Darling Lili

DARLING LILI is a positive delight, though sadly the film was a huge box-office flop and virtually sunk Andrews' film career until "10", S.O.B. and VICTOR/VICTORIA came along a decade later. This film stars Andrews as Lili Smith, a beautiful and adored singing star in England who moonlights as a WW1 German spy. One night, "Uncle Kurt" (Jeremy Kemp) gives Lili her latest assignment: Major Bill Larrabee (Rock Hudson). Lili must make Larrabee fall in love with her, and hopefully let slip some important confidential information that could come in handy for the Germans. Once Lili has Bill firmly in her sights, it becomes clear that this is not her usual "kiss-and-tell" seduction job....she has truly fallen in love with him.

Julie Andrews simply glows as Lili, and delivers a deft performance. Although she indeed plays a spy working for the "Enemy", the audience oddly enough loves her anyway and wants her to escape in the tension-filled final sequence. Rock Hudson is a comical and romantic delight as Larrabee. The support cast includes Lance Percival, Gloria Paul, Jacques Marin, Doreen Keogh and Bernard Kay.

The musical score by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer is truly beautiful, one of the best of the entire decade. When Andrews emerges out of the blackness in the first scene to sing "Whistling Away the Dark", it is indeed one of those chill-inducing moments. Andrews' musicality in this film was quite accomplished; she sings with a smokey timbre in her voice which she rarely displayed before or after DARLING LILI. Other choice moments come in the Music Hall-schmaltz of "I'll Give You Three Guesses" and the sobering "Girl in No Man's Land". Costume designer Donald Brooks decks Julie out in a splendid array of period-perfect ensembles (he also costumed Julie in STAR!).

The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards that year: Best Costume Design (Donald Brooks); Best Song "Whistling Away the Dark" (music Henry Mancini, lyrics Johnny Mercer); and Best Music Scoring (Henry Mancini).

I simply adore this film. DARLING LILI was never made available on videocassette, and appeared only rarely on cable. Director Blake Edwards, in a bid to make the film more palatable for audiences following it's disastrous theatrical release, re-cut the film in a "Director's Cut", and that is the version you get on this DVD. The original theatrical length was 136 mins (the "Director's Cut" runs for a brisk 107 mins, not counting Overture and Exit Music sequences). The transfer is very sharp and the audio is offered in both 5.1 and 2-channel stereo. The cut scenes are all offered as bonus material, so in effect the entire film is here, albeit in pieces. Paramount might hopefully release the uncut LILI one day, but until then, you could do a lot worse than the "Director's Cut". Highly-recommended from this corner.

POSTSCRIPT (29th May 2007): DARLING LILI is now available in it's original uncut form, via the new Paramount DVD editions from the UK and Australia.

Sadly in revisiting this wonderful but unloved (at the time of it's initial theatrical release) film, Blake Edwards felt the need to edit it considerably - and it suffers. The original (longer) theatrical version is far superior and really should be released along with Edwards' shorter, needlessly apologetic rethinking - preferably with an examination by Edwards or qualified historians of the differences between the two versions and the reasons for the recut.

Amazon has two item pages for Darling Lili, that is one for the director's cut (107 min) and the other appears to be for the original release (136 min). The picture showing the Director's Cut reads "Director's Cut" directly below the Movie Title. The page for the original does not say Director's Cut in the picture. Under product information for the original it states: ""Studio: Paramount, DVD Release Date: October 25, 2005, Run Time: 136 minutes, ASIN: B000ANVPT2 (the number for Director's Cut is different)."

I checked out the Director's Cut edition from the library and watched it. It was okay but it seemed choppy and I kept feeling like I was totally missing parts of the movie (it really jumped around in a bad way). I assumed that was the way the movie was made but I did some research and found out it was originally 136 minutes. It seemed to me 29 minutes was a lot to cut out of a movie and maintain any kind of flow so I started looking for the 136 minute version. Thought I had found it on Amazon. I wasn't crazy about the movie so I looked on Amazon Marketplace and found a "like new" copy to purchase. What I received was the Director's Cut. I promptly notified the vendor via email that they sent the wrong movie version. The vendor emailed back that the Director's Cut is the ONLY version available on DVD. I was also told to file a claim with Amazon to avoid shipping it back (shipping was half the cost of the movie). I did that and Amazon did refund the cost of the movie and shipping. I am very fond of Amazon.

I don't particularly care about the Director's Cut (the library can always use another copy) and I still want to see the original 136 minute movie but I'm afraid to order it from Amazon because I suspect, given what I've found on the Internet, that the Director's Cut is the only version available to the U.S. I've read that the original 136 minute movie was released in Europe and also in Australia but, again, I have no proof that is true. If anyone has been able to buy a copy of the original movie I would love to know where they got it!

Thought it was worth pondering this before plunking down the money for what you might hope is the original, longer version and end up with the Director's Cut. I still can't believe that they chose to release the shorter, severely chopped version over the original. I would rather be bored through part of a movie and even fast-forward through parts of it than feel like I completely missed seeing nearly 1/3 of the movie. Hope this might help someone.