ags123 Though the plot of "The Sandpiper" is thin and obvious, the film has enough virtues to make watching it time well spent. Mainly, the chance to wallow in Elizabeth Taylor's beauty, here just about as undone and natural as she ever allowed; Hair blowing in the gentle breeze wafting off the magnificent Big Sur coastline. Richard Burton looks pretty good too, the couple still oozing the magnetism that brought the stars together in the first place. Eva Marie Saint gives expert support in the thankless role of a neglected wife. The scenery is fantastic, the music ('The Shadow of Your Smile") nothing short of sublime, and last but not least, are Herb Rosenthal's gorgeous calligraphic titles.

writers_reign Sometimes, with the best will in the world, you get it wrong. The question here is: how, with all the right ingredients and a more or less foolproof recipe you can't get the soufflé' to rise? Don't look at me, all I know is, Burton, Taylor, Minnelli, Trumbo, Big Sur, what's to go wrong, To digress slightly what is it with Burton and men of the cloth? Becket, Night Of The Iguana, and now this, three holy men and together they didn't have a prayer. Minnelli even cast Tom Drake, his leading man in one of his greatest successes Meet Me In St Louis, maybe he thought they could replicate that success. In their dreams. In casting terms he also threw in James Mason's ex-wife Pamela, and their son Morgan Mason as Taylor's son. Still no go. Maybe it started to go South when they threw out Johnny Mercer's title song and brought in Paul Francis Webster who came up with The Shadow Of Your Smile. As Mercer remarked it sounds like a woman with designer stubble; maybe that's the problem with the movie.

contrerassherry Liz Taylor plays a pre-hippie who lives in a "shack" (prime real estate in real life) by the sea. She paints already-finished works of art. The sandpiper is an injured bird whose wing she helps to heal, although the sandpiper is an obvious metaphor for for the free-spirited Liz.She hangs around in designer clothes with her hair perfectly coiffed, which makes it hard to take seriously her role as free-spirited nonconformist. At one point she shows up at her son's school in a fashionable yellow dress and large white hat. After seeing the interior of her "shack", I couldn't help wondering where she keeps all those clothes. Blue jeans and T-shirts (braless) would have been more realistic as attire for her beach-bum life style. Oh well.Richard Burton cannot resist her allure despite his religious convictions and his marriage to Eva Marie Saint.They fall in love, all the while spouting soliloquies about life, love, the existence or non-existence of God, etc. In one scene, where they are on the beach, Liz is espousing philosophy and the wind keeps whipping her hair into her face and I couldn't help but wonder why they didn't pin in back for that scene. In another scene, as Liz is pontificating again, the sandpiper perches on her head! (How did they get it to do that? ha ha ) Liz is made out to be the wiser of the two, Richard Burton being tied down to such terrible things as responsibility and fidelity.Despite being madly in love in real life, I couldn't see a lot of chemistry between them.I watched this because I read the book "Furious Love" - a really good book by the way. The movies they made together are documented in it so I was motivated to watch their films. So now I have seen this one and it's on the "Taming of the Shrew."

Robert J. Maxwell I had almost abandoned hope when I read TV guide's review. A straight-laced Episcopelian priest who is headmaster of a boy's school on the California coast (Burton) has a fling with a free-spirited artist (Taylor). The combination of Burton and Taylor alone was enough to scare anybody. "Divorce His, Divorce Hers"? They were having a gay old time of it in the 60s but the viewers were like the only sober guests at the party. Stated flatly, the story itself sounds like a Harlequin romance. But it's not that bad. It has a couple of good things going for it, despite the formulaic plot.For one thing, the location shooting in and around Big Sur is truly impressive. It was in these southernmost redwood forests that Jack Kerouac had his first case of DTs, but if you're going to have DTs this is the place to have them. Interiors were filmed elsewhere and the set dressers flung themselves into their task recklessly. Taylor's beach house looks like a Hollywood hallucination. Towards the end, Taylor talks to her son about how -- now that her paintings are beginning to sell -- they might soon be able to afford to move out of it, this weathered-wood and crystal-glass palace by the sea. Yes, what a dump. I couldn't afford the insurance on the place and neither could you. For another thing, there is the catchy theme song by Johnny Mandel, a talented composer. (The lyrics, by Paul Francis Webster, are rubbish.) Mandel did a number of other memorable scores, including "Point Blank." The trumpet that carries the tune under the titles is played by Jack Sheldon, affiliated with West Coast jazz, who partnered with people like Curtis Counce and Gerry Mulligan. Sheldon was an actor of sorts too. He was laid back and invariably spoke and acted as if stoned, whether he was or not. It's a pretty tune and Sheldon draws every melancholy shiver out of it.The script is a joint product and is more thoughtful and intelligent than it has any particular reason to be. Of course, this is 1965, and the Antinomian Age is beginning -- the Beatles, pop art, Andy Warhol, the loosening of language and the parameters of body exposure in the movies. So we're all rooting for the atheistic Liz Taylor who derides and disregards all consuetudinary rituals. She hosts barbaric dances around the bonfire on the beach. The hell with conformity, as represented by Burton's perceptive but repressed male schoolmarm. Except that Burton is no dope. He's given some excellent lines. Why, asks Liz, should she send her young son to school just in order to learn rules that he'll later rebel against? Burton's reply is that maybe, by providing him with society's rules, it will prevent him from rebelling against hers. That reply points up a paradox. An insistence on "no rules" is itself a rule. The dialog sometimes lifts itself above the humdrum drama beneath it. The performances are pretty good too. Burton has that rich voice and is sober throughout. Liz Taylor is gorgeous and seems to drape her hefty, half-naked body over the furniture. Charles Bronson -- as a romantic artist! -- produces crummy sculpture, and Taylor's paintings look as if they should have a slogan printed across the bottom: "SOUFFLE DE LA MER. Enjoy The Freedom! At a store nearest you." And it's interesting to see Robert Webber in a nicely conceived performance as something of a cad. But, ignoring the story and the acting and all that, I don't know how bearable this would have been if, instead of being about two beautiful and smart and rich people on Big Sur, it had been about two middle-aged working-class schlubs in an industrial neighborhood like Kearny, New Jersey. It would have grated.