Lilith (film)

Lilith
original film poster
Directed by	Robert Rossen
Produced by	Robert Rossen
Written by	Robert Rossen
Starring	Warren Beatty Jean Seberg Peter Fonda Kim Hunter Jessica Walter
Music by	Kenyon Hopkins
Cinematography	Eugen Schüfftan
Editing by	Aram Avakian
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	September 27, 1964
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Lilith (1964) is a film written and directed by Robert Rossen. It is based on a novel by J. R. Salamanca and stars Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter and Gene Hackman. The movie was filmed at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland.

Plot

Set in a private mental institution, it tells of a trainee occupational therapist Vincent Bruce (Beatty) who becomes dangerously obsessed with a seductive, very able, schizophrenic patient Lilith Arthur (Seberg).

After engineering the suicide of another patient (Fonda) out of jealousy for his crush on Lilith, Bruce presents himself for psychiatric help to his superiors.

Chestnut Lodge would not permit filming on location so those scenes were done in a vacant mansion rented by the production company, Centur Productions, on the North Shore of Long Island (Locust Valley). Location shooting in Maryland was done in a private home in Rockville as well as in the downtown area, plus scenes at Great Falls on both the Maryland and Virginia sides of the Potomac River, as well as a staged carnival scene at Barnssville, Maryland.

This was Robert Rossen's last film before he died.

Reputation

In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film David Thomson describes Lilith as "an oddity, the only one of [Rossen's] films that seems passionate, mysterious and truly personal. The other films will look increasingly dated and self-contained, but Lilith may grow."

External links

• Lilith at the Internet Movie Database