Daisy Miller (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jul 18, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Peter BogdanovichRelease Date(s)
1974 (May 21, 2024)Studio(s)
The Directors Company/Paramount Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B
Review
Conventional wisdom is, after three successive critical and commercial hits—The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), and Paper Moon (1973)—director Peter Bogdanovich’s stock came crashing down with two equally spectacular flops: Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975). Critics and industry insiders, put off by the director’s frequent pomposity, affectations, name-dropping, and criticisms of mainstream Hollywood, delighted in his humiliating fall from grace. While he continued making films (Saint Jack is particularly wonderful, equal to his best work), Bogdanovich never fully recovered. While some of the criticism was deserved, in the years prior to and after his death in 2022 at 82, Bogdanovich’s filmography is quietly being reappraised and yielding some surprises.
Some years back I reviewed At Long Last Love and was rather startled to discover that, while imperfect in some respects, it wasn’t nearly the disaster its reputation suggested. Likewise, Daisy Miller has many fine qualities despite a few though hardly ruinous problems.
A faithful adaptation of Henry James’s 1878 novella, the film is set among elite expatriate Americans living in Europe. There, Frederick Winterbourne (Barry Brown), falls in love with Daisy Miller (Cybill Shepherd), a flirtatious, nouveau riche American “taking the cure” at a Swiss spa with her mother, Mrs. Ezra B. Miller (Cloris Leachman), and kid brother, Randolph (James McMurtry, son of Last Picture Show novelist Larry McMurtry). American socialites including Mrs. Walker (Eileen Brennan) attempt to ease the Miller clan into their social circle, but the Millers are hopeless: the mother is garrulous, awkward and provincial; the boy is crude, ill-mannered, and thoroughly obnoxious; and Daisy is either blissfully ignorant of her own recklessness, or maybe she’s just openly defiant of the class expectations imposed on her.
Spurning Frederick’s gentlemanly but ineffectual efforts to woo her, Daisy instead keeps company with vibrant local Italian Mr. Giovanelli (Duilio Del Prete), a man of no social standing, the two scandalously seen together, holding hands in public, and staying out well past midnight. Can her reputation, such as it is, survive?
Daisy Miller has its share of surprises. Daisy is as talkative as her mother, rambling on-and-on machine-gun style, rather like the screwball comedy dialogue in Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? Indeed, her yakety free-spiritedness and Randolph’s uncultured, xenophobic comparisons of Europe and America are rather funny. In short, the film is not without humor.
Reportedly Bogdanovich considered playing the role of Frederick himself, with Orson Welles directing the picture instead. This might explain Barry Brown’s performance: he looks and acts like Bogdanovich throughout the film. A lot. Though all but forgotten today, Brown was an immensely talented young actor, best known for Bad Company (1972), his career tragically cut short by suicide at 27 in 1978. (Besides acting, Brown was concurrently a film scholar, specializing in appreciations of actors working in the horror/sci-fi genres.)
The biggest complaint from detractors was Cybill Shepherd’s performance, that Daisy Miller was, effectively, a vanity project for the director’s girlfriend. This is, to a point, a legitimate complaint. She’s appropriately beautiful and she gets her lines out, but she does so without any sense of rhythm or seeming awareness of what it is she’s saying, affecting a kind of one-note delivery and frozen smile throughout. In her defense, the character itself is rather vacuous, so one can’t entirely blame Shepard for playing the role as conceived by its author.
For his part, Bogdanovich regretted making Daisy Miller not because of Shepherd’s inadequacies but rather believing he had erred in making a basically good but wholly noncommercial film, even though its budget was quite modest—just $2 million. Despite those limited funds, the film impresses with its period details and Swiss and Italian locations. Conversely, the cinematography by Alberto Spagnoli (Wanted: Babysitter, Shock, Killer Fish), which seems to be attempting some of the same natural lighting techniques found in Kubrick’s not-dissimilar Barry Lyndon, isn’t up to the task and, visually speaking, the film is bland and unmemorable.
Indeed, though Kino’s release touts a “new HD Master—from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative,” the presentation looks rather soft and grainy at once, especially during the first act set in Switzerland. Opticals such as dissolves and title elements suffer particularly, and there’s a fair amount of speckling and other imperfections. I can’t explain it, except to note several other Paramount titles of the period—The Day of the Locust and Pretty Baby to name two—have similar issues. Were original elements improperly stored? Did the film always look this way?
It’s a shame Daisy Miller is so derided when so much it is very, very good: Mildred Natwick is splendid as Frederick’s aunt, as is Eileen Brennan as the intolerant, judgmental Mrs. Walker; Brennan seemed able to nail absolutely any kind of part handed her. The film is compact, barely 90 minutes long, with just a handful of speaking parts, faithfully capturing James’s themes. It’s much like the later, celebrated Merchant Ivory productions of a decade later, and its worst crime is bad timing. And, as Bogdanovich correctly noted, the film actually received many good reviews when it was new, especially by New York and other big-city critics.
Kino’s presentation, in 1.85:1 widescreen, may replicate the look of original release prints, though this is hard to know for certain. The English DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is adequate, and supported by optional English subtitles. The disc is Region “A” encoded.
Supplements are a mix of new and older material. They include a 10-minute featurette, Remembering Daisy Miller, a new interview with actress Shepherd, who makes a strong case for the film’s accomplishments; a video introduction and audio commentary by Bogdanovich; a second, new commentary track by film historian Peter Tonguette; and a theatrical trailer.
Though far from perfect, Daisy Miller is not at all the disaster remembered by many. Star Cybill Shepherd is not quite up to the title role but she’s far from bad, and the other performances are good to outstanding and it’s an impressive film overall. Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV