Darling

Darling (1965) is John Schlesinger's British drama, available to watch online on iFILM. The setting is mid-sixties London; the face on screen is a young Julie Christie. Her Diana Scott is a fashion model who has decided she deserves more, and she is done waiting for it.

Diana treats the men in her life as rungs on a ladder. First there is television journalist Robert Gold, played by Dirk Bogarde, who leaves his family for her and opens the doors of high society. Then a bored advertising executive, then an Italian title and a marble palace. Each new life looks like the prize at first and curdles into a gilded cage within months. Schlesinger isn't filming a romance but a portrait of the emptiness under Swinging London's gloss: the more Diana collects, the less of her is left.

The part handed Christie the Academy Award for Best Actress, with two more statuettes going to Frederic Raphael's screenplay and the costume design. Cool and faintly cruel, the film still plays half a century on as a sharp diagnosis of media beauty and the hunger for status. If you love British cinema of the era or a great, unsentimental female lead, this one delivers. Stream Darling (1965) online on iFILM.