Petulia

When I look at what's playing today at the multiplex I thank whoever invented the DVD for giving us the chance to see movies made during a time when movies mattered. Movies like "Petulia" a brilliant movie made in 1966 by director Richard Lester. Set against the backdropof San Francisco during the Summer of Love, this is a movie about love, relationships and how they bind us to a life we don't really like.It's about the failure to communicate. In it a doctor (George C. Scott) meets a young woman (Julie Christie) who is physically abused by her impotent husband (Richard Chamberlain). But this is no ordinary love triangle and things are not of the "boy meets girl. boy loses girl. boy gets girl back" variety. This is an adult world. This is a real world.

The movie has a dazzling visual style too. Nicholas Roeg who later directed "Don't Look Now" and "Man who Fell to Earth" was the director of photography.

But what this movie really has is passion and love of cinema. In an interview, the producer of the movie said that after watching the completed film for the first time at a private screening, the director Richard Lester told him: "I don't know if anyone is ever going to watch this film. But even if nobody does you can feel good that our blood is in every frame of it." Will the director of "Click" ever be able to say that?

By the way, "Petulia" was chosen by critics as the third best movie of 1967-1977, conceivably a Golden Age of American Cinema.