Daisy Miller is a 1974 American drama film produced and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and starring Cybill Shepherd in the title role.
Bogdanovich later said he wished he had not made the film, claiming "It's a good picture, there's nothing wrong with it", but said "I knew when we were making it that it wasn't commercial" and "if I had been smart about things...
"[2] Daisy Miller 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 that 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.
Peter Bogdanovich had a production deal with The Directors Company at Paramount Studios under which he could make whatever film he wanted provided it was under a certain budget.
Bogdanovich, who was making a habit at the time of falling in love, heard Welles' comments in the context of a potential film.
My instinct was that he was simply urging Bogdanovich to read the novel; an erudite man, Welles' literary recommendations were definitely worth listening to.
To my surprise, however, Bogdanovich instantly started prepping a movie based on Daisy Miller to star his girlfriend Cybill Shepherd -- an idea that did not stir much enthusiasm within the Directors' Company.
It seems fairly obvious, but I should have listened to him... My partners, [Francis Ford] Coppola and [William] Friedkin, were annoyed that I made it 'cause they saw it as a vanity production from my girlfriend.
[7] During the shoot, Rex Reed visited the set and wrote a hostile piece on the director and star.
[8] Bogdanovich said later "I remember watching dailies of Daisy Miller in Rome or Switzerland and thinking to myself, saying out loud 'This is beautiful, but I don't know who's going to want to see it.'
"[5] Bogdanovich later recalls his partners at the Directors Company were not happy with the film: They thought it was a kind of a vanity production to show Cybill off.
One idea was the little miniature painter and the other thing was having that scene play in the baths...Everything else was the book and I couldn't use his script cause it was really way over the top.
Supporting performances by Mildred Natwick, Eileen Brennan and Cloris Leachman are, respectively, excellent, outstanding, and good.
She also manages to be thoughtless without playing dumb or dizzy, and to convey that mixture of recklessness and innocence that bewildered the other Jamesian characters."
[10]) TV Guide rates it one out of a possible four stars and calls it "truly a dud in spite of handsome sets and an intelligent writing job.
"[11] Time Out London wrote "Bogdanovich's nervous essay in the troubled waters of Henry James, where American innocence and naiveté are in perpetual conflict with European decadence and charm, reveals him to be less an interpreter of James than a translator of him into the brusquer world of Howard Hawks.
"[12] Filmink magazine argued, "If it had come along in the 1990s, I think it would have been a hit on that studio indie circuit that wasn’t really around in the 1970s for English language films.
But the film gains power as it progresses, and builds to a gut punch ending...[the film] is very funny, yet it leaves the viewer remarkably sad as you watch the final credits fade up...The movie plays like the entertaining and breezy classic adaptations that came out of Hollywood in the thirties and forties...Peter tackles the material in a similar way that you can imagine Howard Hawks dealing with the assignment in the forties.
"[17] Henry Hathaway admired Bogdanovich's films but thought his casting Shepherd in Daisy Miller was "bad judgment".