"Lilith" is a strange film, not a bad film, but definitely strange. Vincent Bruce, played by a handsome youthful Warren Beatty, seemingly drifts into a job at an expensive rest home for the mentally disturbed, who are wealthy enough to reside there. Although credentials are not discussed, the young man is hired to attend patients. The supposedly elite home is as equally lax about patient care as it is about professional qualifications, and Beatty is soon involved in a relationship with an attractive young patient, Lilith Arthur, played by Jean Seberg. Beatty and Seberg go bike riding in the country, climb rocky waterfalls, and roll around in the grass, not to mention spending time alone together in Seberg's room, all unsupervised by those supposedly in charge.The film squanders a number of talented performers in undemanding roles: Kim Hunter, Peter Fonda, Gene Hackman, and Jessica Walter. The talented and Oscar winning Hunter seems to sleepwalk through her part as the home's head of staff, and Fonda tries with a thankless portrayal of unrequited love. While Beatty is passable, but undistinguished, as the troubled young Vincent, the film's key role, Lilith, is beyond the grasp of Jean Seberg. The film may have come alive in the hands of a Joanne Woodward or a Kim Stanley, but Seberg fails to suggest the inner demons Lilith is supposed to possess. Her admittedly beautiful face glows, but suggests nothing more than superficial emotions. Among the other cast members, only Gene Hackman reveals the nascent talent that would carry him on to more demanding parts and two Oscars in far better movies.Robert Rossen, director of "All the King's Men" and "The Hustler," takes a self-consciously arty approach in both his direction and his script, adapted from a novel by J. R. Salamanca. Rossen's dreamlike sequences and obsession with water are visually appealing, but often confuse, and he fails to ignite any chemistry between the icy Seberg and the moody Beatty. However, lensed by Eugen Schufftan, who won an Oscar for his cinematography on "The Hustler," "Lilith"'s bleak black-and-white images capture the sterile rest home interior and the variable cloudiness and rain of the surrounding landscape. However, neither Hackman nor Schufftan can save "Lilith." Lacking an actress with the depth to portray Lilith's complexity, the plodding film comes off as merely...strange.

Coming on the heels of Splendor in the Grass and All Fall Down, one can surmise the reasons behind Warren Beatty's decision to play the male lead in Lilith. In those two earlier films, he had played brooding and laconic young men, a group to which Vincent Bruce belongs. Beatty had also previously played a callous gigolo (to great effect) opposite Vivien Leigh in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Lilith would provide him with the opportunity to reprise his earlier portrayals, with the added shades of a seemingly compassionate, diligent young man.Had Lilith required Beatty to exude only these facets of Vincent Bruce, his performance would have been more than adequate; but the character has additional complexities which Beatty never registers well. For that reason, I believe he is miscast in this film. On the other hand, Jean Seberg truly shines as Lilith Arthur, the disturbed young woman. Her expressions in the close-ups disclose her unhinged state of mind. Seberg's performance could profitably be used in acting classes everywhere. Anne Meacham, Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter, and Jessica Walter are also very good, but Gene Hackman deserves a special mention for a brief but indelible appearance.Beyond the performances, the film is a languorous, plodding vehicle, sometimes too painful to watch, as is the scene between Peter Fonda and Warren Beatty in the garden, toward the end. Beatty's disengaging comportment invalidates any sympathy the spectator might feel for him in the end, unlike, say, Shutter Island, for which this film might have served as inspiration.

Five years earlier, and this elliptical oddity would not have been made. The period spanning the early 1960's is an era of transition for American movie audiences, as the old studio system with its emphasis on the literal and the linear begins to break down and the more complex European New Wave finds its way into America's urban centers. It's not surprising, I suppose, that Robert Rossen, a Hollywood veteran with an international perspective, would experiment with this more indirect style in a production like Lillith. Now, I think the film deals provocatively with the distinction between madness and insanity, so I want to pursue that thread for a bit. Lilith is mad, but not insane. She simply has a different way of wanting to leave her "mark" (referred to in the movie) on the world. In effect, it's a desire to use her body (also mentioned) to merge with aspects of that world. Thus, she pursues diverse forms of interplay available in her confined setting—flute playing, tapestry weaving, Vincent, Yvonne, adolescent boys, painting, nature, etc. Indeed, as the list shows, she is sexually undisciplined in the conventional sense, as shown in the intimate scene with the first boy, which is truly unsettling. However, she's amoral rather than immoral since the whole notion of sexual morality (fidelity to one person or gender, along with age considerations) makes no sense given her basic compulsion. Thus, she's a wild card in a well-ordered social world and must be kept apart for, at least, pragmatic reasons.Now, it could be argued that my account so far fails to separate madness from insanity and that Lilith's insanity is simply an extreme form of nymphomania. But consider the mention made of experiencing the world through a "fine instrument". Now, it's well known, for example, that dogs hear sounds that humans cannot because of a more refined sense of hearing, similarly with smells. Then too, at a more theoretical level, the lowly snail must experience the world differently than we do, and who knows what features of reality reveal themselves to even the snail's-eye view. Thus, it may well be that Lilith is in possession of a more fully developed sensing organ than the rest of us. More importantly for the movie's sake, that organ is not just attuned to the world, but to a particular aspect of it—namely, to beauty and the beautiful. Take a look at the list again. One thing the items have in common is beauty, whether human or non-human or the pursuit of the beautiful in one of its artistic forms. So, when Lilith stares through the diffusing prism, in that aesthetic sense, she's contacting beauty in the form of rainbow colors that she not only sees but feels (mentioned in the film) in what may even be a near-religious sense. Thus, Lilth's disorder is not based on a departure from reality as ordinarily understood (insanity), but on its ironical opposite—a heightened experiencing of what the rest of us only experience in weakened form. She emerges, then, as an exceptional individual whose amoral behavior results not from a deficiency, but from a world defined by the impersonally beautiful—a world in which jealousy, for example, has no place (mentioned in the movie). Hence, when she bends down to kiss her reflected image in the lake, it's not what it appears, a narcissistic act of self-love, but a kind of communion revealed to her by a lovely image that just happens to be herself. Now, contrast her "disorder' with Vincent's growing obsession with his mother and those who resemble her, namely, Lilith and the blonde girl at the bar. I'm in no position to psychoanalyze him, but his problem looks more like incipient insanity than madness. He's clearly got a fixation on Mom. In that sense, his desire to work at the asylum can then be viewed as an effort at tracking a mysterious Mother afflicted by her own dark mental problems. Thus, possessing Lilith becomes a way of possessing a mother who is at once strange and unknown to him (he puts her picture beside Mom's on his bedside table). As his obsession with Lilith-Mother grows, he comes to reject an overture from a former sexual attraction, the dark-haired Laura (Walter). He even steals the hand-carved box from Lilith, thus sabotaging her emerging relationship with Stephen (Fonda). (Note that the plain- looking Stephen has found a way to Lilith's heart by giving her an object of beauty.) Now, Lilith may be amoral, but she's not unethical—she disapproves of lying (mentioned), for example. Thus, when Vincent's lies and jealousy lead to Stephen's death, her aesthetically ordered world is shattered, and she collapses into total dysfunction (a memorable image). At the same time, Vincent loses his moorings— Lilith and Mom have slipped forever beyond his grasp. And in what may be a sop to convention and the upbeat (it's still 1964), he reverses course off asylum grounds to ask for help. In his case, there may well be a cure; for Lilith, however, there is none since she is by nature attuned to a heightened world. She is, after all, mad and not insane.As I see it, the tragic figure here is Lilith, ultimately destroyed by an exceptional sensibility and an attraction to Vincent's physical beauty. Had Vincent's quest for his mother not led him into her world, she could have remained at peace with her artistic pursuits. Thus, it's not her world that destroyed his; it's his more 'normal" world that destroyed her. As Vincent, Beatty is all conversational pauses and silences that are perhaps meaningful, but given his generally diffident manner, it's hard to tell. That's perhaps as it should be. On the other hand, Seberg's Lilith is a beguiling figure with a mysterious smile and an inner life that appears elusive and just beyond our grasp. And that's definitely as it should be.

Handsome Warren Beatty (as Vincent Bruce) returns to his smallish Maryland town, fresh from military service. At home, he watches war movies and drinks beer. His grandmother encourages Mr. Beatty to accept a job at the local mental institution (or "insane asylum"), to give his life purpose and make his mother proud. Beatty faces his first workplace crisis by saving likable, but nutty Peter Fonda (as Stephen Evshevsky) from killing himself over beautiful, but schizophrenic Jean Seberg (as Lilith Arthur).Soon, Beatty reports, to superiors, of an inappropriate attraction between himself and Ms. Seberg. He feels Seberg is attempting to seduce him; and, he has considered accepting. In a world quite unlike this one, Beatty would be immediately removed from the case - but, herein, he is urged to continue as seductive Seberg's one-on-one companion. You wouldn't suspect Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg of anything untoward while hiking, biking, or horseback riding all alone, would you? When schizophrenia is described, it's obvious Seberg is the "mad spider" who will catch Beatty in her web. And, so, the therapist and patient fall in love. But, Beatty gets mad when he catches Seberg romping in the hay with her Lesbian lover Anne Meacham (as Yvonne Meaghan). Beatty calls Seberg a "dirty bitch" and makes passionate love to her, while girlfriend Meaghan presumably listens at the barn door. As you can imagine, this scene ends too soon… It all sounds silly… well, it IS SILLY, but "Lilith" is shot beautifully, by acclaimed director Robert Rossen (his last film) with accomplished cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan. Beatty and Seberg do well in the often obvious, sometimes complex leading roles. You can enjoy Jessica Walter and Gene Hackman, in early roles, as Beatty's ex-girlfriend and her colon-troubled husband. And, Mr. Fonda's truly fine characterization might have attracted a "Best Supporting Actor" nomination, if "Lilith" had been more critically acclaimed. The film really should have been a more subtle allegory.****** Lilith (9/20/64) Robert Rossen ~ Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda