Petulia · reception & legacy
1968 · Richard Lester
How Petulia has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
In 1968 plenty of critics wrote it off as modish, fragmented trend-chasing — though Roger Ebert famously championed it — and it has since been thoroughly reappraised as Lester's masterpiece and one of the great American films of its decade.
What's debated
Cinephiles still argue over whose film it really is: Lester's, or a dry run for cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, whose own time-shattered style (Performance, Don't Look Now) it seems to anticipate.
Its footprint
It's a filmmaker's touchstone more than a public one — Steven Soderbergh has repeatedly named it a favourite and its shuffled-time editing echoes through his work — and its scenes with Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead make it a prime time capsule of 1968 San Francisco.
Where it stands
A classic 'best 60s film you've never seen' — beloved-but-underseen, perpetually rediscovered by Letterboxd users who can't believe it isn't more famous.