Lilith
An occupational therapist in a private mental hospital begins to develop feelings for one of his patients, a woman suffering from schizophrenia. He finds his own life in shambles as he tries to deal with their relationship.
Member Reviews
Beatty's first great role - filmcmnt
This was Beatty's fourth film and really the first inclination of the kind of great screen presence he would become. Splendor in the Grass required too much James Dean adolescent angst from him, Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone called for an awkward Italian accent, and the underseen and underrated All Fall Down nevertheless gave Beatty a role that was fairly ill defined. Here, though, Vincent Bruce gives Beatty a chance to give a mature performance that shows his calculating intelligence. You can literally see him thinking his way through this part, something that reportedly drove director Robert Rossen crazy on set, but which makes the Vincent Bruce character perfectly enigmatic and surprising, yielding a "surprise" ending that is totally effective. This is, in so many ways, much more compelling a depiction of institutional life than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which often feels as if it's bilking mental illness for laughs. Here, as some of the other excellent reviewers have said, the mental illness is handled by Rossen as if it's some kind of grim gateway into archetypal and elemental realities from an earlier age of humanity, as when Beatty jousts for his ladylove in a strange and memorable interlude in the middle of the film.A descent into neurosis and psychosis - RoddyPiper
Beatty's character Vincent Bruce is a soldier, just returned from the war, of which experience nothing is said except on the margins: the phrase I remember most in this connection, is his plea to the psychiatric patient Lilith he is assigned to help -- ". . . please just let me do one thing right . . ."
Whatever he experienced in war has changed him, and he has no ambition in is life until he happens by chance to walk into this job at the asylum. There he meets Lilith, played by Jean Seberg, and soon he lets himself be drawn into the incredible psychological web of this beautiful, frightening woman.
I have seen the movie at least four times, and want to see it again, because there is a depth to this film that is difficult to plumb. One of its elements is the enticement and danger, the reward and the cost of heroism. Half-way through the film Vincent sits in on a lecture by one of the senior psychiatrists, who explains how he sees these seemingly hopelessly-lost patients as heroes, because they have dared to take steps within themselves that the rest of humanity shrinks back from; and that what we see of these people now is the result of that harrowing experience at the edge. Issues of heroism pervade the segment that is like a visit back in time to the middle ages, and its tests of how a heroic man could prove his love and loyalty to his lady. What step is too far to go? What is the price of misreading a path? What is the reward if it is in fact the heroic action?
There is a timeless quality to the film: its questions date from the garden, and the asylum seems to have fallen off the circling wheel of everyday time.
This film is in glorious black and white. Peter Fonda and Gene Hackman also appear. It is a real gift.Lilith - Coco
A strong contender, here, for greatest American studio picture of the illustrious 1960s. Certainly one of the most iconic screen couples. Beatty and Seberg aren’t actors, they are searing-hot cattle brands to the soul. They have evolved beyond their place and time – no other characters could procreate with them, they are a new, quietly erotic species. Lilith should appeal to poets, nun’s who yearn to make it with the Godhead, lovers of ecstatic abandon, and those with no faith in the ego whatsoever. Schizophrenic Seberg – and by extension Beatty, her quinine convert – is equated with the aperture of true love and egoless selfhood akind, devoured by a disorder which denies the unblinking aggression of social production, ritual, and class-consciousness to open up the self to a myriad of subject positions…selves to occupy. It’s amazing that the sweat-and-stoic-guts director of The Hustler (’61) could produce such molten, feminine beauty. Such painful bare fact. The movie shows us the suicide we breathe in out communities and the madness, the play, the extremities of ourselves, where lies our tragic salvation…if there is any salvation, all abundant before us, it lies in a profound weakening of ourselves…a disease…love…us. There is so little so right as Rossen’s incandescent masterwork. Recommended to readers of Deleuze and Guattari especially.
cOcO2
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Beatty's first great role - filmcmnt
This was Beatty's fourth film and really the first inclination of the kind of great screen presence he would become. Splendor in the Grass required too much James Dean adolescent angst from him, Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone called for an awkward Italian accent, ...A descent into neurosis and psychosis - RoddyPiper
Beatty's character Vincent Bruce is a soldier, just returned from the war, of which experience nothing is said except on the margins: the phrase I remember most in this connection, is his plea to the psychiatric patient Lilith he is assigned to help -- ". ...Lilith - Coco
A strong contender, here, for greatest American studio picture of the illustrious 1960s. Certainly one of the most iconic screen couples. Beatty and Seberg aren’t actors, they are searing-hot cattle brands to the soul. They have evolved beyond their place ...