Darling is a 1965 British romantic drama film directed by John Schlesinger from a screenplay written by Frederic Raphael.

[5] It stars Julie Christie as Diana Scott, a young successful model and actress in Swinging London, toying with the affections of two older men, played by Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey.

The film was shot on location in London, Paris and Rome and at Shepperton Studios by cinematographer Kenneth Higgins, with a musical score composed by Sir John Dankworth.

It became a critical and commercial success, grossing $4.5 million, and received five nominations at the 38th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won in three categories: Best Actress (for Christie), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Costume Design.

One day Diana meets Robert Gold, a literary interviewer/director for television arts programmes, by chance when she is spotted on the street by his roving film crew and interviewed by him about young people's views on convention.

Though waited on hand and foot by the servants, she is almost immediately abandoned in the vast palazzo by Cesare, who visits Rome frequently.

He reserves a flight to Rome, packs her into his car and takes her to Heathrow airport to send her back to her life as Princess Della Romita.

[10][11] In 1971, New York magazine wrote of mod fashion and its wearers: "This new, déclassé English girl was epitomized by Julie Christie in Darling—amoral, rootless, emotionally immature, and apparently irresistible.

Beauty is central to the cinema and Schlesinger seems an unreliable judge of it, over-rating Christie and rarely getting close enough to the action to make a fruitful stylistic bond with it".

For him, the film is a "leaden rehash of ideas from Godard, Antonioni and Bergman", although with nods to the "Royal Court school", which "now looks grotesquely pretentious and out of touch with the realities of the life-styles that it purports to represent.

[18] According to Richard Gregson, the film only earned £250,000 in the United Kingdom, but Nat Cohen sold the U.S. rights to Joe E. Levine for $900,000 and made a profit – and the film was more successful in the U.S.[2] Filmink argued "there’s always a market for such tales if done right because you can vicariously enjoy the high life while being reassured about your own dull existence because the pretty people are unhappy).