Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Steineded How sad is this?

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

vccc I remember this film as one which helped to define my life in college in the late 60's. I must have seen it along with my friends 10 times. We had the songs memorized and would sing them everywhere. I can't really understand the negative comments about this film. I would really like to find a copy out there somewhere so I could see it again. Does anyone have a copy?

richarre I get that Joanna is a sort of Candide, an innocent heroine whose adventures are probably meant to give the director an opportunity to comment on aspects of the culture. That she has (or should have) this larger function is the only thing that could justify the big song and dance at the end, which is supposed to show that Joanna's transit through the other characters' lives has turned them around, made them see beauty and sweetness and gentleness and other faux hippie-dippy nonsense that would have made Voltaire scream. Joanna might be interesting if she were a puzzle, but she is a blank, she can barely be said to have any behavior at all. She is a beautiful rag doll, and your only response when she is mistreated is to hope that getting taken for granted or slapped around (and her bleating sorrow that follows) won't mar her features. In a general way, of course, you hate to see a movie doing some of the things to a character that are done to Joanna unless there is some point to be made, and the best point that could be made in this kind of Candide story when, for instance, Joanna's boyfriend philosophizes that women want to be treated rough and then he does just that -- as I'm saying, the best point that could be made from this is that this is the way the world is, here are some of the terrible cracks exposed in the world Joanna lives in. But no, the movie goes along with the troglodyte attitude and Joanna responds the way her boyfriend intends she should. All this might still be fun in an archeological kind of way, i.e., look what passed for social philosophy in the Sixties, if there were any energy in the directing, the writing, the music or, barring all that, in more than one or two of the main performances. Joanna's a dead fish. Donald Sutherland is even worse, but for such a great actor to put in such a poor performance says a lot about the writing and directing (was there a dialect coach anywhere?), but especially the writing. Sutherland's part is easily the worst written of a badly written movie. How could it not be? He is meant to exemplify the psychedelic metaphysics of beauty and oneness that the movie makes pastel stabs at pushing, and he has to spout all this hooey about it and he is supposed to find its embodiment in that shapely potato, Joanna, and then he is supposed to die, which is the best thing he does. Do I need to summarize? When I and my co-workers start talking movies and nominating the worst movies ever made (we do spend more time on good movies than bad) Joanna is high on my list.

cestmoi It is silly the way we talk about movies. They are not meant for the ages but for slices of time. Once in a great great while one captures something eternal...8 1/2, Third Man, etcetera, but films are social chewing gum. Here is a fine example of an English director of the 1960s doing some turns that were fresh seeming and of the time...playing to the camera in the post dramatic sequence...don't tell me that wasn't and still would be a kick. And Sutherland's lisping soliloquy in the desert, my first awareness of the Canadian actor. A memorable film, one with some fans, many deprecators. But that's what makes horse races. Does sit hold up to critical analysis? Probably not, certainly not in the context of a lot that has followed. But lovely and fresh and exciting at the time, just like that first date with the sweet fresh girl who is now the woman with the scar from the auto accident. We change, the cinema changes. Films are not for the ages, after all, but acts of commerce sometimes tinged with art and freighted with our associations.

John Seal I'm sure that writer-director Mike Sarne thought he was developing a new cinematic paradigm when he was making Joanna, but the end result is less than satisfying. Genevieve Waite's over-the-top performance only makes sense by the time you reach the film's self-mocking conclusion, and by then you've had your fill of her. Rod McKuen's music is cloying and his singing is, as always, horrendous. Scott Walker's 'When Joanna Loved Me' is wasted during a cringeworthy 'dream' sequence. The excellent Calvin Lockhart (Halls of Anger, Room 222) can't save this film from the wretched performances of Waite and Donald Sutherland, who I've never seen to worse effect in his role as a dying aristocrat. An interesting period piece that has aged very badly.