Frederic Raphael
The screenwriter and director of War on Everyone, The Guard and Cavalry picks Melody, That’ll Be The Day, A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar, Darling, Far From The Madding
The actor, director and writer known for Lost in Translation, Somewhere and Marie Antoinette picks Darling.
The director, writer and actor known for Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End picks 10 favourites including Pink String and Sealing
The film critic for BBC Radio London picks The Fallen Idol, It Always Rains on Sunday, Sparrows Can’t Sing, Pool of London, The Small World