Except for "Star!", (Which another reviewer understandably considers a "companion piece" to this film), Julie Andrews never starred in a film that was more ideally structured specifically for her many talents than "Darling Lilli." She gets to sing, act, look lovely, even let her hair down and do a striptease in her continuing efforts to get away from her Mary Poppins/Maria Von Trapp image, and much more. Lilli is certainly one of the most interesting characters she ever played; you're never quite sure whether you're supposed to root for or despise this half-English, half-German who is a London music-hall entertainer but also acting as a spy for the Fatherland in World War I and is sent to, um, extract military secrets from American Major William Larabee but falls in love with him and tries to clear both their names for the suspicious French government.
And like "Star!", "Darling Lilli" was released at the wrong time. It had enough "performance numbers" to count as a movie musical, even though it also had elements of drama, comedy, and spy intrigue, and both movie musicals and Julie Andrews were not what critics and audiences were anxious to see in the late 1960s and early 70s, when both films were released. So both bombed at the box office. "Darling Lilli" in particular, judging by the "director's cut" that director Blake Edwards prepared several years later, did not really deserve this fate. While flawed, it is still highly entertaining, and Miss Andrews is utterly radiant, whether acting, stripping, or singing some vintage WW I tunes or some lovely songs written for the film by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. The film should be seen if for no other reason than for the hauntingly beautiful "Whistling Away the Dark" and Julie's tender, achingly vulnerable performance of it.
But as I said, the film itself is not too great. The description of Lilli's character alone is confusing enough, and often it's hard to figure out what is going on. (Perhaps some footage that could've cleared up this confusion is in the original version of the film?) In addition to the rather muddled string of events, Rock Hudson is pretty stiff as Larabee, and the various German, French, and English accents of the supporting characters come and go. The authentic WW I aircraft is cool, but the air sequences, appaarently the ones that took the longest time out of the film's very long shooting period, are the least interesting in the film. And another reviewer also noted the film's uneasy yo-yoing between genres: the "director's cut" is probably the most serious film Edwards (Who happened to have just married Miss Andrews before they started filming this) ever directed, but he can't resist putting in some of his trademark cheap laughs, although several of them are admittenly funny. And all in all, the film is very entertaining, whether as a drama, comedy, musical, or spy thriller, and whenever Julie Andrews is onscreen, all the film's faults seem like quibbles. Obviously, Mr. Edwards is in love with his wife; can you blame him?
