Darling (1965)

As she's being interviewed for a woman's magazine about her life, a woman (Julie Christie in her Oscar winning performance) chronicles her "glamorous" life from model to Princess and is not above distorting the facts to favor her. For the film's first hour, the film does a compelling job of documenting a shallow and aimless soul, a "celebrity" without any actual gift or talent. Remarkably, Christie does the near impossible, she makes an empty headed waif interesting. It's the dark side of Holly Golightly. Part of it is her performance and part of it is her, she's the real thing and her screen presence is potent. But as magnetic as she is, even she can't sustain the superficial character for an entire film. The film is populated with superficial characters and even those that aren't supposed to be, like Dirk Bogarde, come across as empty. So after awhile we realize no one is going to change or have an epiphany and the movie will end with everyone as trifling as they were at the beginning. Edgy in its day, some of the film's view of "decadence" today looks rather silly or quaint. Still, it was one of the seminal films of the 1960s. Directed by John Schlesinger, who himself was critical of the film in his later years. With Laurence Harvey, Jose Luis De Vilallonga and Roland Curram.