Word: petulia
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Philadelphia-born Richard Lester, who became British cinema's one-man new wave with A Hard Day's Night and The Knack, chose San Francisco as the location for Petulia, his first film in the U.S. "It's the most exciting city anywhere on earth," he explained. The excitement, unfortunately, seems to have been too much for him. Petulia is a dazzlement of props and location shots, around which the actors ricochet helplessly through a non-romance between a girl who is some kind of nut and an orthopedic surgeon who seems to be going the same...
...opening sequence leaves the audience in no doubt that Petulia is soing to be pretty tricky stuff. A woman with her neck in a brace is being pushed in a wheelchair through a hospital basement. Sudden flash of rock singer in psychedelic lights. Now they're wheeling her into an elevator filled with other damaged patients. Out of the elevator they go . . . why, it's a big party, a charity dance, the sign says, to benefit some highway safety campaign. George C. Scott, looking annoyed, is leaving. Julie Christie, looking lovely, is trying to get Scott...
...that How I Won the War is finished, Lester has plans to film, of all things, a life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Judas, John the Baptist and Doubting Thomas, based on the novel Salt of the Earth by Carlo Monterosso. His next movie is Petulia, starring Julie Christie, which he shot in San Francisco. In Lester's view it is a "sad, desperate, antiromantic picture" (and he would like to retitle it Romance...