Joanna

(UK)

20th Century-Fox/Laughlin. Director Michael Sarne; Producer Michael S. Laughlin; Screenplay Michael Sarne; Camera Walter Lassally; Editor Norman Wanstall; Music Rod McKuen; Art Director Michael Wield

Genevieve Waite
Christian Doermer
Calvin Lockhart
Donald Sutherland
Glenna Forster-Jones

White girl loves black boy, black girl loves white boy. A sometimes funny, often tearful tale of the deflowering of a scatterbrained English girl turned loose in wicked, wanton London. Director Michael Sarne's script contains too few hits and too many misses.

Genevieve Waite moves into London to study art. What she actually studies is male anatomy, mostly out of class.

Waite, with a most irritating voice, is pretty, all wide-eyed innocence even after she's introduced to London's la dolce vita by a Negro girl friend. Having devoted the best years of her life learning to put on eye makeup instead of the facts of life, it figures that Waite winds up pregnant but unwed. The knave who does her in is a Negro nightclub owner-hoodlum played well by Calvin Lockhart.

The film abounds with strange but colorful types, the most impressive being Donald Sutherland as a fatalistic young lord who's dying of leukemia. The best thing about Joanna is the superb color photography of Walter Lassally.

(Color) Widescreen. Extract of a review from 1969. Running time: 107 MIN.

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