In Search of Gregory ** (1969, Julie Christie, Michael Sarrazin, John Hurt, Adolfo Celi, Paola Pitagora, Roland Culver) – Classic Movie Review 8,290

The 1969 mystery drama film In Search of Gregory is mysterious, ambitious and intelligent enough, but also obscure and remote enough. It was Julie Christie’s second box-office flop in a row.

‘Sister, Brother, Lover… a most irregular triangle.’

Director Peter Wood’s little seen, would-be smart 1969 Michelangelo Antonioni-style mystery drama film In Search of Gregory (with its distant echoes of Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Blow-Up) is mysterious, ambitious and intelligent enough, but also obscure and remote enough. And it was Julie Christie’s second box-office flop in a row (after Petulia) that temporarily hurt her star career in the late Sixties.

Christie plays Catherine Morelli, a woman from Rome at her father Max (Adolfo Celi)’s wedding in Geneva fantasising about and obsessing over a mystery-fantasy lover called Gregory (Michael Sarrazin) she never actually meets. She re-connects with her brother Daniel (John Hurt).

With its iconic cast, led by Julie Christie and Michael Sarrazin, and also including John Hurt, Adolfo Celi, Paola Pitagora, Roland Culver, Tony Selby and Gabriella Giorgelli, In Search of Gregory is an interesting, if confused, confusing and none too exciting or appealing relic from the Swinging Sixties.

Co-producers and distributors Universal Pictures decided to give the film only a limited theatrical release after test audiences judged it very bad.

Christie agreed to do the film because it was being shot in the same area where her boyfriend Warren Beatty was filming The Only Game in Town with Elizabeth Taylor.

In Search of Gregory is a British-Italian co-production, runs 90 minutes, is made by Universal Pictures, Vera Films and Vic Films Productions, is released by Universal Pictures, is written by Tonino Guerra (screenplay), Lucile Laks (screenplay) and Ken Levison (adaptation), is shot in Technicolor by Otto Heller and Giorgio Tonti, is produced by Joseph Janni, Edward Joseph and Daniele Senatore, and is scored by Ron Grainer, with Art Direction by Piero Poletto and Costume Design by Gabriella Falk.

Also in the cast are Ernesto Pagano as Priest, Violetta Chiarini as Paquita, Luisa De Santis as Giselle, Gabriella Giorgelli as Encarna and Gordon Gostelow as Old Man.

Georgie Fame sings Close (music and lyrics by Ken Howard and Alan Blakley).

It was originally to have starred Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.

Christie came back strongly with The Go-Between, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Don’t Look Now and Shampoo.

Sarrazin turned down Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy (1969) to take this role. When asked if he regretted it, he said: ‘No. I don’t believe in regret, and I got a free trip to Europe.’

It is an understandably a rarely shown item, though ITV screened it late night on a Friday back in August 1975.

RIP Michael Sarrazin, who died on 17 April 2011, aged 70.

RIP John Hurt, who died on 25 January 2017, aged 77.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,290

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