Director: Vincente Minnelli
Year Released: 1965
Rating: 1.0
Dr. Hewitt (Richard Burton), headmaster of a boarding school, has an affair with artist Laura (Elizabeth Taylor), mother to one of his new (and troublesome) students ... which causes problems with his profession (he's a minister) and his marriage to demure Claire (Eva Marie Saint). It's your typical love triangle mess: uppity man of the cloth gets swayed by sexually liberated woman, and when he confesses to his wife, she's at first quite upset, and then just sad (so much for prolonged external conflict - the burden of guilt is solely in Hewitt's noggin'). The characters are given some pretty clunky dialogue (mostly 'educated' Burton: "Give me strength. Give me emptiness.") and the title bird (with an injured wing!) is dime store symbolism, but Taylor does have a nice speech on the beach about feminism and women's rights (what's so wrong with being a single mom if that's what you want?) ... and there's also Charles Bronson (!?) as a sculptor (an odd casting move, but it works). Burton and Taylor may have, in real life, had one of the great love affairs, but much of the screen work they produced together is rather underwhelming.
