Sebastian (1968)

Overrated and overhyped

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Blistering performances.

Oh, where did the 1960s ever go? What happened? (Sob.) Before it became distressingly violent the 1960s were informed by a light-hearted revolutionary spirit. The Beatles were breaking records, which was nice, and the skirts were tiny, which was also nice. Recreational highs were a pastime and the scent of flowers, hemp, or at least incense, was in the air, a pastel age. There was a Cold War going on too. That's not so nice. However even such a serious business was subject to frolicsome presentations, and this is a good example. The credits are irritating though. I wish "The Pink Panther" with its adorable credit sequences hadn't appeared four years earlier because everybody had to have a crack at it after that.This movie is cute without being hilarious. Everyone is good natured, even the authorities who are not good natured. Among its virtues are the lanky, leggy Susannah York, all soft, pink, blond, and utterly beautiful. She looks dusted in talcum powder. Then there is the officious Dirk Bogarde, in his dark suit and umbrella, who hires her as a code breaker for some intelligence apparat in England. York is a whiz at it too, although her talent doesn't impress Bogarde that much. York sees Bogarde as a challenge and sets out to liberate him. It couldn't have been too hard. He had nowhere to go but up, and this is the London of "Blow Up," tastefully psychedelic.The bossy Bogarde keeps a loose woman, Janet Munro, on the side but York soon seduces him and finds he is reluctantly but undeniably distracted from his blue notebook. It's a bad idea for Bogarde to be mixed up with Susannah York. I should have been mixed up with Susannah York instead of him. Somewhere in the background of all this is Sir John Gielgud, good as ever, simultaneously charming and disdainful, wearing a carefully pressed suit and what appears to be a Crescent tie. He's a delight but I believe his school tie should be Westminster, not Crescent.Anyway it turns more serious as the Russians enter the picture, and the Americans too. Bogarde is assigned a big decoding job involving a Russian satellite. An incredibly young Donald Sutherland cheerfully plays a recording of the first Russian satellite ever. He claims it's sending Morse code but it's not. I was a radioman in the Coast Guard at the time and had to copy the signals. The thing just went beep beep beep.Spies manage to lace Bogarde's champagne at one point with acid but it all ends happily. Bogarde also appeared in "Modesty Blaise" somewhere around this time. It made no more sense than "Sebastian" but was probably more fun. It had Bogarde stretched out on the sand, dying of thirst, and moaning, "Champagne . . . champagne." "Sebastian" isn't that absurd.

This is a good film to watch if you like British films from the era and especially ones with Dirk Bogarde. It's made with some style but the script is a problem. Though it starts out intriguingly, in the end this espionage film is rather much ado about nothing. The main point of interest in this rarely seen movie now is the equally rarely heard Jerry Goldsmith score, which I rather like. I believe it got an LP release back in 1968, but has never been issued on CD. Perhaps one of the reasons for that, as I've recently read, is that Goldsmith didn't have a good experience doing the score and never had much to say about it or simply didn't want to discuss it at all. Unfortunate, because the score, though minor Goldsmith, does have merit. I hope someday to read just what Goldsmith's problems were with it.

The list of excellent actors and actresses in the film is endless and includes Dirk Bogarde, Susannah York, Sir John Gielgud, Lili Palmer and Nigel Davenport, with many more first-rate performers besides. Add to this the musical talents of Jerry Goldsmith and it is quite an achievement by the Director to create this piece of utter nonsense, especially as some of the screenplay is worthy and the settings very 60's and good. Is this meant to be a serious film? It could only have merit if it was a total send-up of it's decade and spy-films generally, but as Dirk Bogarde later described it as a "non-event," the meaning and intent was obviously lost on him; a big disadvantage as he was the star. This film must have begun with promise and potential for why else would such an array of talent include themselves in it's making? Something after that went radically wrong, but like your other contributors I would gladly purchase a DVD if only, in my case, for curiosity value.

A light story about cryptographers... not an easy sell as a script, but afforded a platform for the talents of John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde, Lilli Palmer, the spunky Susannah York and others. The tiny message about being careful when working for a classified department is more and more relevant, as Microsoft just discovered when their source code was stolen via the hijacking of an employee's computer on the air from home. When in doubt, lengthen the password...