Darling

Julie Christie plays the part of Darling in this story of a stylish amoral model. There are three men in her life, each of whom willingly or involuntarily helps her on her way to the top. Dirk Bogarde plays a TV interviewer, an honest man striving to tell illusion from reality; Laurence Harvey, an advertising executive, totally cynical about manipulating society’s values; and Roland Curram, a gay magazine photographer battening parasitically on glossy society. There is also a ‘fourth man’ – the one whom Darling marries, only to find herself a prisoner of the smart world she has conquered. Although Darling thinks she can exploit society to her own advantage, she ends up exploited – manipulated by men who are, aptly enough, professional image-makers at a time in British life when the image said it all (or so it was thought). And at the centre of it all, incarnating the decade which saw the ascension of the model girl to the status of international idol, Julie Christie gives the sort of indelible performance that made many of her subsequent roles look like Darling’s distant cousins or historical ancestors.