The Walking Stick (1970)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Samantha Eggar gives a wonderful performance along with a very effective David Hemmings in "The Walking Stick," from 1970. The beautiful Eggar is Deborah, a young woman who suffered from polio as a child and now has a bad leg; for this reason, she has to use a cane. She believes she is damaged goods, unattractive, and unwanted. She works at an auction house as their porcelain expert and lives with her parents, who don't seem to understand her.One evening she ventures out to a party and meets Leigh Hartley, an aspiring artist, who is attractive but persistent, which puts Deborah off. Eventually she agrees to see him, and they become friends, at last lovers, and ultimately move in together, planning to start their own business. Deborah then begins to find out that Leigh has not been honest about his past, but the final blow has yet to be struck: He and his mates want to rob the auction house and need her to do it.This is a slow film, but the acting is very good, and the story is absorbing and sad. And it leaves one with a few questions, though ultimately I think, like Deborah, we know the answers.The most brutal part of the film is when Deborah does her part at the auction house and, in the way of the robbers, one grabs her and literally throws her out of the way.Thought-provoking, and one asks what it is about love that makes so darn blind all the time. We'll never know the answer.

Spoilers herein.Someone thought to produce a glossy art film, a lowbrow face on a highbrow idea. Early in the game, we are told as much in a discussion of `Wild Strawberries' early in the story. Unhappily, this suffers from Hollywooditis, a malady that hobbles every intelligent thing it attempts. One can see it mirrored in the story itself -- at least that is some pleasure. The enterprise of `stealing' the art is done by incompetents. Same in real life. The affair is botched, and the hobbled actress writes it up and sends it to us. The art is lost.

Curtailing evil, criminal intentions, a dashing young man, Leigh, seduces and persuades the dreary, moderate polio victim Deborah Dainton into falling in love with him. Deborah leads a neatly organized life, and is obligated to see it being reduced to shreds when she discovers her boyfriend is part of a gang who intends to rob the auction house in which she works in. That's when Deborah has to come to grips with the fact that Leigh may have maintained a relationship with her solely for the benefit of the heist. This is an utterly unforgettable study on bitterness, hope and disappointment. We get to witness the magnificence of Eggar's performance as her character slowly discovers what Leigh - David Hemmings - truly had in mind when they began living together. And how Eggar manages to show that her bad leg does not stop her from being as tricky - if not trickier - than the good for nothing Leigh.'The Walking Stick' is an emotionally-charged melodrama that does not appeal to tacky tearjerker clichés. Everything is beautifully executed in a low-key, calm and yet gut-wrenchingly real manner, with an emotionally disarming ending that will leave you sobbing.

A very beatiful low key film about a woman and a man meeting and getting to know one another little by little. Underneath, things are not what they appear to be...In "Walking Stick" Samantha Eggar and David Hemmings give very fine and clear performances as unseeming Londoners. The actors were very hot and coveted starlets at the end of the sixties, starring in loads of ambitious films and then later never to be heard from again... Shame really, they´re brilliant.