why is this movie never talked about?
It's one of the best ever. Great subject with a great caste with a great and equally underrated director.
Whats up with that.
[deleted]
MovieChat Forums > Lilith (1964) Discussion > why is this movie never talked about?
I agree, this is one of my favorite films. There is no film like it. I think it was a bit too "intelligent" and strange for most people. And it deals with a very touchy subject, a beautiful, sexy girl who is smart and over the edge insane, but yet, there is something real and truthful about her..
It's like a dream role, but I think it is the kind of thing that most people could not relate to. But I love it, I think it is just brilliant.
I really identify with Lilith, being completely insane myself...
I agree. It's a movie that's hard to get into unless you are in the mood for it. Nowadays people have low attention spans and are impressed with exploding objects and crazy CGI effects. Thoughtful and intelligent films like Lilith are a hard sell these days.
[deleted]
BlondeIsBetter
Are you saying you're a beautiful, sexy, insane, blonde nymphomaniac? What's you're phone number?!
Even with the excellent cast, all unknowns at the time, this kind of movie, and subject matter, was probably never meant to have major box-office appeal.
Mental hospital movies have done well: "Suddenly Last Summer", "The Snake Pit" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". But those movies all had fairly conventional story arcs and dramatic plots, characters, performances and some sort of hero and villain. "Lilith" was much more unique, low-key, intimate, sensitive, complex and obscure. Very much an actors movie. It reminded me a lot of "Last Summer", with a very young Barbara Hershey.
You may walk on the beach, you may swim in the ocean... under SWAT team surveillance, of course.
Jean Seberg, Kim Hunter, and Warren Beatty were not unknowns when this film was made.
"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first!"🍨-HOMER J.SIMPSON
The cast were all unknowns at the time? Really? In 1964? Really?
By the way, there's no such thing as "more unique". "Unique" stands alone, by definition, and should not take modifiers.
Like Jacques Becker's Le Trou (1960), this film seen in isolation could be taken for the debut film of an exciting new talent rather than the valediction of a veteran in his fifties about to be taken before his time.
shareNowadays people have low attention spans and are impressed with exploding objects and crazy CGI effects. Thoughtful and intelligent films like Lilith are a hard sell these days.Well, audiences and critics in general rejected the film when it was originally released, as well, so we can't really blame it on viewers "nowadays."
To me, the film has obviously interesting elements and good performances...but there's something a little placid and removed about it, with slow pacing. It just feels too careful....I think the heat could have been amped up a bit!
But, there are some very good things about it: the premise, and Seberg's enigmatically alluring performance.
. share
Agreed.
----------------------
http://viverdecinema.blogspot.com.br/
[deleted]
I had never heard of this film before tonight, saw it was playing locally and went out to see it for the hell of it. I was more than pleasantly surprised. The film was beautiful, well acted, and most of all, REAL. You don't see many movies that ring true like this these days. Although I am not a movie expert, I know more than my fair share about movies, known and unknown, and this one I had never heard of from anyone I know. Was a nice surprise, you don't always get rewarded for taking a chance on something like this.
share"Lilith" is one of my favorite movies. I'll never understand why it hasn't been rediscovered.
As I read through some of the posts, I can understand another reason people didn't like it -- they don't even GET it. Some people think Lilith died in the end, for example. Some people think Vincent must have attacked and killed Lilith. (No way!) Others are putting too much emphasis, I think, on the suggestions of incest between Lilith and her brother and hints of insanity in Vincent's family. The movie tells us just enough. We can figure the rest out.
Although I love the ending -- "Help me" -- I'm sure a lot of people would respond by saying "Huh?? That's it??" We get a hugely downbeat ending in which no one lives happily ever after.
The world of "Lilith" is light years away from the world of Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day and Sandra Dee. If "Lilith" had been made six years later, it might have found an audience (as "Easy Rider" or "Midnight Cowboy" did). But in 1964, it didn't stand a chance. More than 50 years later, despair still doesn't sell movie tickets.
True, it was probably ahead of its time, and not sensational enough to get the press or notoriety it would have received had it been over the top instead of downplayed.
shareIn the 70's and 80's this was a staple of New York revival cinemas. I first saw it on a double bill with "Reflections in a Golden Eye"
shareThe world of "Lilith" is light years away from the world of Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day and Sandra Dee.
The world of Lilith is also light years away from the rest of Robert Rossen's body of work, with the possible exception of The Hustler. I find it astonishing that a man in late middle-age could create something that looks and sounds so avant garde, at the conclusion of his career. Run Lilith side-by-side with Rossen's Island in the Sun, made less than a decade before Lilith. The earlier film looks like standard 20th Century-Fox fare, complete with CinemaScope and Deluxe color, and is indistinguishable from the work of the Fox house directors of the '50s, such as Jean Negulesco, Mark Robson, and Walter Lang. In contrast, and as another member has pointed out on these boards, Lilith seems much more the creation of a young filmmaker at the beginning of what would appear to be an promising career. In many ways, Lilith is a Hollywood anomaly. share