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Rating:  - Grilled Cheese with your Cheese?
Episcopal priest Richard Burton, married to perfect clergyman's wife Eva Marie Saint, falls in lust with "free spirit" single mother Elizabeth Taylor when a judge orders Taylor's home-schooled son into the school where Burton serves as headmaster.
Taylor is supposed to be a painter living in a "shack" overlooking the beach at Big Sur. It's hard to know exactly when real estate prices skyrocketed there, but that "shack" would cost millions today. Taylor has an awfully big wardrobe and an awfully comfy lifestyle for an artist who does not appear to sell many paintings. Her makeup is garish. Her costumes are in hideous, lurid colors so obviously designed to de-emphasize her heaviness that they inadvertently draw attention to it. (Not that it's necessarily a bad thing to have a romantic lead NOT be a size 4.) Her line readings mostly are forced and unconvincing, making us long for the freshness and enthusiasm she brought to National Velvet, the casual grace of A Place in the Sun, or the fire of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Burton, so brilliant in films like 1984, has his knickers in a twist here. His notorious charm is entirely absent. His big speech from his pulpit at the end, obviously meant to elicit tears--Julie Andrews' autobiography said he could in fact make audiences cry at will--falls flat.
Fascinating Eva Marie Saint (see North by Northwest) has little to do but act saintly and suffer with dignity.
The campy fun comes from the dialogue, which is purple enough to give Taylor's costumes a run for their money and swings from trite to goofy, the actors' obvious struggle to find anything convincing to do with the dialogue, and the fact that every cliche about "the bohemian lifestyle" and the reaction of "straight society" to it is on display here. An authoritarian judge sends Taylor's son to Burton's school without bothering to examine whether he's learning under her home tutoring, but then Saint discovers that Taylor has taught the child to read Chaucer in middle English--ah, the mindlessly oppressive establishment. The "bohemians" romp around a campfire and Charles Bronson, ridiculous as a temperamental sculptor, uses Taylor as a nude (are we shocked? shocked!) model for a driftwood sculpture that looks like one of those things you stick on the prow of a ship--ah, the joy and creativity of the free spirits. Burton veins pop as he struggles between "morality" and "desire"--ah, the establishment figure yearning to break free from his shackles. The adulterers plot and execute rendezvous in various glamorous locations--ah, the romance of it all. Does anyone ever wonder: wouldn't all that sand in your swimsuit make it pretty darned miserable to make love in the crashing waves on the beach?
All wrapped up in the oh-so-subtle symbol of the sandpiper, how fragile we are, how precious our freedom. This was a hit in its day. Maybe it all seemed more racy back then.
Rating: - the shadow of her smell
ok, now THIS one is dick & liz at their most self-indulgent. even "boom" (not yet released on dvd, alas) is a better movie, if only because it is sooooo bad. it is amazing to realize that right after this, arguably her worst performance, taylor went on to give her best in "virginia wolff". i have given this a second star because the shorts about the making of the film (included on the dvd) are pretty interesting. only for dick & liz completists.
Rating:  - Liz is sweet if not entirely convincing...
Not only in "Cleopatra" but in her next two films as well, "The V.I.P.s," and "The Sandpiper," Taylor was more the world-famous celebrity and less the conscientious actress than at any other time in her career... The three movies exploit the public's fantasy of what the lovers must be like: tempestuous, as in "Cleopatra;" quarreling, on the verge of separation, as in "The V.I.P.s;" illicit lovers, defying the moral norms, as in "The Sandpiper."
As the ancient Queen of the Nile, as modern day grande dame, or as a hippie artist, Taylor is Taylor, hemmed in by her spectacular fame... The international celebrity, the world's most famous lover, takes over from the burgeoning actress of the Fifties, and Taylor walks through the movies as the fabled beauty she'd become rather than the high-strung Southern belle she had been before Rome...
Playing an unmarried woman who lives with her son exactly the way she wants to live, in harmony with the California coast, Liz Taylor, for once, gets to talk about ideas: her character proclaims the joys of independence and self-expression... Taylor is no Jane Fonda, alight with radical fervor, but the role does express something of herself; it lets us see a side of her that differs from the standard screen Taylor...
Here she's a 'new' woman, free and wise, who teaches a thing or two to a rigid churchman... The film's symbol is the sandpiper with a broken wing which she offers as proof that every creature should be allowed to fly free...
We know too much about her to believe her as a hedonistic artist who would dress so fashionably in such an impossibly expansive beach house... The character's broad humanistic philosophy--her objections to organized religion and to formal schooling, her advocacy of free love and her celebration of the naturalness of physical love--are, oddly enough, at the film's center...
The story that interrupts the characters ongoing declarations about life is the old number of a minister tempted by a beautiful woman... Bombarded by the artist's charms, the man succumbs, only to depart at the end, weighed down by, guilt and vowing to seek the way of repentance and purification...The movie's morality is thus a mingling of the old and the new...
The movie plays it both ways, admiring the woman's freedom and righteous self-justification, but making the clergyman pay dearly for his indulgence in forbidden fruit... It's an old Hollywood romance trying to masquerade as a love story in the modern manner...
Burton's prude is impossible and he plays him in a harsh oratorical manner, as if he's deadening himself to the pain of it all, but Taylor's character almost approaches being a real rebel with ideas... The movie exploits the public image of her as a challenger of conventions, but the role also gives her a chance to sound reasonably articulate about matters other than love... Under Vincente Minnelli's graceful guidance, Liz is sweet if not entirely convincing...
Rating:  - Liz Taylor Really Makes An Impression
Whatever else you can say about this movie, Liz Taylor's presence in it makes all the difference. She was really a gorgeous woman in those days, and within the confines of the film, I thought her part was well-acted. That's not to say the film is believable, of course. But the movie is a great preservation (and reflection) of the culture of the sixties - in much the same way as another Burton film, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The Sandpiper is one of those movies that seems at first shallow and uninteresting, but then you can't stop watching it. Too bad it's not yet available on DVD.
Rating: - Love still goes on
This movie has remained with me long after seeing it for the first time. I even found the soundtrack in a local Record store.
When I hear the great song Shadow of your smile I find myself sad that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's love didn't survive in this romantic movie. Then I stop to think and say "wait a minute they had many more years of love at its best in real life, it did survive". Not the greatest script but a memorable experience to watch just the same.
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