The Sandpiper

Plot synopsis:
Laura Reynolds (Taylor) is a free-spirited, unwed single mother living with her young son Danny (Morgan Mason) in an isolated California beach house. She makes a modest living as an artist and home-schools her son out of concern that he will be compelled to follow stifling conventional social norms in a regular school. Danny has gotten into some trouble with the law through two minor incidents, which are in his mother's eyes innocent expressions of his natural curiosity and conscience rather than delinquency. Now with a third incident a judge (Torin Thatcher) orders her to send the boy to an Episcopal boarding school where Dr. Edward Hewitt (Burton) is headmaster, and his wife Claire (Eva Marie Saint) teaches. Edward and Claire are happily married with two student sons, but their life has become routine and their youthful idealism has been tamed by the need to raise funds for the school and please wealthy benefactors.
At an initial interview, there is a momentary immediate attraction between Laura and Edward, but this quickly turns into tension brought on by their greatly differing world views and Laura's dislike of religion. Finally she storms out. She attempts to flee the area with Danny but the police quickly catch them and take the boy away to the school. He initially has trouble fitting in because his mother's home schooling has placed him far in advance of boys his age in many subjects; the standard course of instruction at the school leaves him restless and bored. At Claire's suggestion, Edward visits Danny's mother to learn more about his upbringing.
Laura's unconventional morals initially disturb Edward, as they conflict with his religious beliefs. After visiting her several more times he finds her irresistible and cannot get her out of his mind. They begin a passionate extramarital affair. At first Laura tells herself that Edward is a fling like her other lovers, but to her surprise she finds herself falling in love with him, becoming jealous of his wife Claire. He struggles with guilt, while she urges him to accept the rightness of their love. Meanwhile, Danny flourishes after Edward relaxes school rules and allows the boy to choose more advanced classes.
A jealous former lover (Robert Webber) of Laura's exposes the affair by making a remark to Edward within earshot of his wife. At first Claire is distraught, but later they quietly discuss it in the light of how their lives diverged from the idealism of the first years of their marriage. Edward declares that he still loves Claire and that he will end the affair. Still, they agree to a temporary separation while each decides what they want to do with their future. When Edward tells Laura that he confessed to his wife, she is outraged at what she perceives as an invasion of her privacy, and they part angrily. He resigns his position at the school and decides to travel. The school year over, Laura tells Danny that they can move away, but he has put down roots at the school and wants to stay there. As a parting gift, Edward arranges for Danny to attend tuition-free. His mother has a moment of pain but realizes Danny's need to make his own choices and agrees. On Edward's way out of town, he stops at Laura's place for a silent farewell, she and the boy down on the beach, he high up on the bluff above looking down at them.

Tags: romantic, melodrama

Review:
"The Sandpiper" was the second in a number of films ("The VIPs" was the first) made together by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
By 1965, however, the Code, although not quite dead, was no longer in robust health, and a film on this subject, although still highly controversial, was no longer impossible.Taylor's character, Laura Reynolds, is an unmarried mother who works as an artist and lives with her nine-year-old son Danny in an isolated California beach house.
(This plot line reminded me of Iris Murdoch's novel "The Sandcastle", published a few years before "The Sandpiper", which also dealt with an adulterous affair between a married older schoolmaster at a boarding school and a young female artist).Danny himself does not play a major role, being more of a plot device than a character in his own right.
Her own solution, however, home-schooling Danny in a remote part of the world away from any other children and without a father-figure in his life, struck me as being likely to turn him into a self-centred loner, although the film rather shies away from criticising Laura on this point.
It seemed to me highly improbable that a woman like Laura, whose whole philosophy seems to be one of living in harmony with nature, would allow her young son to have a rifle and then, when he uses it to kill an animal out of wanton curiosity, shrug the whole thing off as a harmless youthful escapade.Elizabeth Taylor looks stunning, but neither she nor Burton are really at their best here.
Taylor always comes across as slightly too glamorous to be altogether convincing as a proto-hippie.The film contains some attractive photography of the Californian coastal scenery (although the colours in the indoor scenes are often rather dull) and there is a notable musical score, including the song "The Shadow of Your Smile".
The love affair between Richard Burton, a jaded Episcopalian priest and headmaster at a boys school in San Simeon, and Elizabeth Taylor, an alienated artist seeking peace and solitude at an isolated beach house, is reasonably convincing.
It's silly and shallow, but it's got a great performance by Richard Burton, and a pretty good one by Elizabeth Taylor.
This film was designed to take advantage of public curiosity about the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who were kind of the Bragelina of the 1960's.
The school is run by the Reverend Richard Burton, along with his pretty and supportive but staid wife, Eva Marie Saint.
I think that not only the scenery, plot, characters and music make it so lovely, but the strength of the relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton which is so obvious and was happening in real life at the same time.
One good aspect of it is it would be very easy to make this a one-sided film in which the Big Bad Headmaster (with a Soft Spot) takes away the child of sweet, free-spirited Elizabeth, but Taylor and Burton play their characters in ways that we could sympathize with either of them--or not.Unfortunately, "or not" is a very distinct possibility.
(Eva Marie Saint's character would be a possible exception if she had more screen time.) They're just varying degrees of liberal and conservative clichés.While Vincente Minnelli was really incapable of making a truly awful film, given his talent--and the talent we would see in Taylor and Burton the following year in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--this can't be seen as anything but a disappointment.
For their third film together (and their first as a newly-married couple), the Burtons chose one of the most infamous bad movies of all-time, the hilariously misguided effort THE SANDPIPER (1965).
I won't spend the time discussing the film's clumsy attempts as addressing such complex issues as theology, which are handled even worse than the central love triangle.In all fairness, Burton has the right degree of sullenness to play the conflicted reverend, but the script gives him little else to do other than appear solemn.
No matter how hard she tries, it simply impossible believe a glamour queen like Taylor as a shack-living, bra-burning hippie, and the characterization only becomes less convincing and more ridiculous as the movie goes on.In the supporting cast, only Robert Webber's villainous Ward makes much of an impression, as Eva Marie Saint is completely wasted as Burton's wronged wife and Charles Bronson is as miscast as Taylor as a sexually ambiguous sculptor.
The location footage of the Big Sur is sometimes breathtaking and the Oscar-winning theme song "The Shadow of Your Smile" is memorable, but these attributes alone cannot lift the movie out the realm of being a "bad movie classic." Despite it's dubious quality and unanimously bad reviews from critics (or maybe because of them), THE SANDPIPER was yet another significant hit at the box office for the Burtons..
Meanwhile, Laura is initially resentful of Hewitt's academic approach, but of course, given this is Taylor and Burton in their prime, they fall quickly into a torrid love affair.
With her zaftig figure and designer outfits, Taylor simply looks disengaged, while Burton tries to inject some dignity to a basically unsympathetic character but to no avail.Poor Eva Marie Saint is left stranded by Claire's frigidity and ignorance.
He's bored with his marriage too, to Eva Marie Saint.Into his life comes single mom Elizabeth Taylor who is raising her son Morgan Mason out of wedlock and living in a hippie colony on the California coast.
Art imitates life as Liz gets Dick's hormones into exponential overdrive.A lot of younger members of IMDb could not possibly appreciate all the publicity surrounding Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor from the first reports of an affair on the set of Cleopatra.
Liz and Dick got a good supporting cast that included Charles Bronson, Robert Webber, Tom Drake and Torin Thatcher.Thatcher plays a judge and he inadvertently gets the adultery ball rolling when he orders that Liz Taylor stop home schooling young Mason and he orders her to send him to the Episcopal school run by Burton.We certainly have come full circle.
The other is the truly lovely score by Johnny Mandel, including "The Shadow Of Your Smile" which has haunted me for about the last 20 years.Really, watch the first five minutes (until the deer is shot) and the end credit sequence and you'll have seen everything worthy this movie has to offer..
In place of pot-smoking hippies with scraggly hair and dirty jeans, Minnelli gives us freshly scrubbed, perfectly coiffed 20-somethings in coordinated scarves and ponchos.Richard Burton is a much better fit in his role as a minister, though, as another reviewer commented, what Liz's character sees in him is something of a mystery.
And poor Eva Marie Saint is reduced to little more than walk on part, though she gets kudos for being able to maintain a stoic expression while a boy recites Chaucer.The dialog is lively, if overwrought and ridiculous, at the film's beginning, but once Liz and Dick fall in love it immediately becomes overheated mush.
Wildly scandalous couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (for those who are too young to remember, the Brangelina of their day in terms of sex) play roles they were miscast in for this mid-60s soaper.
Taylor is Laura Reynolds, a free-spirited, single-mother artist living a quasi bohemian lifestyle on the California beach.
Empty-headed romance with Elizabeth Taylor as a single mother and beatnik artist (and atheist!) living in a beach shack in northern California and Richard Burton as the married minister whom she 'innocently' entices.
Eva Marie Saint is Burton's noble wife (the type of movie good girl who tend to drive men right over the mountain into Sin City).
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton star in "The Sandpiper," a 1965 film also starring Morgan Mason (James Mason's son) and Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson, and Robert Webber.Taylor plays Laura Reynolds, a free-thinking single mother living and painting in Big Sur with her young son (Mason).
Her son gets into trouble, not for the first time, and this time, the judge orders him to San Simeon School, headed up by an Episcopalian priest, Edward Hewitt(Burton) and his wife (Saint).
Edward and Laura fall deeply in love, and it presents problems.The sandpiper in the title refers to Laura's rescuing of a wounded sandpiper and caring for it until it is able to fly free - freedom is a strong theme in the film, freeing oneself of the bonds of religion, marriage, rules, and what people think."The Sandpiper" is directed by Vincente Minnelli, but it's really not up to his usual standards, except for the glorious Big Sur scenery.
The film is responsible for the huge hit, "The Shadow of Your Smile." Seeing Taylor and Burton together is always fun, knowing how much in love they were, and they have good chemistry here.
Having grown up so poor, he liked the money he made from film and never minded if the script wasn't equal to his great abilities.This movie isn't fun like "The VIPs" or trashy like "Boom!" or excellent like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" It's just a Taylor-Burton vehicle.
Elizabeth Taylor plays a "free spirit"--she lives in a shack on the beach and is bringing up her young son without sending him to school.
I just remembering watching this movie in 1984,in that time gave 6/10 now in first time on DVD it refresh my mind on this fine picture,if was directed by the great Vincente Minnelli is worth to see itself,Taylor and Burton make a convincing performance in their roles,she as unmarried free woman with a son and he as Dr.Reverend who is school director,they get attracted each other ended up a dead end,he realize that your work is just a keeper of treasure's God when he raised funds to Church in fraudulent way making bad fiscal agreements to take the money,the conflicts existential driven him to start again in a new place alone...strong matters nowadays...Resume: First watch: 1984 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5.
Free-spirit Laura Reynolds (Elizabeth Taylor) lives in a beach house with her home-schooled son Danny.
Edward Hewitt (Richard Burton) and his wife teacher Claire (Eva Marie Saint).
The Hewitts' stale marriage and professional lives give rise to Edward's affair with Laura.This is definitely more compelling due to Taylor and Burton's real-life love affair.
Like Thomas, he pronounces the word as if there was an "a" right under the "o" that is more felt than heard.Taylor seems to be following him everywhere he leads, in opposition to the roles played, as Burton evokes a performance from her that is replayed in her future works..
I don't care what this movie is about - I just want to watch the Big Sur beaches, that bouquet in Elizabeth Taylor's beach house and Burton and Taylor exchanging silly lines that seem like out of the Women's Studies textbooks.
Eva Marie Saint plays Burton's elegant wife whom he dumps when the goddess of nature appears one day in his office wearing a violet blouse without a bra and we can just enjoy the two most vulgar and most talented actors of their generation being scandalous on beautiful locations for the rest of the film..
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.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton romance drama in a beautiful setting.
Perhaps best known for its Johnny Mandel-Paul Francis Webster Academy Award winning song "The Shadow of Your Smile" and beautiful picture postcard vistas of Big Sur, California, this average Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton romance drama was directed by Vincente Minnelli.
It was written by its producer Martin Ransohoff, adapted by Irene & Louis Kamp, and features a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo and Michael Wilson.Taylor plays Laura Reynolds, a free spirited atheist (liberated, single mother by choice) artist who hangs out with other hippies while trying to raise her undisciplined nine year old son Danny (Morgan Mason).
But through his actions (such as his most recent shooting of a wild deer), Danny has gotten himself in trouble with the authorities such that Judge Thompson (Torin Thatcher) has given his mother no option but to have him enrolled in a San Simeon religious school, run by the Reverend Dr. Edward Hewitt (Burton) and his wife Claire (Eva Marie Saint).
It's so easy to make fun of this Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton soap opera with a pretty setting and an Oscar Winning song that lasts only 45 seconds in the movie as the cast credits roll at the end.
All it takes, though, is an injured sandpiper to get the two stars together after Taylor gets over a judge's order remanding her illegitimate son to be enrolled in the exclusive boarding school Burton runs as an Episcopal priest.As the two get to know each other, they begin to appreciate the warmth hidden inside their individual personalities.
Their love affair threatens to destroy Burton's marriage to the sweet Eva Marie Saint, while Taylor's free-wheeling lifestyle is constantly getting in the way, threatened by fellow artist Charles Bronson and an old beau, Robert Webber, whom Taylor refers to as a slime.Thanks to the wonderful scenery (beautifully photographed to capture each sunset the technical crew could capture), the lush score and tight direction by Vincent Minnelli, "The Sandpiper" rises above mediocrity.
****SPOILERS**** Events get really hot and heavy on the beautiful beaches and countryside of Big Sur with the wild antics and escapades of the administrator of the local church and school for disruptive but gifted children Dr. Edward Hewitt, Richard Burton,and hippie beachcomber and free soul and love advocate Laura Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor.
Like magic Hewitt seemed to forget that's he supposed to be a man of God as well as being happily married, for 19 years, to a saint of a woman Claire, Eva Marie Saint, and co-administrator at the school whom he has two twin teenage boys with.Stopping off at Laura's beach front house Hewitt is smitten by not only her beauty but her knowledge of birds as she, together with Hewitt's help, mends the wing of an injured baby sandpiper who soon becomes Laura's house pet.
A straight-laced Episcopelian priest who is headmaster of a boy's school on the California coast (Burton) has a fling with a free-spirited artist (Taylor).
Laura (Elizabeth Taylor) is a free-spirited painter with a troubled son who gets sent to a religious school run by a strict cleric (Richard Burton).
One of director Vincente Minnelli's more interesting films, "The Sandpiper" stars Elizabeth Taylor as Laura Reynolds, a free-spirited mother who lives with her youngest son Danny.
Damn those beatniks.Mirrored to Laura is Dr Edward Hewitt (Richard Burton), the headmaster of an Episcopal boarding school.
Elizabeth Taylor is a free spirit trying to teach her son there's more to life than school, rules, and living like the rest do.
The story centers around her tumultuous affair with a married minister (Richard Burton) who manages a religious school where she's been forced to deposit her one and only son.The film has a lot of interesting ideas that don't really translate or correspond with the human drama.