Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Best movie ever!

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Masterpiece!

Julie Christie plays a single, uninhibited lass who travels from Rome to Geneva for the sixth wedding of her wealthy father, who has promised she will meet a dashing, unattached American named Gregory at the ceremony. Trivial vehicle for then-hot property Christie seems to be about romantic delusion and disappointment, but it never gets out of first gear. Christie's flirtatious relationship with her brother (a very green John Hurt) is certainly curious--he appears to be both homosexual and housebound--but Michael Sarrazin is less enigmatic as he is misplaced in this wispy world of lost lovers. Director Peter Wood has an eye for character detail, but no filmmaker could do much with Tonino Guerra and Lucile Laks' exceptionally mild screenplay. *1/2 from ****

I saw it as a teenager maybe 15 years ago. I've searched high and low for it ever since then. It was nowhere to be found, the forgotten film, if it had not been for Julie Christie in it. She's absolutely stunningly gorgeous in this film with long brown hair and long slim legs. I wonder why she made it. She was a huge star then and this film isn't much, a little trifle of a movie. The story is so slight it leaves a lot of space for Julies beauty. There's a nice pleasant Sunday atmosphere in the film. I remembered it as much more gloomy but it is more of a romantic comedy, although with a very slow pace. We don't learn much about these beautiful and rich people who are not completely spoiled and quite charming. What I remembered after the first time I saw it was how empty their lives are. You can't feel sorry for them, though.I would like to thank the people who made this film and wonder what it felt when it just disappeared. I wish this film was more known and loved. Films like this don't get made anymore. I can see why it wasn't a hit since no one comes out happier, neither the characters nor the audience. The script was by Tonino Guerra, the same man behind "Blow Up". This can explain the brilliant and poetic ending to the film, set at an empty airport, which made me always remember "In Search of Gregory", love it, and start my own search for it.

Contains Spoiler.This tale of emptiness, boredom and longing is empty, boring and long (even at 90 minutes, it's long). Co-scripted by Antonioni's collaborator Tonino Guerra (whose credits include L'AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE, BLOW UP) this film resembles that director's work superficially. It's about an idle rich girl Catherine (Julie Christie), whose father (Adolfo Celi) lures her to his fourth or fifth wedding in Geneva by telling her he will introduce her to a fascinating young American named Gregory. At the Geneva airport she sees a poster of an auto-ball player (Michael Sarrazin) and from there on she visualizes Sarrazin when she fantasizes about Gregory. All of the fantasy sequences are insipid and dull; they wouldn't even be worth watching as reality. In the course of the next hour she interacts with her somewhat incestuous, wimpy brother (John Hurt, several years before his breakthrough in THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT), her father, her father's new bride (Paola Pitagora) and various bit players in her frustrated search for Gregory. But the object of her romantic fantasy has always just left or was expected to show up but hasn't. At one point on her wild goose chase she ends up in a room containing crates of canned Alpine air(!). The warehouse employee opens one for her and of course it is empty. This moment seems to sum up the whole film. From the opening credits onward a pop song is either sung or played in various arrangements as instrumental underscoring. It's actually pretty catchy in a precious 60s sort of way. ***SPOILER***: Catherine finally gives up on meeting Gregory and heads back to Rome. At the Geneva airport she encounters Sarrazin and has a soulless tryst with him at the airport hotel. He is revealed not to be Gregory. After they separate she calls her brother who happens to be on another phone with the actual Gregory but doesn't bother to tell her so. The brother, an immature neurotic who cannot deal with complexity or challenge of any kind, puts the two phones down side by side and walks away, leaving Gregory and Catherine's disembodied voices buzzing at each other without their knowledge. It is then revealed that Catherine and Gregory are standing in adjacent phone booths at the airport (though the camera never lets us see Gregory's face). Catherine hangs up and steps onto an automatic sidewalk and glides away, alone in the huge, cold, impersonal airport. All this just to reiterate the trite observation that modern people are lonely and isolated? This pretentious piffle is worth seeing only because of the magnetic presence of Julie Christie who was at the height of her fame when it was filmed in the summer of 1968. It was deemed so bad by Universal that they delayed its US opening until the spring of 1970. It played in very limited release (definitely in New York City, but perhaps nowhere else) and then vanished until recently when it began appearing on cable channels.

So much promise, so little delivery. Considering how much talent was involved in this production, one would expect a great deal more--but there are precious few highlights in this muddled Euro flick. Julie Christie looks good but barely breaks a sweat, Adolfo Celi over-emotes, Michael Sarrazin phones in his performance, and only John Hurt seems to be making much of an effort on camera. None of them are done any favors by Tonino Guerra's bloodless screenplay, and the photography of Otto Heller and Giorgio Tonti is unimaginative at best. The print currently airing on Sundance also seems washed out--the film looks like it was shot in Eastmancolor, but wasn't--and Georgie Fame's theme tune is genuinely wretched. Is there anything here to recommend? Well, Hurt is good, but his character is peripheral to most of the action, and Ron Grainer provides some good music for a bizarre recording sequence that imagines the title character as a wacky hybrid of composers Harry Partch and David Whitaker. Only recommended for hardcore admirers of la Christie.