Liz Taylor is in… The Driver’s Seat (1974), BFI Blu-ray Out Now!

One should always be kind as long as one can. It might be your last chance…

 

This is indeed a strange film and one that allows Elizabeth Taylor to take us places we never thought we’d go as her mastery of masked torment pulls us in to the mystery of a character it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing. She unsettles throughout as a character never truly revealed and keeps us guessing with every outburst that may or may not be revelatory… her anger at being offered an “easy-care” dress, her outlandishly colourful style – she’s mocked to her face by her landlady but ignores her – her sexuality and relationship to the men: “I can’t stand being touched!”. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not her… she doesn’t appear to fear anyone or anything and we have to work out why.

The commentary from film curator Millie De Chirico is fascinating and as she says, this is a film that repays repeated viewing so props to the BFI for releasing it now on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK – it never even had a theatrical run. As De Chirico says Taylor was making really bold choices at this stage of her career – not just in a trashy “psycho-biddie” direction – but, because as a child star and product of the Hollywood system, loosing that pressure at this stage of her life – financially independent and just 42 - makes films like this feel like her reclaiming her freedom and image.

 

Liz poses with The Walter Syndrome

She and Richard Burton, were both to be in Italy, he filming The Voyage with Sophia Loren, but they split up, after ten years’ marriage, just before filming and this may, or may not have impacted her playing; she was so much the actor that it’s impossible to tell. They remarried in 1975 but we clearly have to view Taylor’s decisions on their own merits – she made her first film at 12 and her first marriage at 18, she was all about choices.

 

Based on a novella by Muriel Spark, who considered it one of her best works, the film was directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi who adopted Spark’s non-linear narrative, the story flashing forward and back as the impact of Taylor’s character Lise on others is shown in startling fashion. It’s a very effective device, earnest reality trying to identify her person and the reasons for why she will choose to do what she does… not that we know until the very end. It’s a mystery but one told in jumbled fashion, all the better to shock us.

 

Lise starts off selecting just the right dress for a trip she is taking to the South of Italy, her interactions with others are out of joint and she looks round the airport with suspicion at the men especially just as the screen freezes and CCT images are shown with a policeman’s voice instructing others to check through newly issued visas and passports, the beginning of the non-linear narrative.

Flash forward, the police at work

“Usually, the cover is more promising than the inside…”

 

At the airport an elder woman asks her advice on the best sadomasochistic book to choose, she takes this in her stride, bemoaning the lack of content to match the covers but telling her to take potluck. She chooses The Walter Syndrome by Richard Neely, a then popular slice of pulp fiction, about a psychotic killer of women and brandishes it throughout the film.

 

On the plane stranger interactions occur, a young man sat next to her, Pierre (Maxence Mailfort), who changes seats in a panic, whilst on her other side there’s the laughing presence of a off-the-charts Bill (Ian Bannen) who introduces himself with a demonic laugh talking about his macrobiotic laugh… he’s quite direct about his need for daily intercourse but Lise is not interested in his appetite or diet. Then we switch to the police, a lead detective played by Luigi Squarzina, interrogating the young man about his change of seats and relationship to Lise… What has she done, what will she do?

Landing in Rome – she selects the Villa Borghese Gardens as a meeting place later on - there’s a terrorist incident as the police shoot and chase a suspect, to add strangeness onto strangeness, a pale English aristocrat (played by Andy Warhol… oh yes…) returns Lise’s pulp fiction to her. Andy was in town filming Flesh for Frankenstein and makes the perfect otherworldly cameo.

A greeting from the extraordinary Ian.

 

Lise travels with the over-excitable Bill who fails to seduce her with his self-improvement small talk and drops her off at her hotel, leaving her and us cold. Next, we shift forward and he’s trying his dubious charms on the investigating police after what is going to happen happens… if Lise is having a mental trauma, what are we to make of Bill?

 

There’s a man staying there that I want to avoid and at the same time, I can’t find the one that I have to meet…

 

Lise arrives at her hotel room and there’s one of a number of exchanges with other women in service as she angrily requests a clean glass after finding dirt in the one in her bathroom. She’s exacting and used to giving orders; short and to the point rude every time with those she considers subordinate. She them takes a long time to apply her make -up… she’s feeling her age and relates to older women far more than those with youth from dancing shop assistants to less than un-rigorous room cleaners.

 

There’s now a sequence with Mrs Helen Fiedke (Mona Washbourne) as the two go shopping to the Standa department store as the elder woman talks at some length about her life, her late husband and her nephew who is due to arrive soon… someone Lise increasingly feels may be her type just like the man on the plane, and definitely not Bill. She talks at length about the kind of man she is looking for, something that could be “round the corner, at any time…” it sounds romantic, like destiny…

Liz and Mona Washbourne in the back seat

 

Next there is a violent terrorist attack in the streets and then the narrative shifts to the police interviewing the manly Carlo (Guido Mannari), someone we assume would be many women’s type but who we later see, sexually assaulted Lise. Typical of the abusive males that will have blighted Lise’s life and, most certainly, not the type she is looking for.

 

Lise’s mission cannot be revealed but, whatever her mental state, she wants to control her own destiny. According to De Chirico, it’s “…an audacious repudiation of the misogyny in popular culture, from cinematic serial-killer-thrillers to pulp crime fiction where women serve as passive victims…”  It’s a disturbing experience but she has been driven to extremes by casual abuse.

 

You’re all so suspicious, suspicious, suspicious!

 

The faded fantasies of our lost department stores.

It’s also worth mentioning the sparse piano score from Franco Mannino which perfectly fills the gaps between our understanding and sympathy for Lise. It is a film that piques your curiosity and leads the viewer to the darkest of conclusions. Taylor is on remarkable form and it’s great to see her away from Hollywood making a film so far away from the formulas of even lower-budget studio fare. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi directs with control and the cinematography from three-time Oscar® winner Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), is superb. A treat in 4k!

 

The extras are, of the high-quality we have come to expect from the BFI.

 

• Restored in 4K by Cineteca di Bologna and Severin Films and presented in High Definition
• Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women (2022, 6 mins)
• Audio Commentary with curator and programmer Millie De Chirico (2022)
• A Lack of Absence (2022, 22 mins): writer and literary historian Chandra Mayor on Muriel Spark and The Driver's Seat
• The Driver’s Seat credit sequences (1974, 4 mins)
• Waiting For… (1970, 11 mins): a young woman embarks on a filmmaking project when some mysterious men give her a camera and tell her to capture her everyday reality
• The Telephone (1981, 4 mins): a young woman enacts an imaginative revenge on her boyfriend for being unfaithful in this short film by Chris Petit (Radio On)
• Darling, Do You Love Me? (1968, 4 mins) in a hugely entertaining parody of her media persona, Germaine Greer stars as a terrifyingly amorous woman who pursues a man relentlessly.
• National Theatre of Scotland trailer (2015, 2 mins): The trailer for the National Theatre of Scotland's 2015 stage production of The Driver's Seat

 

As is tradition, with the first pressing only - there’s also a handsome illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by the BFI’s Simon McCallum and Canadian artist, writer and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. Also includes Kier-La Janisse’s writing on The Driver’s Seat, previously published in her acclaimed book, House of Psychotic Women.

 

You can order the blur-ray direct from BFI and it’s out today!

Andy, Lupa, Romulus, Remus and Elizabeth