Daisy Miller | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Peter Bogdanovich |
Produced by | Peter Bogdanovich |
Screenplay by | Frederic Raphael |
Based on | The novella by: Henry James |
Starring |
Cybill Shepherd Barry Brown Cloris Leachman Mildred Natwick Eileen Brennan |
Music by | Angelo Francesco Lavagnino |
Cinematography | Alberto Spagnoli |
Edited by | Verna Fields |
Production
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Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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91 min. |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $2.2 million |
Daisy Miller is a 1974 American drama film produced & directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and starring then-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd in the title role. The screenplay by Frederic Raphael is based on the 1878 novella of the same title by Henry James. The lavish period costumes and sets were done by Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Mariolina Bono and John Furniss.
The title character is a beautiful, flirtatious, nouveau riche young American visiting a Swiss spa with her nervously timid, talkative mother and spoiled, xenophobic younger brother Randolph. There she meets upper class expatriate American Frederick Winterbourne, who is warned about her reckless ways with men by his dowager aunt Mrs. Costello.
When the two are reunited in Rome, Winterbourne tries to convince Daisy her keeping company with suave Italian Mr. Giovanelli, who has no status among the locals, will destroy her reputation with the expatriates, including socialite Mrs. Walker, who is offended by her behavior and vocal about her disapproval. Daisy is too carelessly naive to take either of them seriously.
Winterbourne is torn between his feelings for Daisy and his respect for social customs, and he is unable to tell how she really feels about him beneath her facade of willful abandon. When he meets her and Giovanelli in the Colosseum one night, he decides such behavior makes him unable to love her and lets her know it. Winterbourne warns her against the malaria, against which she has failed to take precautions. She becomes ill, and dies a few days later. At her funeral, Giovanelli tells Winterbourne that she was the most "innocent". Winterbourne wonders whether his ignorance of American customs may have contributed to her fate.