Petulia (1968)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An unhappily married socialite (Julie Christie) finds solace in the company of a recently divorced doctor (George C. Scott).The cast is top notch. Christie is excellent and Scott never fails. And director Richard Lester has made some enjoyable movies. But none of these three is showing their best work here. It is middling, average... and wholly forgettable.I feel like maybe it had a bit more weight at the time, because there is the angle of the father who now has to compete for the attention of his children with their "uncle" (mother's boyfriend). That is pretty routine these days, but may have been more novel in the 1960s.

This is a great movie but I suspect it has been forgotten and not recognized because of the child pedophilia and wife beating in it's plot which were very, very uncomfortable subjects to discuss until recently. Acknowledging how good this movie is also mean having to deal with this subjects.I only saw this movie once before as a young teenager in the late 60's on TV and didn't get it. (I did like the "bastardo" remark to Archie by the young Mexican however). Younger viewers will not understand a time when homosexuality,and pedophilia was underground and could only be hinted at in the movies which is why it is not obvious or said in this movie. Seeing the movie again as a 60 year old with the understanding of these modern time but knowledge of the 60's made it clear that Richard Chamberlain's character David was a gay pedophile and that his father Richard played by Joseph Cotten knew it. Whether Petulia knew this before she married him is unclear but it is obvious that she knew it when David wants to drive the young boy back to their home in San Francisco (at least a day's drive from the San Diego Border). Her latter rescue of the boy after the unsuccessful (or successful?) seduction of him by David is the key as why she would try to hook up with George Scott's character Archie.Christie's character is also bizarre. As the child and sister of prostitutes she obliviously has some real issues of her own which are part of her "kookiness" (makes me feel old to see how "kook" has disappeared from everyday usage). My guess is that the realization that her dream marriage is a sham and that her husband prefers young boys has left her even more unstable. Christie probably grew up without a father around and so her attraction to Scott is part physical and that of wanting a father figure, and his kindness. The accident and situation with the young Mexican have left her quite crazy. Her desire to both seduce Archie and then deny him are understandable in her unstable mind to both still want to be married but also not at the same time. Scott's Character is that of a middle age man in manopause, unhappy but not sure what he wants. This explain his divorce, dating other women and dealing with Petulia's character. Note that his fellow doctor is in a similar place but doesn't have the gut to do anything about it.Watching the special features on the DVD I found out according to Chamberlain that neither he or Christie, or Scott knew what the movie was about when making it (Director Lester wouldn't tell them). I believe Joesph Cotten on the other hand must of know what was going on as an explanation of his brilliant performance. His Character as a member of the very elite and small San Francisco upper class is desperate to hide that his son's marriage is on the rocks and even worse his son has beaten her nearly to death and is a gay pedophile. He has to bring her back into the family fold to keep those secrets and his performance shows that masterfully. His lines about how how his his son is busy with his "boys" preparing for a voyage says so much.Chamberlain's character in addition to being a gay pedophile also has severe physical anger problems as shown when he hits Christie when she want the young Mexican to leave after crossing the border. His anger and beating of Christie nearly to death by embarrassing him when staying with Scott is also an issue which Hollywood and Movie Reviewer have a hard time dealing with and another reason to forget this film. The final moments of the film are interesting to speculate. Is Scott the real father of Christie's child as perhaps Chamberlain's character is impotent with women? Is that why Petulia calls out to Archie at the end of the film. Does Archie suspect this and tries to move her out of the situation only to realize it would come to no good end and decides to let everything stay as it is? I don't blame him for realizing how crazy it would be to move her and that it would best for all do nothing at the time.

Julie Christie parades her proletariat pout through 2 hours of psychedelic pretensions, all of which are seemingly supposed to suggest great profundity and hidden meaning--but don't be fooled--this is an empty parcel wrapped in glittering paper, with a core as resoundingly vacuous as the society it attempts to depict.The story, (such as it is) concerns a chic young woman (Miss Christie as "Petulia") who picks up children and middle aged men with casual indifference to convention, because she's "kooky" (recall that our anti-heroine here inherits this voguish characteristic from her cinematic sisters in "Georgy Girl," "Darling" and anything with Sandy Duncan). The reason for this, to which the story eventually arrives, but which it anticipates with frequent visual flashbacks, lies in an unhappy marriage with wealthy pretty boy Richard Chamberlin.In this instance, Petulia's latest adult male conquest is a recently divorced physician, (George C. Scott) with whom she commits adultery, between kooky capers (installing a greenhouse in a residential urban apartment, shopping out the store in an all night grocery etc.) and pronouncements such as "I think I've just found the cure for cancer".Amid the kookiness, and in order to assure us that this is all to be taken in deadly earnest, the story includes an incident in which Petulia is hospitalized after sustaining multiple lacerations in Mr. Scott's apartment. This sequence replete with ambulance runs, and much blood is designed to arouse sympathy for any in the audience who haven't yet warmed to our anti-heroine, who also turns out to be expecting a baby.Mr. Scott wears an expression throughout the film suggesting the worst case of indigestion in history, (and by the way it's the only expression he wears) and one wonders if his dissatisfaction is with the script or the character.In any case, he's unsympathetic, not the least of which is because his ex-wife is portrayed by the exquisitely lovely Shirley Knight of the golden blonde hair and guileless cornflower blue eyes. Her performance, so dead on target, saves the film, in at least those sequences in which she appears.Along the way, every visual cliché in the book is thrown in at some point including protesting hippies, daisy covered vans, strobe lit discotheques, and rock bands. The faddish choppy editing through which these scenes appear fleetingly is about as subtle as a sledge hammer.If the point of this cinematic charade is that modern society is filled with poseurs, then "Darling" from three years earlier made the same point much better. In this case, "Petulia" is the poseur par excellence.

Archie Bollen(George C Scott, very good)is a square peg in a very circular world. He seems to be a Waldo amongst flower children. There's a scene I find humorous(..while others might find strange and/or pathetic)that shows Archie in the middle of a crowd of hipsters dancing in a psychedelic hall as some band was playing with weird-colored strobe lights flashing throughout. What makes this film so great is that he has no business having any connection whatsoever with "young-married" Petulia(Julie Christie). She has this feeling for him that spurns from an operation she watched him perform on a young Latino child named Oliver. Oliver, as the film would confirm later, is caught under a speeding car and it has everything to do with Petulia and her volatile, unpredictable, "quick-to-rush-into anger" husband David(Richard Chamberlain;he's unfortunately the unsung actor here because all the roles are so great that Chamberlain can be forgotten until his character changes Petulia's life through a horrible beating).Archie's previous married life to "Polo"(Shirley Knight who is outstanding as the conflicted wife;clearly, her work on here outshines everyone..even Christie in my opinion)wasn't a bad one, but something was missing. He felt suffocated, not to mention, there was no joy. When he can not get rid of Petulia, he succumbs to her charms and beauty. This film shows their unusual relationship, specifically how their differences bring them peculiarly closer because of this transfixing, overwhelming attraction that morphs into love.I have to say that Richard lester's direction just floored me. The way he edits the lifestyle of that period in San Francisco life and how he captures the people in that era..it's just Wow. I wish films like this were made today. It just vibrated off-screen to me and I was completely hooked to it's charms and visual fervor. The performances are already superb to begin with, but how Lester brings the past within the frame-work of the present..it's so fresh and innovative. This movie just wreaks of craftsmanship. A masterpiece.