In British Palestine of 1938, several men vie for the affections of a Coptic banker's wife who's involved with the anti-British underground movement.In British Palestine of 1938, several men vie for the affections of a Coptic banker's wife who's involved with the anti-British underground movement.In British Palestine of 1938, several men vie for the affections of a Coptic banker's wife who's involved with the anti-British underground movement.
- Awards
- 2 nominations
- Directors
- George Cukor
- Joseph Strick(uncredited)
- Writers
- Lawrence Durrell
- Lawrence B. Marcus
- Andrew Sarris(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAnouk Aimée (Justine) couldn't bear being without her lover and future husband Albert Finney during location shooting and wanted to leave. Director George Cukor persuaded her friend Omar Sharif to convince her of the dire consequences for her career if she did. Although Sharif failed, Finney was able to convince her to finish this movie.
- GoofsA little more than an hour into the film, Dirk Bogarde's character is kissed on the neck by a heavily made-up prostitute in his room. He turns to the camera and his neck is clean. Shortly afterward, Bogarde looks in a mirror and he has a prominent red lipstick kiss on his cheek, though he was never kissed there.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Sex at 24 Frames Per Second (2003)
Featured review
Forty-karat kitsch baroque
George Cukor's adaptation of Lawrence Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET forms the shape of a dial made of character traits from medieval mystery plays--Fanatic Patriotism, Sexual Cunning, Heartless Bargaining, Furtive Retreat. If Durrell sought to catalogue every human impulse, Cukor had another, lower agenda that serves the material beautifully: shifting these allegorical characters into ripe, lustrous kitsch icons who seem to have time-travelled from a Sternberg movie circa 1931.
The whole picture seems to have undergone a time-machine move from THE SHANGHAI GESTURE to swinging '69. It's Cukor's most vibrant movie visually, and each gorgeously staged and color-patterned shot finds a new way to layer an Islamic tapestry atop psychedelic poster art.
Cukor, brought in as a replacement, brings a vigor to the material you don't associate with him, and at 70, he still knew how to shape the beats of a scene like a Broadway pro. It is reported that he and the star, Anouk Aimee, loathed one another, and in honesty it's easy to see Cukor's frustration: she gives a dismally coy, incommunicative performance as the black widow whose web forms the story. She seems aberrantly at odds with the coolly dignified, taciturn style of the other performances: Dirk Bogarde, as the Graham Greene-ish diplomat with a lurid secret may never have been more creepily sympathetic than he is here. And John Vernon, an actor best known for playing pompous authoritarians in B movies, has such noble composure as Justine's long-suffering husband that he seems to turn into a folk-art engraving of a noble and besieged human soul.
The whole picture seems to have undergone a time-machine move from THE SHANGHAI GESTURE to swinging '69. It's Cukor's most vibrant movie visually, and each gorgeously staged and color-patterned shot finds a new way to layer an Islamic tapestry atop psychedelic poster art.
Cukor, brought in as a replacement, brings a vigor to the material you don't associate with him, and at 70, he still knew how to shape the beats of a scene like a Broadway pro. It is reported that he and the star, Anouk Aimee, loathed one another, and in honesty it's easy to see Cukor's frustration: she gives a dismally coy, incommunicative performance as the black widow whose web forms the story. She seems aberrantly at odds with the coolly dignified, taciturn style of the other performances: Dirk Bogarde, as the Graham Greene-ish diplomat with a lurid secret may never have been more creepily sympathetic than he is here. And John Vernon, an actor best known for playing pompous authoritarians in B movies, has such noble composure as Justine's long-suffering husband that he seems to turn into a folk-art engraving of a noble and besieged human soul.
helpful•397
- matt-201
- Jun 17, 1999
- How long is Justine?Powered by Alexa
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $7,870,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 56 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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