I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed in watching The Loved One after all the acclaim it has gotten. There are several wonderful cameos by a lot of the name stars that Tony Richardson got for the film. But in looking back it seems it just wasn't the sum of all its parts.The Loved One is not a satire on the funeral business per se, it is a satire on it when it's done Hollywood style. In Tinseltown everything is done gaudier even burying one. Robert Morse is an English poet who arrives in Hollywood to meet with Uncle John Gielgud who promptly offs himself.As the closest relative by blood and geography Morse gets to make the funeral arrangements. The film is his experiences doing so. And since poetry doesn't exactly pay the rent Morse decides to go into the burying business.Lots of familiar faces are crammed into The Loved One. Liberace as the funeral home director and Rod Steiger as the cosmetician to the dead stars are shown to best advantage. The Loved One runs a bit too long and much of the satire just doesn't gel.If you like to stargaze however, you can't go wrong with The Loved One.

Director Tony Richardson takes no prisoners as he lambastes the funeral business, the government, religion, ideology, and anything else held sacred by many. Richardson does this in the most comically satiric manner with subtlety, restraint at times, over-indulgence at other moments, and a unique blend of English reservedness and wit mixed with American vulgarity and frankness. I loved this film and was laughing throughout. The story starts off with a young Englishman(Robert Morse) arriving in LA with no job or prospects other than visiting his famous uncle John Gielgud - who is in the movie business. Gielgud invites the young man to stay, introduces him to the strong acting British community, and provides him with living essentials as the young man decides what to do with his life(apparently after a romantic break). We see Gielgud at work and Richardson has no problems making fun of the movie industry at all as Gielgud, a veteran of 31 years, has been reduced to helping an American hick become an Englishman - not even remotely possible. He fails, is let go, and hangs himself. At this point we have a wonderful satire about the film industry, but what follows balloons into something even more grandiose. Character actor Robert Morley insists that this man be buried at the best place possible - Whispering Glades. We then watch Morse go there and see the hyperbolic excesses of the funereal business for those who least need their services - the dead. Morse meets beautiful Anjanette Comer, a make-up artist for the dead, as well as a series of people to help bring his uncle to "peace." Richardson, taking Waugh's novel, really has a knack at steamrolling his satire here with decadent grounds, huge rooms for repose, a bureaucratic network designed only for the wealthy, white, and people of "merit." Liberace, giving a great performance, plays a man who helps Morse decide on what casket, suit, and even shoes his dead uncle will have. The film then turns into a myriad of directions from a rich reverend who has a godlike complex but only a desire to make money, the help of the government to foster this big business, and a romantic triangle like no other with Morse, Comer, and Rod Steiger as Mr. Joyboy - the chief embalmer. While the end of The Loved One does not carry the impact now that it did in 1965, the film as a whole is a witty, incredibly black comedy de farce in many ways. Richardson made a film his way with his ideals firmly planted. Yes, this film will and I am sure did offend many. It also opens one's eyes to a number of things. The acting is great with Morse doing very solid work. Comer, as I said before, is lovely. Steiger - Steiger is great! His Mr. Joyboy with effeminacy reeking, long white curls, and fastidious outfits matched with his outlandish hand gestures steals every scene he is in...EXCEPT the ones with his mother(more on that shortly). His accented dialog was a real treat to hear. "I am saving for Momma's big tub!" His mother, "every inch a queen," is in one of the most bizarre film scenes I have ever seen in any "mainstream" picture. Words fail me. See it. I shall never look at a roast pig again - or a turkey - in the same way. I could go on, but I think you get my favorable stance toward this film which is most definitely under-viewed. Jonathan Winters is superb as well in two roles. Catch Paul Williams in his first film role. Watch Milton Berele give a great cameo as a husband fighting with his wife over a bereaved loved one. What a funny scene that was too!

I really wanted to like this film. The creative team behind it is astonishing and its cast is remarkable.However the film is obviously written by two people who know how to write novels, not films.The story just meanders and wanders and rambles and it takes quite some time to figure out exactly what is going on and what action we're supposed to be following.It's worth watching as a cultural snapshot, it's got that zany 60s laugh- in type humor happening in spades (the scene with the girls in the coffins comes to mind) but as a film itself it is a mess.

"The loved one" (1965) directed by Tony Richardson from Free Cinema as current of the British Cinema at the time was not very well received, because of the strangest subject and sordid welfare in it. Under such a comic and quite enough cosmic slapstick, like an anticipation of the more than probable twisted XXI Century in an almost fascist diversion of its religiosity, by such a character as a declared candidate to be like a mouse in experiment for steam cells, in a spirit of continued human split. The disjointed look of this young traveler - who chooses Los Angeles on the place of Calcutta - saw the crossed gigantic net of motorways, watched by him from the window of the TWA plane, just before landing and being submitted as passenger to such an unrealistic control on the airport by old questions and an open book not well actualized of expulsions by bad character. Suited by another encounter with his uncle on a cafeteria of a studio in Hollywood and by a reception in a club, where on the wall the official portrait of Johnson is quickly substituted by another of the Queen Elisabeth II, that stays leaned in a nonconformist touch of displaced meaning of less subtlety. But it conveys for anybody that the purpose had some effects of visual art as its private scandal and joke with the commerce of mortuary's mortgage. For instance when we saw the visit at Xanadu Park near Los Angeles, where the allegedly young poet declares loving his Emily, the woman who works for the private enterprise where it was buried his eccentric uncle after he was found hanged, as the character of a painter performed by John Gielgud. His direct heir is his nephew that finally is not well served by the circumstances, when taking acquaintance with the girl from the business of the deaths in America, as joke to the dreaming way to the sky adventure also. After a while he is employee in a dog cemetery nearby the Los Angeles airport, it seems by the narrative of that eccentric story adapted to the level of life in an open society of magnificence and privileged of the Earth. The rocket that is prepared to go straight ahead to the stratosphere with the dog's remains, after the scene of the couple's crisis inside a beautiful house with futuristic architecture, it is a case of ridiculousness of such kind of desires from a well furnished family but without children, living in abundance and happiness just before the dog pass away. The British humor from the director is of course just before the Vietnam war beginning in the same year and there is too here and there on the story some moments where the viewer can see for instance officers experimenting a coffin, even sleeping a while inside one as if it was a boom of generosity of the time for professionalism. In itself the movie is interesting in some gimmicks as the scene of the suspended house over the mountain with the girl and the boy in unstable equilibrium, at the time of the first journey of The Beatles in America and because of that it is a tread of time. Why not understanding all kind of frivolities here with a human sense even though the dubious taste is of course a legacy from the novel of Evelyn Waugh ?