Justine

A foredoomed attempt to compress Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet for Hollywood consumption, begun by Joseph Strick on location and continued by Cukor in studio sets, with the former's Tunisian exteriors cut in (irrespective of disruptive colour-matching) or back-projected from time to time to make the whole thing look doubly phony. Exuding the disastrous smell of compromise in every shot, it emerges as a farrago of sex (romantic, incestuous, homosexual, nymphomaniac) and high-flown political intrigues concerning Coptic Christians and gun-running in Palestine. Only Bogarde, as the tormented Pursewarden, manages to rise above the inanities and deliver his lines as though they meant something.