There were a few filmmakers who defined British cinema in the 1960s, particularly about the steadily growing movement of kitchen-sink realism, where films about ordinary people (usually plucked from the working class) were produced, based on examining the lives of the invisible majority. John Schlesinger was inarguably one of the most fascinating of the directors working during this period – he had more visual panache than Tony Richardson and wasn’t so intent on capturing the bleakness of reality as Ken Loach, and instead pursued his avenue of realist filmmaking, venturing in his direction as he deconstructs the lives of the average person in creative and often quite beautiful ways. Darling is a peculiar case – this is one of his most notable films, based purely on what it represents to this era in British cinema, rather than for Schlesinger as a director overall. He is more associated as an auteur of films like Midnight Cowboy or Sunday Bloody Sunday, two of the finest films to be produced during this period, rather than for this film, which is a mildly effective drama about identity and femininity, which belongs more to screenwriter Frederic Raphael, who wrote the script from which Schlesinger is working, trying his best to elevate it beyond the status of relatively minor social commentary that genuinely believes itself to be far smarter and more subversive than it is, which is one of the many issues we find with this film. One of the more famous films to come out of this movement, but also one that isn’t entirely accurate in how it assesses many of its themes, or particularly realistic in its approach to telling this story, Darling feels like a missed opportunity, a film in which there is far too much transpiring on screen for us to follow, leading to a convoluted and jumbled experience that not even a competent director like Schlesinger could salvage.

Darling is a film that labours tirelessly to emphasize its modernity. It is actively trying to capture the spirit of being chic and cosmopolitan, to the point of even making a few minor predictions about the subsequent years (since it likely did not want to be entirely dated, especially in hindsight), which proved to be relatively strong assumptions – this is perhaps one of the only times we can refer to anything about this film having clear strengths, since even at its best, the film is mainly passable. The biggest challenge we have with connecting with this film is the fact that it doesn’t seem to have any distinct point-of-view, and instead wants to be a thorough examination of the female psyche, as seen through the character of Diana. In essence, Darling is a film about a young woman who is trying to navigate the challenges presented to her as the embodiment of the Swinging Sixties, but who is essentially nothing more than an object of desire. The moment we start to see that Diana is not intended to be a complex protagonist, but rather the feisty young bachelorette who seems to be defined entirely by her male companions (rather than being the fiercely independent character we are led to believe she is at the start), which is an immense disappointment, especially considering how many films like Poor Cow and A Taste of Honey being produced at the time that took more complex approaches to exploring the plight of women in post-war England. To be perfectly frank, Darling is exactly the kind of film that feels like it was written by a man whose grasp on feminine issues is restricted to secondhand knowledge, rather than anything particularly meaningful on a conceptual level. Raphael, in no uncertain terms, simply did not know how to write women, and while we can’t ever accuse this film of being intentionally misogynistic, the fact that every single action and decision that Diana undergoes throughout this film is orbits around the men in her life. This is not the feminist parable anyone involved thought it would be – it is a flaccid and listless drama that is far too concerned with its image than it is any meaningful commentary.

Many of the film’s defenders usually point to the presence of certain actors as being a signal of its strength as a whole, which is an understandable but still somewhat weak point to emphasize, since there aren’t any performances in this film that feel even partially as revelatory as they would make it out to be. Instead, we have Julie Christie, who was only ascending as a star during this period – in this year alone, she had Doctor Zhivago (a far superior film, both in how it tells its story and uses Christie) and the more conventional but still quite effective potboiler biography Young Cassidy, not to mention some strong work in previous years. Darling is supposedly designed to be a vehicle for her talents, but to do this effectively, there needs to be some degree of complexity in how they construct the character, which in reality is not at all a factor in this film. This is a story that spends more time promoting the idea of Diana than it does exploring her as a human being, and as a result, we have a dreadfully convoluted film that tries to convince us that this character is interesting, but doesn’t make any real statements about it. Christie certainly tries her best, but the script gives her very little to work with, and even in the moments where she is actively trying to find the heart and humanity beneath this character, it just treats her as the object of desire. It isn’t surprising that the best parts of this film revolve around the moments that include Dirk Bogarde – he is not immune to the issues the film faces, but his character is by far the most interesting, especially since he is the only one who seemingly undergoes any real development, going from a lovable and elegant member of the cultural elite to a despicable manipulator who has been driven to the point of exhaustion by being in a relationship with someone too flighty to make up her mind. It is inarguably easier for Bogarde to convince us that he is the best part of the film, since his character is designed to disappear for large portions of the story, whereas Christie has to carry the entire film on her own, and she gets very little help from her other co-stars, with Laurence Harvey and José Luis de Vilallonga being similar to Bogarde in that they weave in and out of the film, but also play such one-dimensional characters, they barely register. Darling genuinely believes it is an insightful, character-based drama, but yet every attempt to define these characters as more than just archetypes falls apart at the seams.

Ultimately, what makes this film fall apart is something that no one could have prevented other than the screenwriter, since there is only so much the director and his actors can do with such a middling script, especially one that seems to have been written by someone who has seemingly never taken the time to observe another human being for any considerable amount of time, since there is a sensation of detachment from reality that propels Darling and makes it feel so disjointed and listless. The flaws of this film come down to the fact that no one acts in the way these characters do, at least not anyone I have ever come across. It almost feels as if Raphael was writing this film to consist of archetypes more than three-dimensional characters, and that he struggled to shade their personalities as anything more than the stock figures we normally expect from brief storyline pitches, rather than final drafts of a completed screenplay. Regardless of how laboriously the actors work to bring these characters to life, the film is restricted by its inability to grasp human behaviour in any significant way. Instead of a charming, insightful human drama, we get an overwrought, melodramatic film filled to the brim with the most unlikable, despicable characters imaginable, which is in itself not enough to disqualify it from having merit, but rather it does this to itself by not having anything particularly valuable embedded in the story to help elevate these more tricky moments, and instead relying too heavily on the suspension of disbelief, which is a poor choice for any writer, especially someone who seems to be genuinely invested in telling a story that never fully realizes his intentions. There is a distance between this film’s screenplay and what appears to be its aims, and it often feels as if Raphael wasn’t interested in telling a story with depth, but instead jumbling together half a dozen plot points and placing them on the character of Diana, who understandably feels like she is teetering dangerously close on a nervous breakdown, one of the many byproducts of a script in which there is far too much activity, and not nearly enough depth.

Audiences have always had a difficult relationship with Darling, and once we watch it, it is easy to understand why it is such a divisive film. From a contemporary perspective, it is difficult to defend some of the choices this film makes, especially since it proposes itself as some radical feminist statement, when in reality all it does is put its female protagonist through the emotional wringer, forcing her to pay the consequences of her reckless life – it is very much a case of refusing to allow her to complain about her situation because she put herself in that position, rather than questioning the socio-cultural structures that caused her to get to that point. This is applicable throughout the film, whether looking at her decision to have an abortion to further her career or her marriage to an Italian nobleman who promptly leaves her to gallivant around the world. This is a story about acknowledging the boundaries women face in society, without actually saying anything meaningful about it, which is where the story fumbles the most. There are inarguably very good elements contained within this film, and several components help capture our attention at certain points. However, it all seems to be for nothing, since these are contained to the sidelines, and never actually make much of a difference to the narrative, which is focused on a character who we are supposed to appreciate and have sympathy towards, but we simply cannot scrounge up enough enthusiasm to care for her. It’s an unstable and often quite unsettling portrait of what a group of men imagined the trials and tribulations of a modern woman would entail, and the lack of self-awareness or willingness to defer to those who may have experience (including their star, who was relegated merely to the background, forced to go along with this meandering, overlong script) is the ultimate source of its downfall, and one of the many reasons that Darling is such an immense disappointment since the potential for excellent was there, it was just enveloped by a layer of mediocrity that obscures all potential.