Petulia

This Richard Lester film will tell you more about how confusing the '60s were than any hackneyed NBC miniseries ever could. In this fragmented love story, told in a nonlinear fashion that bounces back and forth in time, George C. Scott plays a newly divorced surgeon who meets a charming if scattered young woman, Petulia (Julie Christie). He falls into an affair with her, only to discover that she is married to a seemingly normal guy (Richard Chamberlain)--who also happens to be extremely abusive. But his efforts to extricate her from the marriage, set against the flower-power scene in San Francisco, only frustrate him with her indecisiveness. The film features performances by the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company, and captures a sense of the confusion caused by the youthquake that swept the nation. --Marshall Fine