‘Joanna’: the strangest performance of Donald Sutherland’s career
British cinema thrived in the 1960s, although not every production that emerged has necessarily endured. While social realist dramas like A Taste of Honey and Billy Liar have become iconic pieces of British film history, and movies ranging from The Italian Job to A Hard Day’s Night served to highlight the country’s propensity for compelling dramas and comedies, there was also a bizarre collection of films that attempted to tap into the experimentalism of the era, like Joanna.
Sex comedies and capers about young men and women finding their way in sexually-liberated London became quite popular, and while some of these succeeded, Joanna is much more of a Marmite-y film. You’re either going to hate the film or revel in its ridiculousness, but one thing’s for certain – you’re going to wonder why Donald Sutherland is in it.
The Canadian actor spent much of his early career in London, with his first movie role coming in 1963 with an uncredited part in the British drama The World Ten Times Over. He continued to land small roles in British horror movies over the coming years, eventually working his way up to more sizable parts, resulting in his strange turn as a dying English aristocrat in Joanna. The film was directed by Michael Sarne, who would go on to helm the widely hated Myra Breckinridge two years later, which featured Raquel Welch playing a transgender woman.
Joanna wasn’t torn apart in the way that Myra Breckinridge was, but it certainly wasn’t critically revered. The movie saw Geneviève Waïte play the titular character, an incredibly naive young girl who makes her way to London during the Swinging Sixties to become an art student. As she navigates this brightly coloured world, she engages in various relationships, including one with her art teacher and one with her friend’s brother, Calvin Lockhart’s Gordon, although she makes time for a holiday with Sutherland’s Lord Peter Sanderson in Morocco, who teaches her about life and death.
Waïte performs with an obnoxiously high-pitched voice, which is enough to alienate some and charm others, but Sutherland does a slightly camp British aristocrat impression, and it’s hard to comprehend that it’s actually him – the iconic star of Don’t Look Now and Klute – giving this bizarre performance. With a ropey grasp on a British accent, Sutherland delivers a monologue about dying, revealing to Joanna that he has a terminal illness, and it’s surprisingly moving. “It makes sense to die,” he tells Joanna, “Only then does it make sense to live.”
When the film premiered, the New York Times writer Renata Adler noted, “At the Cannes Film Festival, at the end of Joanna (which opened yesterday at the Cinema I), when Joanna cried, ‘This ain’t the end, you know. I’m coming back,’ part of the audience shouted ‘No! No!’ but some of the rest were in tears, and others had simply had a good time at the movies.”
That gives you a pretty accurate taste of the film’s divisive nature. It’s not exactly good, but it’s an enjoyable watch with some surprisingly great moments – from a scene soundtracked by Scott Walker’s ‘Joanna’ to the gorgeous visuals and outfits – but one that makes you question how Sutherland ended up there. What he saw in the part is baffling, yet, due to the gravitas of his acting skills, he still manages to become the highlight of the movie.
