The Sandpiper

source: The Sandpiper

I've recently developed a fondness for Elizabeth Taylor movies, particularly BAD Elizabeth Taylor movies. To that end, there is much trashy treasure to be found in the star's filmography from the 1960s and '70s. Whether it's a pretentious hog wallow like "Boom!," campy weirdness like "Secret Ceremony" and "Reflections in a Golden Eye," or a Eurotrash psycho-thriller like "The Driver's Seat," Taylor's formidable presence, outrageous behavior and often ridiculous costuming always manages to increase the movie's entertainment value tenfold. So I was quite excited when I got the opportunity to see "The Sandpiper," another one of Taylor's missteps from the 1960s. It's as bad as it's reputed to be, but unfortunately it's not nearly bad enough to be entertaining. As she was in "Boom!' and "The Only Game in Town," Taylor is miscast here. She's got the attitude for her role as a free spirited artist, but she's just a tad too old and way too regal to fit in with the beatniks who surround her (save an equally--and hilariously--miscast Charles Bronson as a beatnik sculptor). Her costuming is a bit too glamorous for the character, and her beach "shack" looks like prime beach front property to me. Director Vincente Minnelli could shoulder some of the blame here. As he demonstrated in his next film, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," Minnelli wasn't exactly in tune with the youth culture of the day. In place of pot-smoking hippies with scraggly hair and dirty jeans, Minnelli gives us freshly scrubbed, perfectly coiffed 20-somethings in coordinated scarves and ponchos. Richard Burton is a much better fit in his role as a minister, though, as another reviewer commented, what Liz's character sees in him is something of a mystery. A throbbing hunk of passion he is not. And poor Eva Marie Saint is reduced to little more than walk on part, though she gets kudos for being able to maintain a stoic expression while a boy recites Chaucer. The dialog is lively, if overwrought and ridiculous, at the film's beginning, but once Liz and Dick fall in love it immediately becomes overheated mush. I spent the last 30 minutes of the movie checking my watch. The beach scenery is nice, though. Overall, "The Sandpiper" is more bland than bad, and that ain't good.

The enormity of Elizabeth Taylor's breasts in this ridiculous 1965 sudser overshadows (pardon the pun) even the grandeur of Big Sur captured nicely by Milton R. Krasner's expert cinematography. She was at the height of her notoriety as a Hollywood star enflamed by the media for her highly publicized affair with and marriage to Richard Burton, who looks understandably embarrassed as her co-star, probably the least of their big-screen couplings back in the 1960's. Consider that "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" was their next film. Taylor is hilariously miscast as beatnik artist Laura Reynolds, a free-spirit mother to ten-year-old Danny. They live a solitary life in a striking home overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. How she can afford such prime real estate on just her paintings is one of many suspensions of belief the movie asks of the undemanding viewer. The threadbare plot, written by four screenwriters including the legendary Dalton Trumbo, has Danny being sent to a local Episcopal boarding school for killing a deer out of curiosity. The pompous headmaster is Dr. Edward Hewitt, who feels constantly cheapened by his glad-handing efforts to raise funds to maintain the school and build a new chapel. His repressed wife Claire teaches there, and in no time, Danny starts to enjoy school and the company of the other students. Meanwhile, Laura is initially resentful of Hewitt's academic approach, but of course, given this is Taylor and Burton in their prime, they fall quickly into a torrid love affair. Of course, Hewitt grows guilty for his uncontrollable passion and confesses to his wife. This leads to a rather absurd but inevitable conclusion. The film's director is surprisingly VIncente Minnelli who can't seem to do anything intelligent with the limp script handed to him and lets his two stars flail excessively on screen. With her zaftig figure and designer outfits, Taylor simply looks disengaged, while Burton tries to inject some dignity to a basically unsympathetic character but to no avail. Poor Eva Marie Saint is left stranded by Claire's frigidity and ignorance. Charles Bronson has a few silly scenes as a sarcastic bohemian sculptor, while Robert Webber has his standard role of a wealthy cad lusting after Laura. Morgan Mason plays Danny insipidly, though interestingly enough, he would grow up to become Reagan's Chief of Protocol and marry Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go's. Much of the dialogue is painfully bad with a lot of counter-culture talk that sounds hopelessly pretentious out of Taylor's mouth, yet for all its flaws, the film is utterly watchable as a trash wallow. The familiar Johnny Mandel song, "The Shadow of Your Smile", comes from this movie and plays over the opening and end credits. The 2006 DVD contains two vintage featurettes: "The Big Sur", narrated by Burton, about the challenges of filming in the area, and "A Statue for The Sandpiper", featuring the artist who carved the redwood statue of the bodacious Taylor, used in the film.

Yes, the scenery is beautiful. Yes, the interior sets filmed in France are faker than fake. Yes, the film displays the usual Minnelli visual flair. Yes, it is as bad as you've heard. Yes, the soundtrack is beautiful. Yes, Taylor is stunning. And being that IMDb requires ten lines for a review, I will type this extra long sentence to insure that I do not have to come up with any further comments on this film. Sure, watch it, but expect a typical 60s Minnelli flick.

The Sandpiper is a great movie to watch. This was made in 1965, it's about a Boy who kills animals. A doctor tries his best to stop the boy doing things badly. I give this movie 10 out of 10 because i think it is a great movie.

This film was designed to take advantage of public curiosity about the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who were kind of the Bragelina of the 1960's. Their star power were enough to make this picture a hit at the box office. Here, Taylor plays a free-spirited beatnik artist and single mother. She lives on the beach in a glamorous "shack" and makes a living as an artist while raising her son. Very touching. Her son, played by Morgan Mason, gets into trouble and winds up being sent to a religious boarding school. The school is run by the Reverend Richard Burton, along with his pretty and supportive but staid wife, Eva Marie Saint. Well, Burton is going through a mid-life crisis and it comes to fruition when he first meets Taylor and is taken by her heavy make-up and "look at my breasts" wardrobes. So he visits her home to help her keep tabs on her son's progress at school and meets some of her beatnik friends, including Charles Bronson, absurdly cast as a hippie sculptor. What happens then? Well, after taking forever to set up the story, Taylor and Burton fall in love and have an affair, to the surprise of no one. In the process, we are treated to the majestic Big Sur beaches and beautiful music, including the Oscar-winning theme song "The Shadow of Your Smile." In fact, the music and seascapes are more interesting than the story and characters, who just talk everything to death while the story drags on in predictable fashion. This would have been a better coffee table book than motion picture. My recommendation? Watch the opening credits and closing credits, which are by far the best parts of the movie.

The story in this film is worth telling, but the script seems to take forever to tell it. Lots of explanatory dialogue bogs the film down, and there's really only enough story for maybe a one-hour television drama. One good aspect of it is it would be very easy to make this a one-sided film in which the Big Bad Headmaster (with a Soft Spot) takes away the child of sweet, free-spirited Elizabeth, but Taylor and Burton play their characters in ways that we could sympathize with either of them--or not. Unfortunately, "or not" is a very distinct possibility. First of all, the boy in question does not exude a persona that's engaging in any way. (And what he does in his first scene certainly does not endear him to the audience.) And secondly, there's nothing really compelling enough about any of the other characters either. (Eva Marie Saint's character would be a possible exception if she had more screen time.) They're just varying degrees of liberal and conservative clichés. While Vincente Minnelli was really incapable of making a truly awful film, given his talent--and the talent we would see in Taylor and Burton the following year in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--this can't be seen as anything but a disappointment. But it's not a total failure either. If you're initially interested, Maybe you'll stay with it. If not, you'll be totally bored. Note: This film gave us the Oscar-winning song, "The Shadow of Your Smile." But none of the characters smile much, so it makes little to no sense when the Studio Singers perform it over the end credits. But it works as a score.

Richard Burton dials down the angst quotient from his previous year's role as a defrocked priest in "Night of the Iguana", and Elizabeth Taylor begins warming up for her later role as Kate in "Taming of the Shrew". The music and the scenery make the film compelling enough to watch, but the psychological and theological ramblings are strictly for the soap lover. Eva Marie Saint, as the hurt wife, has a few good scenes but not nearly enough to salvage the drama. And it's fun to see a young Charles Bronson in a beatnik role. The whole effort ranks several notches above "The VIP's" and other Burton-Taylor vehicles but all in all, "The Sandpiper" is a long boring day at the beach.

I absolutely adore this film and cannot wait to get it on DVD. I think that not only the scenery, plot, characters and music make it so lovely, but the strength of the relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton which is so obvious and was happening in real life at the same time. Roll on December, which is when I have been told it is going to be released on to DVD. One of my favourite films and really romantic! Richard Burton is brooding, moody and so strong, and Elizabeth Taylor is such an independent character and yet she loves to be loved too, as long as her wings are not clipped. She is like the sandpiper that she looks after then lets free. A free spirit, just like her son.

For their third film together (and their first as a newly-married couple), the Burtons chose one of the most infamous bad movies of all-time, the hilariously misguided effort THE SANDPIPER (1965). The film had a great pedigree starting with director Vincent Minnelli (who helmed such classics as 1944's MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, 1958's GIGI, and even 1970's criminally underrated ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER), and great supporting cast featuring Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson, Robert Webber, and James Edwards. Unfortunately, the film misses the mark on almost every occasion, undermining a potentially interesting love story with poorly-developed characters and cornball dialogue. I won't spend the time discussing the film's clumsy attempts as addressing such complex issues as theology, which are handled even worse than the central love triangle. In all fairness, Burton has the right degree of sullenness to play the conflicted reverend, but the script gives him little else to do other than appear solemn. Burton is unarguably one of the greatest acting talents of his time, but this character is so one-note that even he cannot save it. Unfortunately, Taylor fares even worse – although she does display a believable rebelliousness that is necessary for her role of the free-spirited, agnostic artist, she is simply out of her element amongst the mid-sixties beatnik scene. No matter how hard she tries, it simply impossible believe a glamour queen like Taylor as a shack-living, bra-burning hippie, and the characterization only becomes less convincing and more ridiculous as the movie goes on. In the supporting cast, only Robert Webber's villainous Ward makes much of an impression, as Eva Marie Saint is completely wasted as Burton's wronged wife and Charles Bronson is as miscast as Taylor as a sexually ambiguous sculptor. Even with its terrible dialogue, leaden plotting, and unconvincing performances, The Sandpiper is still certainly watchable. The location footage of the Big Sur is sometimes breathtaking and the Oscar-winning theme song "The Shadow of Your Smile" is memorable, but these attributes alone cannot lift the movie out the realm of being a "bad movie classic." Despite it's dubious quality and unanimously bad reviews from critics (or maybe because of them), THE SANDPIPER was yet another significant hit at the box office for the Burtons.