Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Brilliant and touching

Best movie ever!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Daisy Miller is an adaptation of the novella of the same name written by Henry James. Daisy Miller was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the same person who directed Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show. Both the film and the novella tell the story of Frederick Winterbourne, a young American man studying in Geneva, where he by chance encounters Daisy Miller, a young American woman traveling Europe with her family. Winterbourne and Daisy develop a deep connection with their short time together in Geneva, but eventually Daisy has to leave Geneva and head to Rome. Daisy wants Winterbourne to come with her, but Winterbourne says he most stay in Geneva for now, but will be in Rome eventually. Daisy is angry with Winterbourne for this decision and after a brief fight Daisy leaves. Eventually Winterbourne does go to Rome where he finds out that Daisy has been running around and flirting with several different men, and has been rejected by the high-class society there.Adapting Daisy Miller into a film was a strange choice for Frederic Raphael (the screenwriter) to make. Because, well let's face it, it isn't a good story like at all. If you've read the novella you know what I'm talking about, and the reason that it sucks so much is because Daisy is such an unlikable character. She is annoying, arrogant, rude, and manipulative, but even with her many, many flaws Henry James was still trying to hold her up as a symbol for innocence and how American ideals are different from the rigid European customs. Which doesn't really work if the character you using to try and convey this point is a cruel deceitful arrogant bitch, like Daisy Miller. The whole book falls apart, in fact the reaction to Daisy Miller at the time was bad at the time it was first published that Henry James had to come out and say what the novella was supposed to be about, because everyone was getting it wrong. I know I'm dwelling on this but it deserves to be dwelled on. Daisy Miller is probably one of my most hated characters of all time. But to be fair the filmmakers do to try to make Daisy a more likable character, however she still isn't even close to likable, but they do add some scenes that try to show that she isn't as bad as we think she is, and they also desperately shove the fact that she's "innocent " down your throat. The filmmakers also try to make the message of the book much more obvious. Which is good, but they do go a little to far, at some parts and even flat out saying what the message is several times during the film. Another positive I can say about the film is that all members of the cast and crew do really good jobs, all of the performances are at least good and some are actually pretty great. The set's, cinematography, and costumes are also all pretty good. Throughout the whole film I actually felt like I was in Geneva/Rome, not to mention that there is some fantastic lighting in this film. Even with all of its good parts Daisy Miller is still a weak film, but I would say that it's far superior to Henry James novella. The filmmakers do a good job of trying to lessen the weaker aspects of the source material, and add some pretty good scenes. In fact I would like to see the same cast and crew adapt a different story, because if they do this well with a bad book, I'm curious to see what they'd do with a good one. But I don't think I can recommend Daisy Miller, it isn't terrible, but it isn't good either.4.7

Many reviewers here seem to have confused the story and characters with the film and the actors.Yes, Daisy in the film is rather flat and monotonous. But that's a high compliment -- that the ravishing Cybill Shepherd could so accurately portray such a flat character. Henry James at one point describes Daisy's expression as a "light, slightly monotonous smile", in another her voice as a "little soft, flat monotone". He says late in the story that "there was always, in her conversation, the same odd mixture of audacity and puerility". No, she wouldn't be a very pleasant person to be around for long. But that was part of James's point: that our attraction to people (especially those of the opposite sex) often defies reason. Shepard makes the point well.Some have commented that they wished the story had been filled out. Some of those apparently haven't read the story. One of those critics even places the story wrong by forty years. Though called a novella, it's barely more than a short story. In fact the film does a remarkable job of portraying the events and (more importantly) the characters very much as they are in the story. The great majority of the dialog in the film is verbatim from the story.In some instances, the scenes and characters were significantly expanded from the James story. How far should a director go, if the aim is to film a classic story, not just to make something derived from that story? James's characters were pretty flat, a lot flatter than those in the film. One could justifiably criticize the film for telling the story far better than James did.Do you think James's story is dated and flat in the modern world? Well, in many ways so do I. A polemical assault on discrimination based on manners and birth is truly dated. Yet an assault on personal discrimination remains fully current. The modern world is certainly not devoid of personal discrimination. Perhaps it's not often so ugly, not in the first world anyway, but prejudice is very much alive.James's story is also unsubtle: two groups of people with differing views, one person caught with one foot in each camp, unhappy results. That's about it. Should one film the classic story, or build something different? It's a choice; great films have been made both ways. The choice for this film was unambiguous: to film the classic story.The photography is truly gorgeous -- the film (at least the outdoor parts) was shot on location in Vevey, Switzerland and Rome, Italy. Despite the long stretches of dialog, including Daisy's run-on commentaries, one need not strain to understand the words. If the story were as good as the production and acting (several good performances) then this would be a 10. The faithfulness to the original weights it down.

Granted, the lead character is supposed to be a shallow, useless wench, but something might have been done with the other characters, or with some depth to Daisy, that might have rescued this from the morass it became. Sadly, it was not to be, and I suffered through far too much of this filmish turd than I should have endured.Don't waste the rental on this one. Better to be stuck watching reruns of The Love Boat or Green Acres, which are far superior in character development.How Bogdanovich got involved in this disaster I cannot imagine, and it looks like he just sat in the nearest bar getting drunk and let the Assistant Directors torture one another with churning out this load of swill.

Ms. Shepherd's fluttery, busy, yet essentially one-note performance undermines an effortful, well-pedigreed adaptation of a seemingly unfilmable work. The screenplay is nimble and witty, the photography lush, the locations dazzling, the supporting cast well-chosen -- how can anyone not respond to Mildred Natwick in anything? But it's all up to the star, and here, she's not up to it. Admittedly, Daisy is a shallow character, but a more thoughtful actress would give her more dimension (today, maybe, Gwyneth Paltrow could do it).It's irresistible to consider the parallels between real life and reel life: The young Bogdonavich dotes on his leading lady as blindly as Barry Brown's character dotes on Daisy. But the poignancy is tempered somewhat when you consider that this nattering, uninteresting young lady would be absolute hell to live with.