Richard Lester's Petulia (1968) Starring Julie Christie and George C. Scott

Available from www.digitalclassics.co.uk and all major retailers.

Set during the swinging sixties in San Francisco, Richard Lesters landmark romantic drama tells of the charmingly kooky socialite Petulia (Julie Christie), who has been recently married to David (Richard Chamberlain). Unhappy with her marriage, she embarks on a love affair with a melancholy recently-divorced doctor (George C. Scott) as they try to make sense of their dispassionate lives.
As Lester zigzags through the flashbacks and flash-forwards of cinematographer Nicolas Roeg's startling images and Lawrence B Marcus's knowing screenplay, Petulia's jigsaw pieces form a celluloid time capsule of life and love in the turbulent 60s.
"A brilliant, expertly acted film, so rich in character and visual and aural detail that it takes several viewings to absorb it all." - Danny Perry, Guide for the Film Fanatic

"**** One of the decade's top films" Leonard Maltin

"It's a very real film about two people trying to get through to each other." Director Richard Lester.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Julie
• Christie
• Richard
• Lester
• Dick
• George
• Scott
• Chamberlain
• Petulia
• Sixties
• San
• Francisco
• unhappy
• marriage
• socialite
• kooky
• Nicolas
• Nic
• Roeg

[mudbonehancock]

The best emotionally true film of the era. It still works and perhaps this is an age that does not get metaphors, the power point generation you know.  If you don't get it you should never get married.

[EricandDish]

I'm not the only one that hates "Petulia": In his review for Newsweek Joseph Morganstern called it "a stupid adult comedy" while Pauline Kael in a 1970 essay on the state of movies said that "Petulia" was one of the worst films she ever experienced. Did you know this was supposed to been the American entry at the Cannes Film Festival? And you know what happened: It was stopped during the French riots and worse of all, it was released a week after Robert Kennedy was killed.

[EricandDish]

I saw this film on New Eve's 2007 (since I own it)-and I hated it. Not only that, but I drinked a few Budweisers before this so that maybe I could get a better understanding (it worked for me with "Barbarella") and it still didn't worked. This movie, "The Manchurian Canidate", and "Easy Rider" are three movies that I've watched from the 60's in which they pissed me off so much I didn't know what the hell they were about (and I still don't). "Bullitt" was the better late-60's-San Francisco film.