Imagine a 14 year old boy obsessed with bad guys, strippers and vampires gets given carte blanche by hollywood and the enthusiastic assistance of Tarantino to make a film
This looks and feels like a B movie, but there is something compelling about the story of this seemingly born evil little girl and her family. The acting is sound and the minor characters well drawn and convincing. I think its a but or an under recognised classic
Streisand is very convincing as a street walker who seeks to better herself. George Segal as the aspiring novelist cum book store clerk and her putative Henry Higgins less so. Classic 60s sexy risque kitsch attempting to shock a middle class audience and humanise sex workers
This film is perhaps one of the most radical ever to come out of hollywood and should be part of the core curriculum for any film school or course in screen studies. The film is shot entirely from the point of view of Phillip Marlow whose face we never see. Every character looks almost directly at the camera just to the right or left of centre, The effect is most unnerving and entirely in keeping with the exquisite Raymond Chandler dialogue. It appears to have been a B movie, the only way the director would have gotten away with it. It is very hard for actors to play to directly to a camera as the convention of almost all narrative cinema is a recreation of the stage "proscenium" where the audience forms a virtual fourth wall. As such I can only pronounce all the performances of even the miinor characters to be excellent. Wait for the scene where Phillip Marlowe is punched in the face, its literally a knockout!
A princess runs away from her life and is rescued from danger by a handsome reporter. She has fun doing the the ordinary things denied to her by her position and of course, they fall in love. Sounds cheesy and predictable. It is a truism of a good narrative text that the central character(s) undergo a change or transformation during the story. Audrey Hepburn can show us this transformation in a facial expression as only a handful of really great actors can. Even the usually wooden but still handsome and charming Peck rises to the occasion. A remarkable film which I pray to God hollywood never attempts to remake. Of course it helps if you fall in love with Audrey too but you already knew that
