Honorary Pick – Darling Lili

Ah the naughty Julie Andrews movie. This spot is filled by The Hole which I reviewed all the way back here. So instead of Keira Knightley flashing her boobs, we get Julie Andrews doing a striptease.

There, now that I’ve got my click bait, this is a film that’s perfectly fine. Not amazing and not terrible, hence why it isn’t on the main list. The real story is almost in the production of it. It’s one of those shoots whose troubles behind the scenes created material for a whole film itself (a 1980 release called SOB). Shot in four different countries, in production for two years and costing Paramount about $25 million (equaling $158 million in today’s money) – the result was an extravaganza that covered multiple genres. Spy, romance, slapstick comedy, partial thriller and even musical – this film tried to do it all. And all it did do was lose money for Paramount and dent the careers of those involved for a while. Blake Edwards had the opportunity to recut the film in the 90s – knocking about 29 minutes off the run time. But since that cut is hard to track down, the lengthy 2.5 hour cut is the one I’ll be going off.

To examine the background of Darling Lili you almost need to take a class in the history of Hollywood itself. By the 1960s, the Golden Age was well and truly over. The stars of the time had aged, the studio system had fallen and the Hays Code was no longer dictating what could and couldn’t be shown. We were entering the New Hollywood Era – where films made by young, indie directors were far grittier and more cynical than the family-friendly fare of the Golden Age. The Sound of Music is key here; the success of that saved 20th Century Fox from financial oblivion after the bombing of their expensive epic Cleopatra. So studios kept greenlighting lavish musicals in the hopes that they would see a return on them. One called Hello, Dolly! was such a disastrous bomb that it killed the movie musical for over a decade until Cabaret revived it with a darker twist. But what about the star of The Sound of Music?

Julie Andrews had starred in that right after Mary Poppins and fell headlong into typecasting. She didn’t want audiences to see her as a sweet magical nanny, so she looked for roles to distance herself from that image. She got some – particularly The Americanization of Emily – but audiences still saw her as a chirpy Disney star. It was when she met a director called Blake Edwards that they came up with a solution. Likely taking cues from…

Deborah Kerr had of course been stuck in corsets and petticoats until she donned a bikini and rolled in the sand with Burt Lancaster. So why couldn’t Julie do the same? They knew audiences wouldn’t just accept her in an against-type role, so they had to be careful with how they played it. And this movie is so unbelievably meta about everything. Take a look at this poster.

I’ve seen discussions that say Darling Lili is really just an allegory for Julie Andrews herself and her public image. I’m like ‘yep, I buy it’. The opening scene is a perfect example. She is a singer on a stage, where the camera is to her front. Throughout the performance, the camera moves around until it is at her back. She’s in silhouette facing the audience – representing that the woman you see performing on stage is a mere shadow of her true self.

The song she sings is “Whistling Away The Dark” – a brilliantly haunting piece that sets the stage nicely. As opposed to the powerful ballad that is “The Sound of Music”, the upbeat “A Spoonful of Sugar” or even the soothing “Feed the Birds” – this song has a different edge. The primary instrument that opens the music is a xylophone – which makes it sound almost like a lullaby. It’s equal parts comforting and unnerving. Although the music is lovely, you get a shiver up your spine when you hear it. And even with Julie’s beautiful vocals, there’s that feeling that something is just not quite right. That sums up the nature of the character she’s playing: singer Lily Smith.

The performance gets interrupted by the sounds of planes flying overhead. You see this is the middle of the 1910s – meaning we’re in World War I. And the entire theatre is scared out of their seats. But Lili gets the orchestra to start playing, and leads some of the soldiers in singing some songs to calm everyone down. Another scene that tells us a lot about Lili’s character – in that she’s able to command attention and earn the people’s love quite easily. Overall this makes for a really solid opening – establishing both the setting and Lili’s persona. The persona is an important one, as the next scene takes us to Lili’s fancy mansion. A Swiss man called Colonel von Ruger (Jeremy Kemp) is waiting for her. If anyone asks, he’s her uncle. Why do they need the secrecy? Because Lili Smith is actually Lili Schmitz. Half German and therefore a German spy!

Lili apparently is an accomplished spy – used to working on diplomats and old generals. Her butler Bedford and her maid Emma are likewise in on the game. Her latest target is someone much younger, called Major Bill Larrabee. It sure sounds like an exciting time. Living a double life; by day a glamorous singer adored by all, by night a spy deceiving everyone.

Meet Mata Hari – the most famous female spy ever. Lili is clearly based on her – a spy during World War I who was also a glamorous performer, and had multiple affairs with army officers. Most of what we think we know about Mata Hari comes from legend – no thanks to a highly fictionalised 1931 film starring Greta Garbo. As a spy she was pretty insignificant. There’s even debate over whether she was even guilty. But the legend of her is far more intriguing – so that’s what we keep thinking of over the years.

We return to our regularly scheduled programming to meet Bill Larrabee.

Rock Hudson was a leading man during the 1950s and 60s – most famous for starring alongside Doris Day in romantic comedies. Sure he had a reputation as a heartthrob then but at the time Darling Lili was put into production, he was in his late forties. So it’s a little hard to take him as the stud who steals Lili’s heart through his sex appeal alone. Julie Andrews we can buy as the sexy singer who charms everyone, but Rock Hudson doesn’t quite cut it. He probably could have played it if he’d been ten years younger. But it’s not really his acting that’s being showcased anyway.

There’s a few of these dogfights in the film – fittingly enough as a WW1 period piece. They were shot in Ireland, but that wasn’t Blake Edwards’s wish. He wanted to shoot in South Carolina, but Paramount insisted on the Leixlip Airfield which is just over the hill from me. And as someone used to Irish weather I can imagine just how frustrated the second unit quickly became. They needed clear air to be able to film these scenes, but Irish weather is known for…

Production finally got pulled out of Ireland when a Paramount exec checked up on the crew and found them enjoying a picnic in the sunshine. You can understand why they quickly went over budget there. And that’s precisely why the dogfight sequences run as long as they do; the amount of money Paramount was spending on those scenes was well publicised, so they went ‘okay, show em what the money went on’.

We meet the German General Kessler, who meets with Von Ruger. Although Lili’s track record is excellent, Kessler still doesn’t trust her. Not only because she’s half-English but because of her mysterious lady parts; she is a woman after all and they’re inherently prone to developing wartime romances and defecting on their evil bosses at the drop of a hat.

Lili’s first assignment takes her to a hospital for soldiers, where she sings to raise their spirits. It’s “The Girl In No Man’s Land” – which although it sounds nice is utterly pointless. You see, this film was not a musical when it entered production. Sure since Lili was a singer and played by a singing actress, she’d have a couple of performance scenes. But Paramount saw dollar signs and had the film turned into a lavish musical. As a result the songs often put the plot on hold or run too long. “The Girl In No Man’s Land” is a prime example. The information that the scene provides has either a) already been given (Lili is beloved by soldiers) or b) conveyed before the scene is over (Bill first sees Lili). And then Lili launches right into another song – “Smile Away Each Rainy Day”. And continuing the theme of overlong entertainment sequences, Lili has to spy on Bill at a place called the Cafe Can-Can. Which means…

You see a lot of sequences like this in films from the late 60s and early 70s. With the Hays Code no longer breathing down their necks, filmmakers were going ‘look what we can show now’. So we get our sexy car wash in Cool Hand Luke, our gratuitous boob twirl in The Gypsy Moths and a three minute can-can dance in Darling Lili. There is considerably more to this sequence than just fanservice though; a huge aspect of Lili’s character is how restricted she feels in the persona she has to maintain every day. She’s constantly performing for diplomats, generals and other soldiers – having to look like the wholesome squeaky-clean English Rose they think she is. And if we take the film as a metaphor for Julie Andrews herself, she too felt restricted being constantly seen as a wholesome Disney character. There are a few shots where Lili watches the dancers and you almost get the impression that she envies them and how free they get to be.

While having dinner with two generals, Lili gets approached by an American soldier called Youngblood Carson. He’s completely insignificant to the plot and only spends a few minutes gushing about how great Lili is. But his actor Michael Witney is very fun, and he has plenty of chemistry with Julie Andrews. Way more so than Rock Hudson later on down the line. He leads the whole cafe in singing “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary”, which segues to Lili bringing his whole squad to her front door. She gives Youngblood Carson a kiss on behalf of all his men and sadly he disappears from the film from then on.

Lili isn’t done entertaining soldiers just yet – as Bill surprises her with a picnic. Apparently 3 am is the best time to have one (“no ants”) and he also went to the trouble of bringing along several Romani musicians to serenade them. After an ‘enjoying the picnic’ montage, we cut to the dawn where Bill and Lili seem to have made a connection. But sadly thus begins the main reason I can’t get wholly invested in the romance.

This part of the movie is just montage after montage showing Bill and Lili on different dates. Now I love me a good montage – they’re a great way of showing time passing and helping convey a lot of information. But a montage is not a substitute for character development. We’re constantly shown Lili being charmed by Bill and the two of them doing many couple-y things. But we never get any reason why Lili is attracted to him. Their conversations that aren’t exposition are too short and neither character is developed through the romance. Sure we know enough about Lili but we don’t find out anything about Bill – except that he’s an ace pilot and something of a ladies’ man.

The picnic scene is a big offender here. That gets turned into a montage when it should have been Bill and Lili’s first big conversation. The whole point of the plot is that Lili’s love for Bill causes her to feel things she’s never felt before. So in this scene we should have seen the reason she’s attracted to him. And in the following scenes it’s not clear if Lili has fallen in love yet or she’s just faking. All that’s clear from those scenes is that Lili has a fancy wardrobe.

Sweet Jesus, every frame of this film feels early 2000s levels of expensive. If you take the film as a specific attempt to sex up Julie Andrews’s image, then those scenes do have a point. Both Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp were decidedly modest and not really concerned with sex appeal. Lili on the other hand is lavish, elegant and heavily made up. It’s no surprise that Blake Edwards was falling in love with her during production. Every camera angle seems designed to showcase her beauty like was done with Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Jayne Mansfield etc.

But I think there is considerably more to Julie Andrews in this film than constantly showing her dolled up. And I honestly think she never gets enough credit for being an actress. This tends to happen with singing actors – who often get thought of as just a voice and pigeonholed into musicals, while forgetting their other talents too. Julie Andrews’s performance in this is one of the highlights; she doesn’t play Lili as a stereotypical femme fatale. She plays her in such a way that it’s instantly believable why the soldiers can’t get enough of her, and she enjoys such a sweetheart reputation. But she brings that subtle edge where you can tell there’s something artificial about her persona. It’s a shame the film didn’t do better, because it does showcase her as an actress in addition to a beauty.

Lili arrives back at the house one day to find two police detectives Liggett and Duvalle. The poor gentlemen sadly don’t realise what film they’ve blundered into. This was imagined as a sexy spy drama with a passionate love story. And these two are straight out of The Pink Panther franchise – bumbling around in a way that feels pretty dissonant with the film we’ve been introduced to. They do get down to business and tell Lili that they’re convinced that Bill is passing information to a German spy. And they’ve noticed that Lili has been spending a lot of time with him…

…so they ask her to keep an eye on him and report anything suspicious.

They do seem to have guessed that with Bill’s reputation, he’s likely being seduced by a female spy. Lili realises that if she keeps seeing Bill, it’s only a matter of time before her cover is blown. But if she STOPS seeing him and the flow of information stops at the same time, they’ll definitely know it’s her. So it’s time for a song!

It’s called “I’ll Give You Three Guesses” and thankfully it actually is plot-relevant. It’s also worth noting that although this is a musical, it’s strictly what’s called a Diegetic Musical. In the world of musicals, songs are often accepted to just be symbolic of what’s really happening (Nine), taking place in an alternate universe where people just burst into song (most animated musicals) or figments of a character’s imagination (Chicago). A Diegetic Musical means that all the songs are in-universe performances. They’re presented in a way that the audience can buy they’ve been set up and rehearsed beforehand, and just happen to have something to do with the plot. Cabaret was the first movie musical to make this technique popular – which likewise features a singer as its lead – but Darling Lili got there seven years earlier.

“I’ll Give You Three Guesses” is a cutesy little love song that’s meant to evoke “Jolly Holiday” from Mary Poppins – at least aesthetically. But whereas “Jolly Holiday” is played straight, there’s yet another tinge of artificiality to the performance here. While a good song, it feels like a chaste Victorian poem with very innocent and modest ideas about love. But after the performance, Bill takes Lili out to dinner. The plot once again gets put on hold to meet a comic relief character – in this case Bill’s comrade TC played by Lance Percival. At least he delivers some good information – that Bill was involved in some kind of secret operation titled ‘Crepe Suzette’.

But the plot gets put on hold once again for the sake of a comic relief sequence – TC grabbing the stick you roast chicken on and trying to duel with the head waiter. Plot resumes as Lili gives Von Ruger the information, and gets put on hold once again to accommodate the lovers’ trip to the country.

Yet another slow-moving couple montage segues into a random scene with a choir of French school girls singing. Bill and Lili join them, dragging things out even more. When I heard Blake Edwards trimmed the film in the 90s, I knew this would be one of the first sequences to go. When the plot resumes, things actually get good. Von Ruger follows Lili to the inn they’re staying at and reveals that Bill has been lying to her. He said he flew last weekend but he actually wasn’t with his squad. Either he’s onto Lili or else…

Right here is where the film well and truly kicks into gear. The following scene of Lili trying to weasel information out of Bill is equal parts interesting and funny. She cleverly accuses him of calling her ‘Suzette’ in bed. And when he refuses to give her the 411 on Operation Crepe Suzette, she storms out. Or she tries to. The car won’t start. And that means Bill has to drive her home. What else?

The whole sequence is punctuated with cutaways of Duvalle and Liggett trying to spy on the lovers in another bit I’m sure felt the scissors in the director’s cut. But once Lili gets home, Bill refuses to take no for an answer and ambushes her in the shower! And in this scene there’s actual passion. For once I buy these two as lovers. The argument even culminates in a passionate kiss under the warm water.

In terms of the sexy stuff, this is probably the third most remembered moment from the film. The papers had gotten wind of the romance between Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards and got convinced that Rock Hudson had to be in on the fun too. According to the couple, one gossip columnist really pushed the story that they were having threesomes – and that the two men had spent a lot of time together in San Francisco’s leather bars (if you want to google what that is, warning NSFW!) beforehand. Rock Hudson’s response? “How the hell did she find out so quick?”

It’s time for another dogfight, and this is probably the most visually striking of the lot. TC and Bill do their thing of shooting planes out of the sky, until the two of them end up on the ground and have to wing it, cowboy style. But far more importantly, detectives Liggett and Duvalle show up with the news that they’ve found Crepe Suzette!

Her actress Gloria Paul has a pretty interesting life story. She’s the daughter of an English opera singer and began ballet training at the age of three. She danced for an Argentinian ballet company and ended up in Rome one tour. So she decided to try and get into films instead. Her work was almost exclusively in Italian cinema, and this was her only real appearance in a mainstream Hollywood production. A screencap from Darling Lili is even used as her IMDB photo. She had to retire from acting in the 90s when a water heater fell on her and left her paralyzed from the waist down.

This brings us to the song “Your Goodwill Ambassador” – the only song in the film that Julie Andrews has no part in. It’s a great bad girl song – it’s honestly up there with “Why Don’t You Do Right?” from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and I’d hold it above “Mein Herr” from Cabaret. Gloria Paul mainly appears in this one sequence but she has a great charisma and sex appeal. You can tell she’s everything that Lili secretly wishes she could be but would refuse to admit. The other Julie Andrews songs in the film have been slow, cheerful and very G-rated. This one is fast and bouncy, chock full of innuendos. Lili’s songs have been like a classy stage show, while this is more like a burlesque performance. And despite featuring this scene, the movie got a G-rating!

We return to Bill and TC’s antics, where they manage to hijack a German plane, board it and shoot up not only the rest of the fleet but they blow up the airfield! Lili has a temper to do something similar, as she demonstrates in a reprise of “I’ll Give You Three Guesses”. Now where the first one was all Disney-esque and cutesy, this one…

Lili goes ‘anything Suzette can do, I can do better’ and we get the most meta scene in the whole film; Julie Andrews goes from Mary Poppins to Mata Hari in the course of one song. Almost like a snake shedding its old skin, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, like Miley Cyrus discovering the year 2013 – Julie Andrews perfectly conveys that she’s been holding back for so long that she practically explodes. And that makes it the best song in the film.

Lili gives Suzette’s information to her ‘uncle’, who remarks that she might be a bit jealous. I thought you were Colonel Von Ruger, not Captain Obvious. Lili has her butler follow Bill and sure enough, he’s meeting with Suzette. So she gives him their code book and orders him to put it under Suzette’s mattress. And then she phones the police herself.

Von Ruger guesses correctly that she has fallen in love with Bill. But things might be in her favour now – as Suzette tells the police that she did have an affair but Bill only took her out to lunch to tell her it was finished. Things aren’t in Von Ruger’s favour however; he finds General Kessler in his study. He’s to come back to Germany to face a court martial.

Kessler has also arranged for a hired dog Kraus to take Lili out. He follows her back to her home – but she reads the evening paper and discovers that Bill was breaking it off with Suzette. So she makes a dash for the police station, Kraus tailing behind her. Bedford rings the Colonel’s office but instantly knows something is wrong when Kessler answers – so he goes down there and helps subdue Kessler. This butler is quite the effective number two.

Lili confesses everything to the police – including that she planted the code book. And although Von Ruger arrives soon after, Kraus shoots at them. Von Ruger explains that Lili really didn’t think things through; if she had let the investigation go ahead, Suzette would soon be able to prove that she wasn’t a spy and that Bill never told her anything. So he would have had a chance of going free. But by Lili confessing to being a spy, this implicates him anyway. So she and Von Ruger have to run to the train station so they can get to Switzerland.

This climax is pretty action-packed so I’ll summarise the three threads we end up with:

Kraus follows Lili and Von Ruger onto the train and holds them up at gunpoint.

Kessler goes back to the house and – after ordering warplanes to fire on the train – ties up Emma and Bedford.

Liggett and Duvalle go to Bill’s HQ and tell him everything.

Bill manages to escape his house arrest thanks to some good timing by TC. He goes all the way to Lili’s house to free Emma and Bedford. Kessler tries to make a run for it – and his car accidentally gets crashed by a very late Liggett and Duvalle!

That’s not all yet. Bill, TC and their unnamed comrades take to the air to stop the planes that were ordered to shoot up the train. Lili is able to knock Kraus into harm’s way at the right time to take him out – and she and Bill share a rather sweet moment as he flies as low as possible to meet her on the ground, before having to take to the sky again. This segues to our denouement where we’re told that peace has been declared in Europe.

According to the newspaper headlines, Lili ended up exposed as a spy. But that doesn’t seem to have hurt her public image – as that same headline announces that she will sing at a war benefit. So she never got any kind of legal repercussions for being a spy? She never faced trials, prison or even execution? Given the incompetence of the police detectives it’s honestly not that surprising. We wrap things up with Lili singing a reprise of “Whistling Away The Dark” at the war benefit.

Youngblood Carson survived the war! And he’s asking Lili for another kiss. Sadly she reunites with Bill instead and the crowd erupts into a reprise of “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary”.

So with the musical version of Apocalypse Now costing $25 million to make, how much money did it generate at the Box Office.

$5 million.

Not kidding.

Paramount botched the distribution and that meant that the film barely saw release in the United States. So with this film only showing in a select amount of theatres, it had no hope of regaining the costs. Critical reception was only okay, so it couldn’t bank on good word of mouth to generate profits. Not helping matters were the people who turned up with their kids thinking it was another family-friendly Julie Andrews musical – and getting a nasty shock. And as mentioned above, this was the era of Bonnie & Clyde, Easy Rider, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy etc. Films that were smaller, grittier and more cynical. Darling Lili was a remnant of an era that had simply passed. The days when you could put a lavish epic musical on the marquee and crowds would turn out in droves. Crowds opted for simplicity and realism instead of spectacle and idealism. That’s why a movie like Cabaret succeeded; it embraced the darkness and cynicism of the 70s. Had Darling Lili been made just three years later, it probably would have ended with Lili getting executed by firing squad – just like the real Mata Hari. In some ways it embraces the tropes of New Hollywood – raunchiness, character greyness – but it also clings onto too many of the Golden Age tropes audiences were rejecting. Especially in a happy ending that glosses over everything – when even Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music had bittersweet endings (Mary sadly leaving the Banks children, and the Von Trapps having to escape Austria).

The financial loss hurt the careers of Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards for a while. Blake Edwards too really had his sanity put to the test. From having to move production from Paris to Brussells during the 1968 student riots to Paramount execs hiring people behind his back – he ended up taping every conversation with them just to remind himself he wasn’t going mad. With that in mind, it’s no surprise this film ended up with a rather uneven tone. He eventually did what all good artists do and use the bad experiences to create something – namely the 1980 film SOB – satirizing the whole production. He rebounded quickly, but Julie Andrews struggled to get another hit for over ten years (Victor/Victoria). Why did this image shake-up work for Deborah Kerr and not her? Probably because Deborah did not have one true hit that audiences associated her with. She was just stuck wearing corsets and petticoats in fluff like Young Bess whereas Julie had a beloved image as both Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp. Whereas From Here To Eternity just put Deborah Kerr in a different role, Darling Lili suckered you in thinking you were watching Mary Poppins when really…

I would by no means call Darling Lili a perfect film. Or even a great one. It’s very easy to point out the flaws, and where the film fails. But at the same time, the sheer talent of Blake Edwards as a director elevates this above other disasters like Hello, Dolly! and Cleopatra. There’s an odd charm to this film that comes from its imperfection. You can watch Rock Hudson shooting up nameless Germans from a flying plane one minute, and then Julie Andrews wiggling her ass to goo-goo eyed patrons the next. Sexual politics go hand in hand with incompetent detectives sliding off roofs. There’s a world war going on and yet the tension hangs on whether this one woman is being two-timed. So it’s not surprising that the film did find its audience when it got re-run on cable TV. It is a film that’s fascinating to watch unfold, in more ways than one.

Bet you don’t need three grades, and not even two…

*Story? Somewhere hidden among the great characterization is a great story to go along with it. Sadly it’s buried under endless montages, slow pacing, slapstick comedy, uneven tone and lack of depth. D+

*Characters? Lili makes for a great enigma of a lead – and the examination of her public image versus her true self makes for an interesting watch. Bill sadly was a decorative love interest that we end the film knowing very little about. The comedy characters were…unique…and I can’t really say much more. B-

*Performances? I stand by my statement that this is one of Julie Andrews’s best performances. She plays a very deep, conflicted character and does it in a nicely subtle way. I buy her performance from beginning to end. Jeremy Kemp really stood out to me as well as Von Ruger (and I had no idea he wasn’t actually Swiss!) There were a few one scene wonders in Michael Witney and Gloria Paul. Rock Hudson did his best but didn’t quite get there. A-

*Visuals? These days when I think of the word ‘spectacle’, this movie comes to mind. Elaborate costumes, detailed sets and impressive camera angles galore. I’m not sure if Julie Andrews shared the greater romance with Blake Edwards or his camera though. A+

*Anything Else? The songs range from pointless (“The Girl In No Man’s Land”) to some of the best Julie Andrews has ever pulled off (“I’ll Give You Three Guesses”). The jarring tone shifts were also a problem. C

It’s a pirate’s life for me next, with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl