Lilith **** (1964, Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter, Jessica Walter, Gene Hackman) – Classic Movie Review 6191

Writer-producer-director Robert Rossen’s polished 1964 drama stars Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg and Peter Fonda, and is based on J R Salamanca’s novel of love, madness, creativity, jealousy, unrequited love and incestuous desire.

Everybody seems to be battling – if valiantly – in this difficult but well-meaning, and often fascinating drama from esteemed director Rossen, making his final film.

Beatty stars as Vincent Bruce, a worker in a mental hospital, an elite sanitarium in Maryland, who falls for the titular schizophrenic Lilith (Seberg). Two other patients, Stephen Evshevsky (Fonda) and older woman Yvonne Meaghan (Anne Meacham), also look for love from Lilith.

The movie is well worth watching for the intense acting of the stars, particularly from Seberg in arguably her best American film, and for its intelligent attempt to say something serious. But it is easy to see why this unyielding material failed to reach a large audience.

Also in the cast are a formidable trio of Kim Hunter as Dr Bea Brice, Jessica Walter and Gene Hackman, as well as James Patterson and Robert Reilly.

It is shot in black and white by Eugen Shuftan, scored by Kenyon Hopkins and designed by Richard Sylbert.

It was rumoured that Beatty and Rossen did not see eye to eye and had a difficult relationship on set.

Kim Hunter alleged: ‘The tensions on the set contributed to Rossen’s death.  He’d cut half Warren’s lines, which made Warren interesting and the rest of us talky as hell! He gave Jean no help whatsoever. She was damn good in a demanding role.’

Beatty moved on to four commercial projects to try to recover lost box-office ground: Mickey One (1965), Promise Her Anything (1966), Kaleidoscope (1966), and of course Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which reunited him with Hackman.

The five-time Oscar nominee Rossen, best known for The Hustler (1961), All the King’s Men (1949) and (screenplay only) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), died on 18 February 1966, aged 57. After being blacklisted by the HUAC between 1951 and 1953 for refusing to name names, to save his career in May 1953 he admitted to being a member of the Communist Party from 1937 to 1945 and named 57 others.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6191

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