Copying film making shots and styles from Howard Hawks and John Ford, Peter Bogdanovich tried to create a film centered around his girlfriend Cybill Shepherd. The film turned out to be another nail in the old career coffin.
Reviewers at the time complained that Cybill Shepherd didn't have the acting chops to pull off her part, but it would have taken a pretty special actor to make something of the character of Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller is either a free spirit or a bimbo or an airhead or just plain clueless.
Having Cybill Shepherd race through her lines like Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby was probably a poor idea as well. Shepherd also looks more like a cocktail waitress then a rich American heiress and at times her face actually seems a little hard when she is photographed. As much as Bogdanovich blew it with Shepherd, the rest of the cast is quite good, particularly Barry Brown as Winterbourn who is attracted to her but to worried about his social standing to get involved with her.
But who was the intended audience for this film? The film is about a silly young girl offending the morals and manners of conservative Americans living abroad in Europe. Not exactly an action packed theme for a film. This probably wasn't the kind of stuff that packed them in at the Drive-In in 1974.
Daisy Miller could have used a few car chases to liven things up. A predictable disaster.
92 minutes, screenplay by Frederic Raphael.
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