BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

marilyn5825 O my goodness ! ! the scenery is AWESOME, BEAUTIFUL, i think i was holding my breath at times... also the passion between Elizabeth and Richard !!! was that acting or (wow) ! some of the lines Elizabeth said really can make one think about true love.,i wonder if they were married at the time when this was filmed., every time Richard looked at her , he looked like he was going to pass out with love., and the director (WOW) directors like Vincent is the reason IM IN LOVE with movies . BUT NOW here is the question ??? does anybody know whose house they used on that cliff in Big Surf to film that ???? did the house belong to MGM or was it a private owner ?

JLRMovieReviews 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. There's beauty, nature, and the world at his feet. Enter Richard Burton, who's an Epsicopalian priest at a school. He is talked into letting Elizabeth's son enter the school, because her unorthodox ways are not conducive to the boy growing up and being a part of society. So says some nosy somebody, who has influence. She is against the idea, but ultimately her son goes to the school after some minor scuffle. When Richard becomes fixated on this beautiful creature with her novel ideas about life and people, he finds excuses to see her, despite the fact he is married to Eva Marie Saint. One thing obviously leads to another. I have always found this to be a very beautifully realized film. I guess I'm susceptible to the ocean, art, and the earthy qualities that this kind of film captures, but I think I could go so far to say that this is one of my favorite films of Ms. Taylor's. It may not be that much in the way of film-making or that important at all, but this is very much a feeling type of film, that lets you, the viewer, get lost in her world completely, living just off Big Sur in California. Everything is so beautiful. Have I used that word enough? If you don't like this review or this film, then leave me be with Ms. Taylor as we let a sandpiper fly when he wants to....

blanche-2 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). From the first, Edward is struck by Laura's beauty and finds himself at her house more often than necessary. Laura has a man, Cos (Bronson), around her who is doing a nude sculpture of her, and Edward finds out about that, and that someone he knows (Webber) has a past with Laura. 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. Of course he usually worked with better scripts than this one. 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. Taylor, her hair down, is beautiful and tanned -- she was 33 at the time of filming -- though she's not totally convincing as a hippie type. For one thing, her clothes are too beautiful. She is, however, convincing as a woman in love. Burton, with that incredible voice, is good in his role, but for the most part, Burton was wasted in the movies. 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. For some of us, that's enough.

James Hitchcock "The Sandpiper" was the second in a number of films ("The VIPs" was the first) made together by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Their romance, which had begun on the set of "Cleopatra", had both enthralled and scandalised the public, and the studios wanted to make the most of their notoriety. The public perception of Dick and Liz as a glamorous but scandalous couple can only have been increased by the subject-matter of "The Sandpiper". At one time a film about a clergyman engaged in an adulterous affair would have been an unthinkable violation of the Production Code. 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. (The film's title derives from an injured sandpiper which she rescues and nurses back to health thereafter and becomes a symbol of freedom). Danny's behaviour, however, has got him into trouble with the law, and a judge orders her to send the boy to a local boarding school. Laura is reluctant to do this; she is a free spirit who distrusts any form of institutionalised education. To make matters worse from her point of view, the school is run by the Episcopalian Church, and she is an atheist whose attitude to religion is one of positive hostility rather than mere indifference. Nevertheless, she realises that she must comply with the judge's order or risk losing custody of her boy.Burton plays Dr. Edward Hewitt, an Episcopalian priest and headmaster of the school. Although his values are very different from Laura's, Edward is something of an idealist and is becoming disillusioned with his life at the school, feeling that he is neither a priest nor an educator but merely a fund-raiser. (The school is currently engaged in a major fund-raising drive to build a new chapel, something Edward feels is unnecessary). Edward takes a great interest in Danny's progress and finds himself increasingly drawn towards Laura, possibly because she is so different both from him and from his wife Claire. Claire is attractive and supportive of her husband but rather staid and conventional compared to the bohemian Laura. Eventually Edward and Laura begin an affair, even though he is a married man. (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. I felt that this was a weakness, given that one of the themes of the film is two different philosophies of education. Laura's view is that all formal educational establishments, particularly conservative boarding schools like Dr Hewitt's, are undesirable because they exist in order to turn children into conventional conformists. 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. The opening scenes in which Danny shoots a deer strike a particularly jarring note. 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. Burton is certainly not as good as he was as the world-weary spy in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", also made in 1965. The relationship between Edward and Laura is not based simply upon sexual attraction, but upon a growing realisation that despite their differences they are kindred spirits. The unbeliever Laura, paradoxically, has more in common with Edward's Christian idealism than does the conventionally pious Claire. The trouble is that one never really senses in Burton's performance the idealistic religious believer hiding behind the mask of the formal and pedantic schoolmaster. 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". As a psychological and emotional drama it has its points of interest, but overall it is a rather dated sixties period-piece, most interesting as a record of that decade's official Golden Couple. 6/10