Petulia
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''Petulia'' is a 1968 British-American drama film directed by
Richard Lester Richard Lester Liebman (born January 19, 1932) is an American retired film director based in the United Kingdom. He is best known for directing the Beatles' films '' A Hard Day's Night'' (1964) and '' Help!'' (1965), and the superhero films ' ...
and starring
Julie Christie Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She ...
,
George C. Scott George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999) was an American actor, director, and producer who had a celebrated career on both stage and screen. With a gruff demeanor and commanding presence, Scott became known for his port ...
and
Richard Chamberlain George Richard Chamberlain (born March 31, 1934) is an American actor and singer, who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show '' Dr. Kildare'' (1961–1966). He subsequently appeared in several TV mini-series, such as ''Shō ...
. The film has a screenplay by Lawrence B. Marcus from a story by Barbara Turner and is based on the 1966 novel ''Me and the Arch Kook Petulia'' by John Haase. It was scored by John Barry.


Plot

Petulia Danner is a young socialite married to a savagely abusive architect. At a benefit concert for victims of traffic accidents, she meets Dr. Archie Bollen, with whom she becomes smitten because he treated an injured Mexican boy. Archie is in the process of divorcing his wife Polo, sifting through relationships with the new man in his ex's life, his estranged sons, and well-to-do friends who only know Archie as one-half of a couple. Petulia and Archie embark on a quirky, desperate, and ultimately tragic affair.


Cast

*
Julie Christie Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She ...
as Petulia Danner *
George C. Scott George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999) was an American actor, director, and producer who had a celebrated career on both stage and screen. With a gruff demeanor and commanding presence, Scott became known for his port ...
as Dr. Archie Bollen *
Richard Chamberlain George Richard Chamberlain (born March 31, 1934) is an American actor and singer, who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show '' Dr. Kildare'' (1961–1966). He subsequently appeared in several TV mini-series, such as ''Shō ...
as David Danner * Arthur Hill as Barney *
Shirley Knight Shirley Knight Hopkins (July 5, 1936 – April 22, 2020) was an American actress who appeared in more than 50 feature films, television films, television series, and Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in her career, playing leading and charac ...
as Prudence "Polo" Bollen *
Joseph Cotten Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994) was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of '' The Philadelphia Story'' and '' Sab ...
as Mr. Danner * Pippa Scott as May * Kathleen Widdoes as Wilma *
Roger Bowen Roger Wendell Bowen (May 25, 1932 – February 16, 1996) was an American comedic actor and novelist, best known for his portrayal of Lt. Col. Henry Blake in the 1970 film ''M*A*S*H''. Bowen considered himself a writer who only moonlighted as an ...
as Warren *
Richard Dysart Richard Allen Dysart (March 30, 1929 – April 5, 2015) was an American actor. He is best known for his role as Leland McKenzie in the television series '' L.A. Law'' (1986–1994), for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award from four consecutive no ...
as Motel Receptionist * Ruth Kobart as Nun *
Ellen Geer Ellen Ware Geer is an American actress, professor, and theatre director. Personal life Geer was born in New York City, the daughter of actors Herta Ware and Will Geer. Her father was best-known for playing Grandpa Zebulon "Zeb" Walton on ''Th ...
as Nun * Lou Gilbert as Mr. Howard * Nate Esformes as Mr. Mendoza * Maria Val as Mrs. Mendoza * Vincent Arias as Oliver * Eric Weiss as Michael * Kevin Cooper as Stevie * Rene Auberjonois as Fred Six (uncredited) *
Peter Bonerz Peter R Bonerz (, born August 6, 1938) is an American actor and director. Early life Bonerzwas born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Elfrieda (née Kern) and Christopher Bonerz. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended Marquette Un ...
(uncredited) * Barbara Bosson (uncredited) *
Barbara Colby Barbara Colby (July 2, 1939 – July 24, 1975) was an American actress. She appeared in episodes of numerous television series before a 1974 appearance on ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' led to a main cast role on the new series '' Phyllis''; afte ...
as Patient (uncredited) * Garry Goodrow (uncredited) *
Carl Gottlieb Carl Gottlieb (born March 18, 1938) is an American screenwriter, actor, comedian, and executive. He is best known for co-writing the screenplay for ''Jaws'' (1975) and its first two sequels, as well as directing the 1981 film ''Caveman''. Early ...
(uncredited) * Howard Hesseman as Hippie (uncredited) * Kathryn Ish (uncredited) * Austin Pendleton as Intern (uncredited) *
Richard Stahl Richard Stahl (January 4, 1932 – June 18, 2006) was an American actor who mostly appeared in comic roles on television and in films. Early life Born in Detroit, he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. In the 1950 ...
(uncredited) *
Mel Stewart Milton "Mel" Stewart (September 19, 1929 – February 24, 2002) was an American character actor, television director, and musician who appeared in numerous films and television shows from the 1960s to the 1990s. He is best known for playing Hen ...
(uncredited)


Production

Producer Raymond Wagner originally developed the film with director Robert Altman, who brought on screenwriter Barbara Turner to adapt John Haase's novel. Turner's version was largely faithful to the novel—a romantic story told, as Kirkus Reviews put it, with "a light, trenchant wit." However, Altman and Wagner then dissolved their partnership, and Wagner engaged Richard Lester as the new director of ''Petulia''. As Lester's biographer
Andrew Yule Andrew Yule (2 November 1834 – 18 July 1902) was a businessman who founded Andrew Yule and Co. Early life Andrew was born in Stonehaven- Fetteresso, Scotland, the third and youngest son of Robert Yule, a clothier, and his wife Elizabeth. He h ...
wrote, "Lester hated both the book and the script, especially the cuteness of its leading character. But there was something about it, perhaps the challenge of bringing its archness down to earth and injecting a healthy dose of reality." Lester brought on his frequent collaborator, screenwriter Charles Wood, for a page-one rewrite, then replaced Wood with Lawrence B. Marcus. As Lester told the '' San Francisco Examiner'', "I don't see it as a comedy. Larry Marcus' screenplay has altered the novel considerably -- to a sad love story about two people who meet and turn each other into opposites." ''Petulia'' was filmed on location throughout San Francisco during the summer of 1967. In addition to stars
George C. Scott George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999) was an American actor, director, and producer who had a celebrated career on both stage and screen. With a gruff demeanor and commanding presence, Scott became known for his port ...
,
Julie Christie Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She ...
,
Richard Chamberlain George Richard Chamberlain (born March 31, 1934) is an American actor and singer, who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show '' Dr. Kildare'' (1961–1966). He subsequently appeared in several TV mini-series, such as ''Shō ...
,
Shirley Knight Shirley Knight Hopkins (July 5, 1936 – April 22, 2020) was an American actress who appeared in more than 50 feature films, television films, television series, and Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in her career, playing leading and charac ...
, and
Joseph Cotten Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994) was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of '' The Philadelphia Story'' and '' Sab ...
, Lester included San Francisco musicians like Janis Joplin (who performs in the opening scene),
The Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, country, jazz, bluegrass, blues, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, world music, ...
, and members of the comedy troupes The Committee and Ace Trucking Company. The film included scenes at the apartment building located at 307 Filbert Street, the Cala Foods on Hyde, and the Fairmont Hotel. This was
Nicolas Roeg Nicolas Jack Roeg (; 15 August 1928 – 23 November 2018) was an English film director and cinematographer, best known for directing ''Performance'' (1970), '' Walkabout'' (1971), ''Don't Look Now'' (1973), '' The Man Who Fell to Earth'' (1976 ...
's last job as cinematographer before becoming a director himself. Critic
Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...
points out that it was on ''Petulia'' "that Roeg can be said to have arrived at many of the rudiments of style and structure that characterize his own, subsequent films, the first of which was ''Performance''. An essential part of this manner is a form of rapid and fragmented, kaleidoscopic cross-cutting between diverse strands in a narrative tapestry, an approach that creates meaning largely through unexpected juxtapositions. By and large, it is a wide-ranging, impressionistic method which can make a relatively simple plot multilayered and complex, and an already difficult plot a series of puzzles and mazes."


Reception

''Petulia'' had been listed to compete at the
1968 Cannes Film Festival The 21st Cannes Film Festival was to have been held from 10 to 24 May 1968, before being curtailled due to the turmoil of May 1968 in France. Background This edition was marked by the previous controversy around the Langlois affair. On February ...
, but the festival was cancelled due to the May 1968 protests and unrest in France. John Haase, the author of the source novel, loathed the movie, and wrote a scathing article for the ''Los Angeles Times'' about the book's journey to the screen, concluding, "The novel is gone. Barbara Turner's screenplay is gone. Altman is gone, Petulia is gone, Archie is gone. Only Ray Wagner is left, and Dick Lester and 350,000 feet of film, and miniskirts, and the Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead, and the topless restaurants, and the hippies, and the junkies and the go-go girls and the mod and the pop and the op and all the other sick and ugly things of our time the book never dealt with at all. That's what's left." But Lester himself was pleased with the film. As he told Steven Soderbergh years later, "I felt that I had plugged into what I wanted to say, and that a chance had been given me by odd circumstances: taking a book that seemed totally wrong and being angry about it, then trying to see what one could make of it and using that as a means of talking about fairly complicated things ... a frazzled and disjointed response to a society that was in chaos and they didn't know how to deal with it." The film was a box office disappointment upon its release in 1968. As Tobias Churton wrote in his book ''The Spiritual Meaning of the Sixties'', "''Petulia'' failed to strike a chord with the public. Its approach was too advanced, ambiguous, perhaps even too prophetic." Critical reviews were initially mixed on the film. Giving the film four stars, Roger Ebert wrote in his ''
Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...
'' review of 1 July 1968: "Richard Lester's ''Petulia'' made me desperately unhappy, and yet I am unable to find a single thing wrong with it." In ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'',
Renata Adler Renata Adler (born October 19, 1938) is an American author, journalist, and film critic. Adler was a staff writer-reporter for ''The New Yorker'', and in 1968–69, she served as chief film critic for ''The New York Times''. She is also a write ...
called it "a strange, lovely, nervous little film." On the other side of the ledger, in her 1969 essay "Trash, Art, and the Movies,"
Pauline Kael Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions oft ...
wrote that "I have rarely seen a more disagreeable, a more dislikable (or a bloodier) movie than ''Petulia''." Critic John Simon went even further, calling the film "a soulless, arbitrary, attitudinizing piece of claptrap." In time, however, ''Petulia'' developed a passionate cult following, and many critics and writers came to see it as a key film of its era.
Danny Peary Dannis Peary (born August 8, 1949) is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written and edited many books on cinema and sports-related topics. Peary is most famous for his book '' Cult Movies'' (1980), which spawned two sequels, '' Cu ...
devoted a chapter to the film in his 1981 book '' Cult Movies'', describing it as "one of the best American films of the last fifteen years. ''Petulia'' is a brilliant film, inspiringly cast and beautifully acted, so rich in character and visual and aural detail that it takes several viewings to absorb it all. Lester makes the viewer work to grasp the meaning of his film." In ''How to Read a Film'',
James Monaco James F. Monaco (November 15, 1942 – November 25, 2019) was an American film critic, author, publisher, and educator. Life and Work Monaco founded Baseline in 1982, an early online database about the entertainment industry, and a forerunner o ...
called ''Petulia'' "as prescient as it was sharply ironic – one of the two or three best American films of the period."
Joel Siegel Joel Steven Siegel (July 7, 1943 – June 29, 2007) was an American film critic for the ABC morning news show ''Good Morning America'' for over 25 years. The winner of multiple Emmy Awards, Siegel also worked as a radio disc jockey and an adverti ...
asserted that "''Petulia'' is, without question, my favorite American movie, perhaps my favorite of all movies. I’ve seen it at least twice a year since it was released and each viewing has yielded fresh insights and pleasures." Mark Bourne wrote in ''DVD Journal'' that "in 1978 a ''Take One'' magazine poll of 20 film critics — including
Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...
,
Richard Corliss Richard Nelson Corliss (March 6, 1944 – April 23, 2015) was an American film critic and magazine editor for ''Time''. He focused on movies, with occasional articles on other subjects. He was the former editor-in-chief of '' Film Commen ...
,
Stanley Kauffmann Stanley Kauffmann (April 24, 1916 – October 9, 2013) was an American writer, editor, and critic of film and theater. Career Kauffmann started with ''The New Republic'' in 1958 and contributed film criticism to that magazine for the next fifty ...
,
Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
,
Frank Rich Frank Hart Rich Jr. (born 1949) is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist, who held various positions within ''The New York Times'' from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO. Rich is curren ...
,
Andrew Sarris Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism. Early life Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katav ...
, Richard Schickel, David Thomson and François Truffaut — ranked ''Petulia'' among the best American films of the previous decade, taking third place after ''
The Godfather ''The Godfather'' is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel of the same title. The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caa ...
'' ( I and II) and '' Nashville'', and ahead of ''
Annie Hall ''Annie Hall'' is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by him and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer, w ...
'', ''
Mean Streets ''Mean Streets'' is a 1973 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and co-written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973. De Niro won the National ...
'' and '' 2001''."


Awards and nominations


Music

Lester uses the current West Coast musicians of the time: Janis Joplin with
Big Brother and the Holding Company Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After som ...
, the Grateful Dead playing " Viola Lee Blues", The Committee, and Ace Trucking Company are briefly featured in club sequences. Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh,
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan Ronald Charles McKernan (September 8, 1945 – March 8, 1973), known as Pigpen, was an American musician. He was a founding member of the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played in the group from 1965 to 1972. McKernan grew up he ...
, and
Bill Kreutzmann William Kreutzmann Jr. ( ; born May 7, 1946) is an American drummer and founding member of the rock band Grateful Dead. He played with the band for its entire thirty-year career, usually alongside fellow drummer Mickey Hart, and has continued to ...
appear in cameos during the movie's apartment house medical emergency scene as onlookers. Jerry Garcia also appears in duplicate on a large mural and in triplicate on a bus bench both times in stylized solid black and white. ''Petulia'' was an influence on filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. The track "All Things To All Men" by The Cinematic Orchestra begins with a sample of John Barry's haunting saxophone theme from the film.


Home media

The film was released on VHS. A US DVD was released in 2006.


References


External links

* * {{Richard Lester 1968 films 1968 romantic drama films Adultery in films American nonlinear narrative films American romantic drama films British romantic drama films Films about couples Films based on American novels Films directed by Richard Lester Films about domestic violence Films set in San Francisco Films shot in San Francisco Films scored by John Barry (composer) Warner Bros. films 1960s English-language films 1960s American films 1960s British films