Ballad of Big Sur

The Sandpiper is a multimillion-dollar drama adapted from a penny-dreadful idea by Producer Martin Ransohoff. Filmed in the declivitous Big Sur country on the California coast, the movie offers mountains, sky, surf, birds and Elizabeth Taylor as an irresistible bohemian painter who lures an upright schoolmaster (Richard Burton) away from his loyal blonde wife. When Star Burton first read the script, he remarked that "it hits pretty close to home." Director Vincente Minnelli exploits this possibility with unctuous professionalism, fielding his glamorous duo in a romance `a clef that they appear to take seriously.

When the law forces her wayward illegitimate son to enroll at a school for boys, Liz storms off to the beach to enjoy what's left of freedom. Burton, as the Rev. Mr. Hewitt, follows her, after carefully removing his clerical collar. She is a wild thing who tends wounded birds or casually poses nude--hands to bosom, in deference to a man of the cloth--for a sculptor pal.

The Sandpiper's absurd situations are matched by dialogue that beauty (hers) and talent (his) cannot vanquish. Liz flaunts her attachment to another wastrel whom she knew "in the Biblical sense--he had carnal knowledge of me." Though Burton's performance consists mostly of curtain speeches, he handles his lines with flair, particularly when he drags himself away from Liz's shack into the clean, cool air to intone sonorously: "Oh God, allow me some small remembrance of honor." The drabber phrases fall to Eva Marie Saint as the wife, whose patience and succor are apt to take such forms as "Thinking is almost always a kind of prayer."

Long after the eyewash has been absorbed into the scenery, the illicit lovers part, clearly miserable but matured by their experience. Audiences may learn a thing or two as well, after having observed how wanly Art imitates Life.

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