bkoganbing At a time when films were becoming bigger and more expensive to fill theater seats in competition with the small screen, David And Lisa quietly premiered in the fall of 1963. A small black and white film with a dental floss budget it's about two young people in a mental health facility that only the rich can afford.As such it's not a film that is truly representative of the mentally ill. Something like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is far better in that regard showing how people of all types and all types of neuroses are warehoused like cattle. This is a facility that only people of means can afford.Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin who got their first big breaks in the title roles as a pair of kids at a combination of boarding school and mental health facility. Dullea is a boy with an all consuming passion for neatness and order who goes ballistic at being touched. Margolin is a loopy girl clearly schizophrenic who constantly speaks in rhymes. I think in her mind that's bringing a kind of closed order to her world.We never see Margolin's family, but Dullea's is an eyeful. His father is distant and ineffectual. But mom Neva Patterson is the ice queen of suburban Republican women. David's here clearly because he's an embarrassment in her world. The therapists are strangely passive. Clifton James and Howard DaSilva seem to be good listeners, but really don't offer much. James who played southern redneck types usually is almost unrecognizable. As for DaSilva he was coming off the blacklist and no doubt grateful for any work.The film got two Oscar nominations for director Frank Perry and for Best Adapted Screenplay. But it belongs strictly to the leads Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin as David And Lisa.

dougdoepke The movie's very un-Hollywoodish nature created considerable buzz at the time of release. Audiences weren't used to a documentary-like approach to such tricky subject matter. Then too, the production team and cast were not exactly household names. I expect the movie's success exceeded the Perry's fondest dreams. Happily, it gave them encouragement to continue independent production of offbeat subjects.The trick here is to have mental illness treated in a detached yet sensitive way. At the same time, David's (Dullea) ice-cold demeanor is not apt to win audience allegiance at the outset. We're never told exactly what his problem is, which is the way it should be, but the severe emotional repression evidently has to do with a cold, unfeeling mother (Patterson). Also, not wanting to be 'touched' looks like a metaphor for keeping his feelings hidden not only from others, but from himself as well. In that difficult role, newcomer Dullea is totally convincing— a handsome, pale-eyed iceberg.As Lisa, the unknown Margolin is wonderfully expressive, her face literally lighting up as David shares her secret language of rhyming. She is so winsome, it's not surprising that even David takes notice. We know less about Lisa than about David, but obviously the statues she embraces represent key absences in her life. When the two finally touch, a moving moment rare for any movie is reached. At the same time, note how the therapist Dr. Swinford (deSilva) is portrayed more as a facilitator than as an analyst. He provides the environment in which the two can reach each other in ways that his expertise cannot. And he's wise enough to know that. I don't know what the Perry's expected from their two principal actors, but what they got is almost sublime, and a big reason why I think audiences responded so enthusiastically. Too bad the film has slipped into obscurity since that initial reception. It certainly deserves rediscovery, especially on TCM.

Doug Galecawitz Fruedian psychology must have been real real popular in the early sixties. Between Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate, Dr Straelove, and this dime store matriarchal film making seem to hit a cheesy crescendo. Why? This seems to be an interesting enough premise for a movie, but (at least in today's standards) seems meek and unwilling to commit itself to anything more than skipping along the surface of it's quirky characters. Plenty of interesting elements lurk right beneath the surface, but in this heavy handed melodramatic bird's stool, it falls flat.The movie does serve as an oddity (or perfect example) of lazy film making, perhaps because of budget. Every scene is repetitive. The movie follows so closely to the idea of one set set-up, establishment, and fade out, that it seems less and less like a movie and more and more like a series of scenes. To a modern audience it should seem striking. Quick cuts, and lead in being today's norms.5 out of 10, not bad, but Jimmy Stewart in Harvey is less of a waste of time.........

victorsargeant "The Miarcle Worker", "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "David and Lisa", arrived in theaters in the same season and all black and white, all intense, human stories...that influenced me to dedicate my life to becoming a "wounded Healer". This little film, hit me hard, by first confronting my own demons, my family of origin, the dry 1950's in the Mid West Kansas prairie. Not like the "Snake Pit", this exploration of mental illness, was warmer, more understandable and approachable with the human heart. Meinger's Clinic was nearby in Topeka, Kansas, and they were doing the best clinical work in the world to date.The movie theater was our only source of connection with the outside world emotionally. Yes, radio and later TV, just one channel CBS, brought to our living rooms, words, pictures and ideas, some painful some joyous.A small Kansas wheat farming community can be a "closed information system", that is thrown into conflict, by new ideas about humanity, God, the larger World out there.We were "shaped" emotionally more by film than TV or Radio. Cinema Scope presented a window on the world, in sound and images 60x our physical being and we were enmeshed on many psychological levels by film. That is the power of film, especially in a theater with other people.James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, in "Giant", Kim Novak and William Holden, in "Picnic", made down the road from our town, were only the tip of the iceberg. "Best Years of Our Lives" and "Since You Went Away", were more than just images on the silver screen in a dark movie theater....that was 'US' up there, that was our story, our lives. We were "known, validated perhaps" by these images.We were "defined" by fashion, haircuts, musicals, songs, dance, social conflict and reminded us of our humanity, the HUMAN COMEDY, that we lived in our local patterns, in our own words and behaviors.I later became a "theater major" at the University of Colorado. Theater helped me understand human behavior, human motivation and the human masks of tragedy and comedy. Sports were important for character and physical glory and the Olympics, But Theater showed "why" the hero, the villain, the plots enriched our daily emotions.Psychology was a dimension of theater. "David and Lisa", I was like them "both" in my way and was led to explore my own shadow and my teenage demons. Like "Rebel Without a Cause" we found these films to be therapeutic and healing on many levels. Walt Disney had lied to us and westerns no longer held my interests. As a teenager my hormones were creating a new me, a new sense of personality and the purpose of being alive. I had to "know" who I am and who I am not...for some reason. "Why are we here on the dirt prairie?" No, not "Oklahoma" again? haI never take a client that is "sicker" than I am. ha And felt I should drop out my first year in graduate school, because I saw myself on every page. "I feel I am too sick to be a therapist", I told my professors. They smiled."We are more concerned about students, who never see themselves on any of the pages in the DSM", they added.I have not regretted becoming a therapist and "David and Lisa" helped build the bridge to that island, called the "Unconscious".The cast is perfect. The performances are influenced by the 1950s and like ...'Without a Cause', parents were that emotionally dead to us even then.I am pleased this film has survived and is on DVD. Music is lovely and fits the action, Kier should have been nominated for an Oscar as well as the actor who played "Lisa" can't remember her name. I actually become a close version of the psychiatrist in my way. VSS