robert-259-28954 For me to rate any film "perfect," it must contain every element of a perfect movie— the perfect story, the perfect script, the perfect cast, the perfect director, and the perfect cinematographer. This one had all of the above, in droves. Let's start with the casting— phenomenal—from leading roles, to character parts, to cameos, totally incredible, utilizing the greatest talent alive at the time. But perhaps the single most inspired bit of casting was using Liberace as the appropriately funereal casket salesman, hilarious. Robert Morse was so convincing as an Englishman, imagine my surprise when I learned he was 100% American. Rod Steiger showed a rare turn at his genius as a comedy actor after having starred in so many seminal films like "On The Waterfront," and the newcomer, Anjanette Comer... I've had a crush on her for now 50-years! Add a superb John Gielgud and Jonathan Winters in their respective roles to round out the dream cast. I once believed "Some Like It Hot" to be the best American comedy film, but after watching this piece of cinema magic, there was no other. As not to reveal the plot, all I can say is that in the long history of comedy films, particularly in the satirical vein, there is nothing to compare or compete with "The Loved One." It never gets old and never feels dated, although I've heard some cinemaphiles suggest that it should be re-made. But how can you improve upon perfection? To find any writer the equal of Terry Southern, or any cast as good as the one mentioned would be, in a word, impossible. I'm just glad that we have this amazing film to enjoy and laugh with forever.

U.N. Owen A line - spoken by a 'council' of Whispering Glades, Mr. Starker - played by Liberace.IF you like (VERY) dark humour, and you've not yet seen this, I recommend it, wholeheartedly.I first saw the loved one only about four or five years ago.But since then, this movie and it's whole... style has stayed imprinted in my brain.The cast of The Loved One is so chock-a-block full of cameos, I couldn't even list them all here.You know a film has to be a little... skewed, shall we say, when one of the first of these cameos is played by the laconic James Coburn - who, within the year, would become Derek Flint, except here, he is a hayseed customs agent at - of all places - Los Angeles international Airport.The plot of the film in a nutshell is Dennis Barlow - played by Robert Morse - comes to Los Angeles (after winning a contest) to visit his uncle, an older man (played by sir John Gielgud) - Sir Francis Hinsley, who works at a film studio and sees the 'writing on the wall' - that is, the Hollywood studio system is almost all but dead, and the kind of pictures he's used to working on are almost gone as well.Seeing that his days - and usefulness - at the studio are numbered, Sir Francis decides his only option out is a permanent one - both from the studio, and from life.Most of the plot of The Loved One, is about what happens after Sir Francis leaves us.Starting almost immediately afterwords, as young Dennis Barlow has to deal with burial preparations.Where else would one do that in the artificial world which IS Los Angeles's film making industry , but, at Whispering Glades (a not-too- subtle poke at Forest Lawn Cemetery).An aside: it was in 1963 - only two years prior to this film - of the publication of Jessica Mitford's book, The American Way of Death which is an exposé of abuses of America's funeral home industry, and examined how death had become a business (and a none-too-pleasant-one at that) - which was too sentimentalized, highly commercialized, and, along with this, the grossly exorbitant costs involved.Nothing is sacred in The Loved One - and as I mentioned, the funeral business is held up highly for ridicule.Anjanette Comer is the love interest of both (young - and breathing) Mr. Barlow, and Mr. Joyboy (played brilliantly by Rod Steiger( the names are almost as delicious as those in a James Bond story) - the head stylist of Whispering Glades.The over-the-top care with which Mr. Joyboy and the entire staff of Whispering Glades devote to the deceased, is mind boggling(ly hysterical).I won't give away too much, but I must point out a scene involving Mr. Joyboy's mother eating - particularly when Mr. Joyboy brings Aimee home - supposedly on a 'date,' but, all he does is cater to his mother's every (food) whim.She's a bed-ridden whale - (then) a caricature of American's gluttony, which is so funny, but so nauseating.I wish anyone who over eats, be made to watch this.It is frightening to see how - what was once (ONLY in the 60's, for goodness sake) a 'fringe' population of morbidly obese people, has (pun DEFINITELY intended) blown up into a national health problem.All-in-all, The Loved One is a film for those, connoisseur's like me - of very dark films - which is definitely not easily forgotten.One last thing: I never knew Ms. Mansfield (and Ruth Gordon!?!? BOTH? CUT!?!?) were in The Loved One 'til I read it in the 'trivia' here (thank you!).

beatcamel I really wanted to like this film. The creative team behind it is astonishing and its cast is remarkable.However the film is obviously written by two people who know how to write novels, not films.The story just meanders and wanders and rambles and it takes quite some time to figure out exactly what is going on and what action we're supposed to be following.It's worth watching as a cultural snapshot, it's got that zany 60s laugh- in type humor happening in spades (the scene with the girls in the coffins comes to mind) but as a film itself it is a mess.

carvalheiro "The loved one" (1965) directed by Tony Richardson from Free Cinema as current of the British Cinema at the time was not very well received, because of the strangest subject and sordid welfare in it. Under such a comic and quite enough cosmic slapstick, like an anticipation of the more than probable twisted XXI Century in an almost fascist diversion of its religiosity, by such a character as a declared candidate to be like a mouse in experiment for steam cells, in a spirit of continued human split. The disjointed look of this young traveler - who chooses Los Angeles on the place of Calcutta - saw the crossed gigantic net of motorways, watched by him from the window of the TWA plane, just before landing and being submitted as passenger to such an unrealistic control on the airport by old questions and an open book not well actualized of expulsions by bad character. Suited by another encounter with his uncle on a cafeteria of a studio in Hollywood and by a reception in a club, where on the wall the official portrait of Johnson is quickly substituted by another of the Queen Elisabeth II, that stays leaned in a nonconformist touch of displaced meaning of less subtlety. But it conveys for anybody that the purpose had some effects of visual art as its private scandal and joke with the commerce of mortuary's mortgage. For instance when we saw the visit at Xanadu Park near Los Angeles, where the allegedly young poet declares loving his Emily, the woman who works for the private enterprise where it was buried his eccentric uncle after he was found hanged, as the character of a painter performed by John Gielgud. His direct heir is his nephew that finally is not well served by the circumstances, when taking acquaintance with the girl from the business of the deaths in America, as joke to the dreaming way to the sky adventure also. After a while he is employee in a dog cemetery nearby the Los Angeles airport, it seems by the narrative of that eccentric story adapted to the level of life in an open society of magnificence and privileged of the Earth. The rocket that is prepared to go straight ahead to the stratosphere with the dog's remains, after the scene of the couple's crisis inside a beautiful house with futuristic architecture, it is a case of ridiculousness of such kind of desires from a well furnished family but without children, living in abundance and happiness just before the dog pass away. The British humor from the director is of course just before the Vietnam war beginning in the same year and there is too here and there on the story some moments where the viewer can see for instance officers experimenting a coffin, even sleeping a while inside one as if it was a boom of generosity of the time for professionalism. In itself the movie is interesting in some gimmicks as the scene of the suspended house over the mountain with the girl and the boy in unstable equilibrium, at the time of the first journey of The Beatles in America and because of that it is a tread of time. Why not understanding all kind of frivolities here with a human sense even though the dubious taste is of course a legacy from the novel of Evelyn Waugh ?