Lilith (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray] [2019]

An excellent and sadly under watched film which deals with schizophrenia and the isolation it can bring - even to someone as beautiful as the character played by the lovely Jean Seberg. Here is my tribute to Jean: [...]

Finally a wonderful bluray copy of this great film. Jean Seberg gives the best performance of her life and the cinematography is spectacular. A rare restored gem!

The interview with Beatty was worth the price of the disc alone. Very well done!

An essay on the impossibility of being happy.

While "The Hustler" is director Robert Rossen's most famous film, and, indeed, it is a very good film, I think that "Lilith" is by a long way the more interesting (I can't say that it is any better or worse than The Hustler because the two are so different). True, it is harder to sympathise with any of the main characters than is the case with The Hustler, unless, of course you have personal experience with mental health care, but for me it was one of those movies that at the end of it you just can't let it go. It is profoundly tragic and a must see for fans of 1960's cinema. Definitely one of my all-time-favorite movies.

I received this dvd in very good condition. It is a very interesting film which focuses on the relationship between a man who works at an institution as an occupation therapist and a beautiful patient who is disturbed and who has child like qualities about her.She is a schizophrenic but he falls in love with her. The relationship is not allowed as she is a patient, and their relationship gradually falls apart.Well worth watching. Warren Beatty is excellent.

The book, by J. R. Salamanca, is one of my all time favourites; Salamanca specialised in looking deeply and daringly into human issues that others are afraid to touch, and I believe there is more to his stories than can be understood at first reading. Lilith, is probably based on his real life experience, as he is known to have worked in a mental asylum in his youth (the very same location was used for the film) and some other facts fit his real life story.At first sight, as some reviewers here have related, this is the story of a young man who goes to work in a private mental asylum in a small American town where he becomes involved with a young woman who seduces him, leading him into an impossible position where she is able to blackmail him. Tragic events ensue as a result of his actions, with another inmate killing himself; and the young man is forced to leave.I think there is much deeper meaning to this story though, with Salamanca, as always, planting questions in our heads about the nature of mental illness, human interactions, and about society and its rules. Experts in the field of Psychology have long been divided over the very existence of so-called mental illness, with R D Laing being notable for his writings ('Sanity Madness and the Family', 'The Divided Self,' etc) in which he sought to explain 'madness', not as some mental 'disease', but as a condition induced by society and family relations. In Schizophrenia, in particular, the sufferer is forced to see the world in a different way because those around him set up conflicting realities - Laing built on the writings of Gregory Bateson who developed the idea of the 'double bind' in which a person perceives one reality, but is scapegoated by family and friends who conspire to create a false truth that is more acceptable to them. Implied facts can also conflict with observed facts. This idea is far from dead, and a key exponent of the idea that Schizophrenia and madness should be seen in relation to society is Professor Richard Bentall, who, in addition to his books ('Madness Explained' and 'Doctoring the Mind'), recently wrote an article in the Guardian entitled 'when will we stop calling ordinary distress mental illness'.(POSSIBLE SPOILERS) I see Lilith as a victim of events, and her odd behaviour as a fascinating construct to cope with those events. She lives in her own highly intelligent and creative world; creating her own music (which she plays on a home made flute), mythical stories, and even her own language, as well as weaving on her home made loom. This fits with the idea of her having to invent a different world because the real one has been made too contradictory to her. Here I found the film lacking, because it failed to put across the wonder of her invented world at all. Her invented language, completely missed out in the film, has an unusual structure, allowing different forms of expression; a vital clue to what is really going on.My Lilith, from my reading of the book, is more innocent and fascinating and less sophisticated than the film's portrayal. She inspires more sympathy. The key to her world seems to me to lie in easily missed references to events with her brother, who seems to have fallen in love with her, wanted sexual involvement which she refused (she tells of giving him his last wish after his death), and ultimately killed himself out of distress. Her newly constructed world is one based around universal love (and sex), and so what seem to us to be controlling and evil acts can in fact be seen as her way of avoiding ever again causing death by denial of sexual favours. But she fails to take account of sexual jealousy, a universal evolutionary trait, and so in her innocence causes more death and distress.I may be wrong in my above interpretation, but a fascination with young women leading men astray occurs in his other books. Did her brother kill himself because she seduced him, as she seduces others later. This might be the obvious explanation, leading us to see her as evil, but I'm not convinced by it. Does it matter anyway, since the attraction was probably two-way, and the event can still explain her way of coping afterwards. Another key theme is his mocking of American society and the idea of the conventional happy family. This comes across in the scenes involving his former girlfriend, from a very conventional and up-tight family, who can be seen as no more existing in reality than Lilith. I therefore think that Salamanca has much more sympathy and understanding for Lilith than the film would have us believe.A brilliant book, but not properly portrayed in this film as I see it. This is not my Lilith. The rather random jazzy music didn't seem to fit to me either. The Jousting scene was very good - I had no idea what Jousting events in the US were like until I watched this. A good watch nevertheless, hence four stars, but I'd love to see a modern, deeper and more accurate, version of it made, which could be far better.It is a great pity that Salamanca is not better known, and this is partly because of a dispute he had with the library system in an attempt to get them to pay royalties every time a book was borrowed. I recommend all his other books, especially 'Embarkation' which I found gripping.

Excellent!