Darling Lili Reviews

Perfectly fine. Blake Edwards's big-budget WWI espionage melodrama stars Julie Andrews as Lili, a Mata Hari-like German spy using her wiles to get information from Allied officers. At first a music-hall favorite singing old-fashioned ditties, Lili eventually incorporates a bit of striptease into her staid act. She proves herself less a hard-hearted spy than a vulnerable woman when she falls in love with American flier Rock Hudson and cannot bring herself to betray him. The film came along at a time when the musical genre was struggling to redefine itself, and its theme of innocence in everything was taking a back seat to jaded knowingness in all art forms. LILI was a commercial failure, and everyone jumped on the bandwagon to lay Andrews out. Time has proven everyone wrong. Diverting, tuneful score by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer includes the lovely, Oscar-nominated "Whistling Away the Dark."