George Peppard has his hands full; good thing he apparently has six of them!
I haven’t seen House of Cards(HoC) in years, mostly because I haven’t been able to find it on DVD or any other format that I can afford that would work with my good old American DVD player. I can’t even find a trailer for it, although I've found plenty for the 1993 drama by the same name starring Kathleen Turner as a mother trying to help her apparently autistic child. However, thanks to the many times I saw HoC on TBS and other local channels in my youth, I remember it like I saw it yesterday!
Dig that far-out groovy Peter Max-style poster, man!
During the 1960s, Universal Pictures made a mini-genre out of the Lighthearted International Technicolor Romantic Suspense Thriller, with such rollicking adventures as Charade; Arabesque; Mirage; Blindfold, and A Man Could Get Killed. Before making HoC, director John Guillerman had directed leading man George Peppard in the 1966 World War 1 thriller The Blue Max and the 1968 private eye drama P.J. (Note to Vinnie, all George Peppard fans, and all fans of Disney’s animated school comedy series Recess: Yes, P.J.’s last name is in fact Detweiler! But I digress....) I’ve always felt that HoC was one of the loopiest of the lot from its opening sequence: tracking shots of Paris from a corpse's-eye-view! There it is, floating in the River Seine practically unnoticed by the populace. Having grown up in a big city (NYC, for those who came in late), I know city dwellers tend to be blasé about things no matter what city they live in, but come on!
The many faces of Barnaby Shaw & pals
Peppard plays Reno Davis, a sort of hip 1960s Hemingway type who drifts from one country to another, either writing his novel or getting into boxing matches. Indeed, when we first meet Reno, he’s getting the hell beaten out of him in a Paris boxing ring. One night, someone shoots at him—and discovers the triggerman is a frightened child, Paul de Villemont (played memorably by the haunted-eyed Barnaby Shaw). Reno drags the little sharpshooter home to his surprised widowed mom, Anne, played by the luminous Inger Stevens with a vulnerable sophistication reminiscent of Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. To quote New York Times movie critic A.H. Weiler, “Miss Stevens is...pretty enough to turn any adventurer's head,” and Reno and Anne almost lose their own heads in more ways than one. You see, it turns out the glamorous but troubled Anne is the American widow of a French general; she and Paul are virtual prisoners of her sinister in-laws and their cohorts, including British actor Keith Michell (TV’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry VIII and His Six Wives, among others) as the secretive psychiatrist Dr. Morillon. Anne and Paul take a shine to Reno, and the feeling is more or less mutual. No surprise, really; at the very least, Reno’s iconoclastic loner routine is surely a welcome change of pace from the Daphne DuMaurier types slinking around the family chateau. Anne hires Reno as Paul’s tutor/companion. The DuMaurier types don’t exactly welcome Reno with open arms, which may also explain why men in Anne’s orbit don’t seem to live too long whenever they try to help her and Paul, including that poor slob we saw floating lifeless in the Seine earlier, one Sidney Scott (who doesn’t even get a credit in the film for his trouble, poor guy).
It takes more than guns and Orson Welles as El Exigente to make Reno lose his cool!
Soon we viewers are catapulted from DuMaurier Land to Robert Ludlum Lite as the chateau’s occupants turn out to be not just any old Eurotrash stuffed shirts, but actually part of a Fascist group led by the powerful Leschenhaut, played by Orson Welles at his haughty and sinister best. Seems that Papa wanted his little man to be brought up as a Hitler youth! Before you can say “Alfred Hitchcock sent me,” Paul is kidnapped, Reno is framed for murder, and he and Anne (who’s not overjoyed about bodyguard Reno dropping the ball with her child; as a mother myself, I’m on Anne’s side!) are chasing and being chased all over Paris and Rome trying to save Paul and the world from these dastardly so-and-so’s. House of Cards was adapted from renowned mystery author Stanley Ellin’s 1967 novel, and set in opulent locations including the Colosseum and all manner of manors all over France. True, some of the plot twists in James P. Bonner’s screenplay (actually a nom de plume for the screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who brought us Hud, Hombre, The Cowboys, and Norma Rae, among others) stretch credibility to the breaking point (especially Dr. Morillon’s true identity). Also, some of the more attention-grabbing stuff is never explained, although I’m willing to blame some of that on TBS editing the version I saw on TV (besides, sponsors have to squeeze in commercials; they have to eat, too, I guess). Despite these quibbles, HoC still manages to be entertaining. When I first saw iton TV in my younger days, I found Francis Lai’s score to be a little syrupy for my taste, but it’s grown on me over the years. George Peppard, in his prime, was well-cast as a cynical rogue, with his all-American good looks, hard-boiled flippancy, and breezy charm. He cracked me up whenever he improvised outlandish excuses to authority figures, like in the Fountain of Trevi scene and this sexy sequence with leading lady Inger Stevens:
"Reno, thank goodness you're here! This is the stuffiest family reunion ever!"
Inger Stevens had been a favorite of mine since I first saw her on the TV series version of The Farmer’s Daughter. I always sensed something unconventional about her. Indeed, Stevens did have difficulties in life, and left us far too soon, but once you saw her, you couldn’t forget her. I thought Stevens was an excellent match for Peppard both physically and personality-wise, with screen presence aplenty. It wasn’t just Stevens’ striking blonde beauty and honeyed alto voice that made her stand out; she also had a warmth that belied her Nordic Ice Maiden looks, and a knack for being at once worldly and wholesome. This quality is reflected in Stevens’ fab Edith Head costumes, too.
This wildly complex thriller probably shouldn’t be watched by anyone with a migraine or a short attention span—but if you're in the mood for a well-cast conspiracy yarn that doesn't take itself too seriously, keep an eye out for HoC in your TV movie listings. Better yet, bug the folks at Universal and urge them to at least put out a House of Cards print-on-demand DVD!
A smorgasbord of George Peppard scenes (with and without Inger Stevens) for your viewing pleasure!
In any language, House of Cards is good fun if you can find it!
Thanks to the miracle of Print-on-Demand DVDs, one of my favorite Hitchcock pastiches,The Prize (1963), as in Nobel Prize, has become available from the Warner Archive. It couldn’t happen to a more entertaining movie! Loosely based on Irving Wallace’s best-selling 1962 novel, it’s quite appropriate that much of The Prize’s action takes place in Sweden’s Grand Hotel in Stockholm, since this lively, sophisticated yet impish international thriller plays like a cross between the classic movie adaptation of Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel and Alfred Hitchcock’s Northby Northwest(my favorite film of all time, for those who came in late).
The folks at MGM clearly realized screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s witty dialogue would be as important to the success of The Prize as it was to Lehman’s Oscar-nominated screenplay for North by Northwest (1959), so they lavished The Prize with plenty of smart, snappy lines in addition to the time-honored glossy MGM production values. They also cast The Prize with many actors who’d worked with Hitchcock before and/or after they became part of the Prize package, like Paul Newman (more about his Hitchcock experience shortly); Marnie’s Diane Baker; The Birds’ Karl Swenson, along with veteran character actor John Qualen, as bickering room service personnel at the Grand Hotel; and frequent Hitchcock supporting player Leo G. Carroll as the Nobel committee’s outwardly calm but inwardly worried head honcho, Count Bertil Jacobsson. Virginia Christine of Folgers Coffee commercial fame briefly appears in The Golden Crown nightclub scene with Baker and friends and a wine chaser. (Fun fact: Ms. Christine was married to Fritz Feld of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and so many other comedies from 1940 to his death in 1993.) Fans of the classic private eye series 77 Sunset Strip(*snap snap*) may recognize Jacqueline Beer as another sexy secretary type, Monique, the mistress of Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Claude Marceau (Gérard Oury, renowned as a writer/actor/director in his native France). One of the more entertaining Nobel winner vignettes is a piquant running gag in which Newman as Andrew Craig, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, agrees to help fellow Nobel-prize winner Dr. Denise Marceau (Micheline Presle) pretend they’re having an affair to make her hubby and fellow Nobel-prize winner Claude jealous, culminating in an almost-naked Newman winding up in Denise’s suite with her slow-burning spouse—but I’m getting ahead of myself. The Prize is that kind of movie—very busy (mostly in a good way)!
Between The Prize and Charade, 1963 was a great year for playfully glamorous Hitchcockian thrillers! Director of Photography William Daniels, who also did the honors for TV’s I Love Lucy and the Oscar-winning The Naked City, got to have fun with trick photography. Great driving symphonic score by Jerry Goldsmith, too, augmented here and there by musical riffs from Bernard Herrmann’s North by Northwest score and another musical riff I swear I’ve heard on Star Trek! Is it just me? Incidentally, I liked the way the filmmakers got past the language issues of the international cast of characters, as decreed by major domo Mrs. Ahlquist (Edith Evanson): “During Nobel Week, nothing but English is to be spoken, even when you quarrel…Now don’t let me hear another word about this, especially in Swedish!”
Paul Newman plays our charmingly sardonic hero, the hard-drinking, womanizing, and of course, Nobel-winning author Andrew Craig, honored for his novel The Perfect State. Indeed, according to the media montage in the film’s opening credits, Andrew is the youngest author to be thus honored since Rudyard Kipling. (Would that make fictional Andrew Craig the Nobel Prize equivalent of real-life youngest Best Actor Oscar-winner Adrien Brody? But I digress….) Andrew is just interested in the money — and maybe also Inger Lisa Andersson (Elke Sommer), the cool, beautiful blonde Foreign Office attaché assigned to keep his scamp tendencies in line. We can feel the chemistry beginning, but Inger Lisa isn’t going to make it easy for him:
Andrew: “How much do you know (about me)?”
Inger Lisa: “Your lack of regard for the Nobel Prize; your threat to turn it down; your decision to come to Stockholm only because fifty-thousand dollars…how did you put it in Time Magazine?”
Andrew: “‘Ain’t hay?’…Yes, I think you have caught the outer man, Miss Andersson. But bear in mind that nine-tenths of the iceberg is generally hidden from view.”
Inger Lisa: “In your case, it happens to be ice cubes.”
For Andrew, having Inger Lisa on his side is sheer delight!
When our irreverent hero gets around to schmoozing with his fellow Nobel Prize winners, he meets Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson, another Team Bartilucci favorite), the Nobel Prize winner in Physics. Dr. Stratman is a native German who reluctantly cooperated with the Nazis only to keep his family safe. The endearing Stratman gently chides Andrew in a warm, fatherly way about his flippant, mercenary approach to his Nobel honor. Andrew and Dr. Stratman agree to get together over a bottle of schnapps the next day. But what a difference a day makes: when they cross paths again at the Nobel press conference, Dr. S. acts as though he’s meeting Andrew for the first time! Little does Andrew know that after they said their goodbyes the night before, Eastern Bloc spies kidnapped the real Dr. Stratman to drag him back behind the Iron Curtain, replacing him with his lookalike brother (Robinson pulls double duty here; wonder if MGM paid him twice?), who plans to use the Nobel ceremony to denounce the West before Dr. Stratman “defects.” What’s worse, his lovely niece Emily Stratman (Baker) is playing ball with the bad guys. But Emily’s mercurial behavior is puzzling; is she really a modern-day Mata Hari, or do the bad guys have a hold over her, or what? It’s interesting to watch Emily’s expressions throughout the film, with her sweet face and shifty eyes always at odds with each other; it intrigues and amuses me (granted, I’m easy to please).
Meanwhile, Andrew grudgingly reveals his dirty little secret at the press conference: acclaimed though they are, Andrew’s literary novels haven’t been selling well — but the “private-eyewash” detective novels he writes under a pseudonym are selling like fresh hot pancakes with lingonberries! (Hey, Andrew, if you don’t want the pulp fiction gig, I’ll gladly take it, and so would any number of writers I know!) Skeptical interviewers ask Andrew for an example of his ability to find story material in whatever situation is at hand. Naturally, Andrew improvises a storyline about a Nobel prize winner — who just happens to be a lookalike imposter. You can almost hear the alarm bells going off for Emily and the counterfeit Stratman. Before you can say, “George Kaplan,” Emily, Off-Brand Stratman, and a couple of sinister fedora-wearing jaspers in trench coats are doing their damndest to screw up whatever shreds of credibility Andrew has left (ah, the time-honored “Hide the Corpse” gambit never gets old). Failing that, they’re happy to make Andrew a dead man who’ll tell no tales!
Winning the Nobel Prize turns life upside-down for author Andrew Craig (Paul Newman) when neo-Nazi thugs in Swedes’ clothing decide he’s a man who knows too much!
Our award-winning amateur sleuth thinks he’s finally catching a break in the case at the Nobel banquet. Andrew overhears the wife of fellow Nobel honoree Dr. John Garrett (Kevin McCarthy, yet another Team Bartilucci fave) as she mentions seeing a patient at the local sanitarium who looked like Stratman. This leads to more double-crossing Mata Hari antics from Emily, and the movie’s highlight: Andrew is chased at night from the sanitarium to a nudist conference, in a sequence that winks broadly at North by Northwest’s classic auction scene. According to the IMDb, an uncredited young Britt Ekland is in that nudist seminar as well. With so many attractive blondes in the audience, it was hard to tell one from the other. I wonder what Hitchcock would have said? (Perhaps, to quote The Producers, “Ah-woo-wah, ah-woo-ah-wah!”)
Ironically, Newman is more successful as a Hitchcockian hero in The Prize than he was in Hitchcock’s own Torn Curtain (1966), which had its moments, to be sure (like that great farmhouse scene; you’ll never look at your gas oven quite the same way again). But with its action-packed script, great dialogue, and appealing cast, The Prize is simply more fun than Torn Curtain. If you’re somehow listening in the hereafter, Sir Alfred, no offense intended; we still love you and your movies!
These hairbreadth escapes are getting Andrew's goat!
Not only does Newman let his funny flag fly, but he has delightful chemistry with the irresistible Elke Sommer, she of the eminently kissable lips, in one of her earliest big-screen roles. Sommer won a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, and the sultry yet ultimately sweet Diane Baker was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Director Mark Robson had worked with Lehman and Newman earlier in From the Terrace (1960),so I’m not surprised that they worked together so well on The Prize.
Our hero's foe gets the point at Stockholm's Orpheus Fountain
As I mentioned earlier, the other Nobel honorees’ little subplots weave in and out of Andrew’s Hitchcockian hell. In addition to the jealousy charade that Andrew and Denise Marceau pull on Claude Marceau, the Nobel Prize for Medicine gets split as well, since the recipients all came by their findings independently; Dr. Garrett is hell-bent on proving that Italian doc Carlo Farelli (Sergio Fantoni from Luchino Visconti’s Senso) cribbed his research. Farelli brings his aging mother (Grazia Narciso, who guest-starred on Peter Gunn and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, among others) to Stockholm with him, though she seems to be there primarily as a sight gag. Sometimes all these mini-plots result in what Joe Bob Briggs would describe as “the plot getting in the way of the story” but they’re well-acted and entertaining overall.
Elke Sommer wins Golden Globe over nominee Diane Baker. Does that mean blondes really do have more fun?
The Grand Hotel has everything, including half-naked Paul Newman!
This post has been revised and republished as part of theMy Love of Old Hollywood Horseathon, hosted by Page, from May 25 through May 28, 2012. Saddle up, y'all!
After Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian romantic comedy-thriller Charade (1963) became a smash hit, Donen had a decision to make: play it safe and make another film just like it (this was in the days before filmmakers sequel-ed popular films to death, lazily giving them titles like Hit Movie Part 2), or boldly go where he hadn’t gone before? Donen opted for a little of both with Arabesque (1966). Arabesque has just about everything a moviegoer could want in a fun escapist movie: spine-tingling suspense; international intrigue; delightful onscreen romantic chemistry between Oscar-winners Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren (though the Oscars they won weren't for Arabesque; Peck won his Best Actor Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962,while Loren had won her Best Actress Oscar the previous year for Two Women); witty dialogue and sight gags; eye-catching English locations; jazzy Henry Mancini music with autoharps and mandolas providing exotic Middle Eastern-sounding motifs; inventive visuals with a pop art vibe; and the beguiling Sophia in fabulous Christian Dior frocks and footwear, courtesy of the scene-stealing villain played by renowned character actor Alan Badel (Day of the Jackal; This Sporting Life; Children of the Damned) as our heroine's foot-fetishist sugar daddy! What’s not to love?
The eyes have it, and Prof. Ragheed's gonna
get it!
If the delightful Charade was Alfred Hitchcock Lite, then Arabesque is Hitchcock Lite after taking a few classes in James Bond 101, including an opening title sequence by Maurice Binder, who also did the honors for Charade as well as for most of the Bond movies. Gregory Peck plays David Pollack, a hieroglyphics expert and Yank professor at Oxford who finds himself embroiled in Middle Eastern intrigue while decoding the MacGuffin, a cipher (which also happens to be the title of the Gordon Cotler novel which inspired the film, adapted for the silver screen by Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price and Pierre Marton. More about Marton shortly).
Our hero finds himself up against four Arabs who want to know what’s on that cipher:
* Prime Minister Jena (pronounced “Yay-na” and played by Carl Duering), who’s in England on a hush-hush mission;
*Nejim Beshraavi (Badel), the shipping magnate whose ships may be laid up for good if Jena signs a treaty promising to use English and American tankers;
*Yussef Kasim (Kieron Moore of Crack in the World fame, among others), whose penchant for then-hip lingo a la Edd “Kookie” Byrnes on 77 Sunset Strip belies his ruthlessness;
*And last but far from least, Beshraavi’s
In any language, nobody can resist Yasmin!
beautiful, unpredictable lover Yasmin Azir, played by the dazzling, hazel-eyed Loren. She’s sharp, witty, and alluring as all get out in her fabulous Dior wardrobe, including a beaded golden burnoose!
Kieron Moore reads the Arabesque script: "I talk like Kookie and get knocked off how?!"
John Merivale, the character actor who put the "Adrian Messenger" in The List of Adrian Messenger is memorable as Sloane, Beshraavi’s put-upon henchman, who gets a memorably tense opening scene in a doctor’s office with hapless Dr. Ragheed (George Coulouris of Citizen Kane; Murder on the Orient Express; Papillon) and is treated as a combination lackey and punching bag for the rest of the film. I almost—only almost—felt sorry for the guy. Anyway, some of David’s new associates have no qualms about stooping to murder, and soon the chase is on, with suspenseful scenes at the Hyde Park Zoo, Ascot, and a construction site. Our man David is subjected to truth serum and knockouts, and I don’t just mean the lovely Loren: “Everytime I listen to you, someone either hits me over the head or tries to vaccinate me.” Poor David doesn’t know where to turn, especially since he can never be sure whether he can trust the mercurial Yasmin.
The usual ever-so-slightly wooden note in Gregory Peck’s delivery is oddly effective as he tries to loosen up and deliver witticisms in the breezy style of Cary Grant, Donen’s business partner and original choice to play David Pollack. (Rumor has it Grant and Loren were romantically linked once upon a time; wonder if that’s why Grant didn’t take the role?) It helps that those witticisms were written by none other than
If the shoe fits, Beshraavi will have Yasmin wear it!
Charade alumnus Peter Stone under the nom de plume Pierre Marton. Peck may not be Mr. Glib, but he’s so inherently likable (he won his Oscar for playing Atticus Finch, after all. Ask Vinnie, my husband, to do his Gregory-Peck-Impersonating-Cary-Grant impersonation sometime!) and seems so delighted to get an opportunity to deliver bon mots after all his serious roles that he’s downright endearing, like a child trying out new words for the first time. Besides, the bewitching Loren can make any guy look suave and sexy. Badel, looking like a swarthy, polished Peter Sellers wearing cool shades, virtually steals his scenes as the suave-bordering-on-unctuous villain with a foot fetish. Shoe lovers will swoon over the scene with Badel outfitting Loren with a roomful of fancy footwear and a comically/suggestively long shoehorn.
Giddy-up, giddy-up, let's go! Let's vanquish a foe!
Speaking of things of beauty, Christopher Challis’s dazzling, inventive cinematography won him a BAFTA award (the British equivalent of the Oscars), and Christian Dior got a BAFTA nomination for Loren’s elegant costumes. The only thing that disappoints me about Arabesque is that director/producer Donen didn’t seem to like this sparkling, twist-filled adventure as much as our family and so many other movie lovers do. Specifically, he felt the script needed work. In Stephen M. Silverman’s book about Donen’s films, Dancing on the Ceiling, Donen is quoted as saying about Arabesque, “We have to make it so interesting visually that no one will think about it.” Boy, did they ever! In an article about Arabesque on the TCM Web site, Stone had said that Donen “shot it better than he ever shot any picture. Everything was shot as though it were a reflection in a Rolls-Royce headlamp.” I don’t think Donen gave himself or the movie enough credit, though. If you ask me, Arabesque is a perfect example of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best-known quotes:“Some films are slices of life; mine are slices of cake.”Now that Arabesque is finally available on DVD (my own copy is part of Universal’s Gregory Peck Film Collection, a seven-disc DVD set that Vin bought me for Christmas 2011), I wish someone would get Donen and Loren together to do the kind of entertaining, informative commentary Donen did with the late Stone for Criterion’s special-edition Charade DVD, while they’re both still alive and well enough to swap stories, or perhaps even put out a whole new deluxe edition of the film!
Our heroes saddle up for action! Nice horsies!
At Ascot, that's the ticket - to frame our man David Pollock for murder!
Reflections in two sexy spies! (Great F/X work!)
Odd, I don’t usually get hieroglyphics in my
fortune cookies!
Double-cross Beshraavi, and you’re in for a date
with the falcon— and we don’t mean George Sanders!
Miss Plimsoll, won't you join me in a duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside"?
Sir Wilfrid's Monocle Test never fails!
Christine Vole: Hostile Hottie Witness!
Witness for the Prosecution(WftP), another one of my all-time favorite movies,sizzles, sparkles, and surprises from its opening credits in the Old Bailey, to its rollercoaster twists and turns, to its jaw-dropping climax. In fact, one of the things I love about the plot twists of this 1957 thriller is that they play fair with the audience, unlike so many films that don’t care if a twist doesn’t make a lick of sense as long as viewers get a momentary shock, however cheap and sloppily executed. The Billy Wilder Touch adds cynical wit to his sparkling adaptation of Dame Agatha Christie's suspenseful, internationally-beloved courtroom drama with some of the best lines in a Wilder movie since Double Indemnity, thanks to writers Wilder, Harry Kurnitz, and Larry Marcus. Sir Wilfrid’s query about the features of defendant Leonard Vole’s eggbeater, "Is that really desirable?" has become a catchphrase in our household, as well as the title of one of Team Bartilucci's blogs. Indeed, the only thing keeping me from putting WftP on my list of “Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies That Hitchcock Never Made” is the fact that even Hitchcock himself admitted that courtroom dramas weren’t among his considerable strengths or interests.
Talk about powerhouse stars! Charles Laughton plays Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a.k.a. “Wilfrid the Fox,” a brilliant veteran barrister who won’t let his cardiac health issues stand in the way of helping a client beat a murder rap riddled with circumstantial evidence. This adds extra suspense during the trial as the audience nervously wonders if Sir Wilfrid will keel over with a heart attack from the strain of it all! Laughton’s real-life wife Elsa Lanchester is a delightful foil for him as his chipper but no-nonsense nurse Miss Plimsoll. Laughton and Lanchester shine in the most engaging performances of their careers, garnering well-deserved Oscar nominations. (WftP also earned nominations for Best Picture, Billy Wilder's direction, Daniel Mandell's editing, and Gordon Sawyer's sound recording, but it was The Bridge on the River Kwai's year.) The comic sparring chemistry between Sir Wilfrid and Miss Plimsoll, and the playful warmth and understanding that's grown between them by movie's end (like the nice little bit at the very end with Sir Wilfrid actually smiling and putting his arm around Miss Plimsoll), had my husband Vinnie opining that if another movie was made featuring these characters, Miss Plimsoll would probably end up as Mrs. Robarts before it was over. What a delightful series that could have been, kind of like a British Thin Man (okay, so Laughton was chubby; it makes him cuddly!) except that Sir Wilfrid would be the eager crime-stopper while Miss Plimsoll would make a show of tut-tutting until she finally went along with Wilfrid the Fox’s schemes, smiling!
Tyrone Power is the client in question, Leonard Vole (look up “Vole” in the dictionary, and you’ll see how devilishly clever the name really is). An unemployed but likable inventor, Leonard’s a real lady-killer, it seems: he’s accused of murdering rich, lonely, aging widow Emily French for her money. Mrs. French is played by one of my favorite character actresses, Norma Varden (of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, among others); Varden and Power work together beautifully in their scenes, portraying Mrs. French’s sweet-natured longing as funny and poignant at the same time.Speaking of beautiful, Marlene Dietrich is absolutely mesmerizing in both looks and acting talent as Leonard’s German war bride Christine, she of the duplicitous tactics, malleable marriage contract, and unshakable alibi against the gobsmacked Leonard! Is Christine truly the ultimate bitch, or is there more to her agenda? The entertaining flashbacks that Wilder and company deftly weave throughout the film to give it more verve and movement work beautifully, especially in Christine and Leonard’s sexy meet-cute/fall-in-love/dig-those-legs scenes. Dietrich and Power are dynamic in their scenes, whether it’s love or hate or payback time! It's a shame Dietrich’s brilliant, multifaceted performance wasn't nominated for an Oscar as well, on account of the producers not wanting to spoil a certain crucial surprise twist. Tyrone Power's usual ever-so-slightly wooden delivery actually serves him well as defendant Leonard Vole; somehow it adds to his air of feckless innocence. Veteran character actors Henry Daniell, John Williams, Ian Wolfe, and Torin Thatcher provide able support, too, with original Broadway cast member Una O'Connor stealing her scenes as Mrs. French's loyal Scottish housekeeper Janet MacKenzie, who’s suspicious and “antag’nistic” to the beleaguered Leonard. Sadly, WftP was the last film for both O’Connor and Power before they died within a year of each other, but what a memorable swansong they had.
Maybe it’s a British thing, but I was struck by how people took Sir Wilfrid’s cantankerous side in stride. It’s a refreshing change from what Vinnie calls “gas-permeable people” whose overly-fragile feelings are crushed by any response that’s less than 100% sweet and sensitive. I love how nobody takes Sir Wilfrid’s cranky pronouncements to heart, including Miss Plimsoll, who gives as good as she gets, like when she reveals she knows all about the cigars hidden in his cane (not to mention the brandy he’s squirreled away).
I promised Vinnie I’d carry on the great tradition of not revealing the stunning surprise ending of WftP. While you’re at it, don’t blab to your friends, either! I’ll only say I'd have paid good money to see the sequel that the ending implies. The film’s suspenseful surprises were so zealously guarded that when WftP was shown in London for a Royal Command Performance, even the Royal Family had to promise beforehand not to reveal the surprise ending to anyone else! Here's the heads-up:
“Notice! To preserve the secret of the surprise ending, patrons are advised NOT to take their seats during the last few minutes of Witness for the Prosecution.”
Looks like Leonard doesn't have a leg to stand on, but Christine sure does!
“I wish I’d gotten to know her before I fell in love...I could say who’s to blame, say who’s the man in this cautionary tale...." (From "Out of Jail" by They Might Be Giants)I’ve always affectionately joked that Charade was the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made, as those who know me well can attest. Brimming with piquant romance, sophisticated comedy, and stylish suspense—including a soupçon of graphic-for-its-era violence and gore—Stanley Donen’s 1963 romantic comedy-thriller is a thoroughly entertaining object lesson in why it’s so important for people to really get to know their sweeties before marrying them. Case in point: Charade’s heroine Regina “Reggie” Lampert (Audrey Hepburn). Reggie, a beautiful young American simultaneous translator in Paris, quit her job at E.U.R.E.S.C.O. after marrying the rich and mysterious Charles Lampert—but he’s turning out to be too mysterious for comfort. When we meet Reggie, she’s vacationing in Megeve’s lovely French Alps resort, but it’s no pleasure trip. She’s suffering from buyer’s remorse — or more accurately, bridal remorse — and seriously contemplating divorce. As she sadly admits to her friend Sylvie (Dominique Minot), “I’ve tried to make it work, really I have.…But with Charles, everything is secrecy and lies. He’s hiding something from me, Sylvie, something terrible — and it frightens me.” Witty byplay with a handsome older gent who introduces himself as Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) perks things up before Reggie returns home to Paris.
Reggie in disguise, with glasses!
But her homecoming is a rude awakening: Reggie is utterly gobsmacked to find their apartment is completely bare, and Charles has been murdered! On top of that, three men unknown to her turn up at Charles’s very sparsely-attended funeral. One of them, Tex Penthollow (James Coburn), holds a mirror to Charles’s open casket to see if he’s breathing. The second, Leopold W. Gideon (Ned Glass, who also played opposite Grant in North by Northwest as the suspicious Grand Central Terminal ticket agent) sneezes violently over Charles’s casket. (Sylvie dryly notes, “He must have known Charles pretty well…he’s allergic to him.”) The third mourner is an angry, imposing fella named Herman Scobie (George Kennedy) with a bad attitude and a metal prosthetic claw. He storms into the church and confirms Charles’s deceased state by plunging a pin into his corpse, to the shock of both Reggie and Sylvie.
Reggie's a Truthful Whitefoot, with a white dress to match!
"Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"
With oranges like these, who needs apples?
Turns out Charles was living a double life—a quadruple life, really, considering he had 4 passports under 4 different names. But that’s only the beginning; self-described American Embassy “desk jockey” Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) reveals that Charles was a wanted man! He and the other “mourners” had fought in World War 2 together, going behind enemy lines to deliver $250,000 in gold to the French underground. Instead, they stole the gold but got ambushed by the Nazis, which is how Scobie got a claw where his hand used to be. Charles escaped with the $250 grand and had managed to elude his former comrades until now. The bewildered, vulnerable yet determined Reggie is the gang’s only lead, if they don’t get fed up and kill her first. There’s one scene where Tex corners Reggie in a phone booth at the Black Sheep Club (oranges never looked so sexy or funny!), torturing our hapless heroine by dropping lit matches on her dress as she brushes them off, screaming and sobbing. It’s always made me want to write a scene (if someone hasn’t beat me to it) in which the heroine has just enough room to knee her tormentor in the groin, snapping, “I saw that movie, too!”Peter catches up with Reggie in Paris and offers to help her out with the fix she’s in. His playful hard-to-get routine is catnip to her, and she’s falling in love…until she finds out the guy has as many aliases as Charles did. Boy, Reggie sure can pick ’em! Bartholomew wants to take advantage of Reggie’s mystery man by encouraging her to play nice with Peter — or is it Alex? Adam? — and see what he’s up to. Who can she trust, and how can she keep all those names straight? Her life becomes a case of “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” as the crooks and Peter/Alex/Adam/Whatever His Name Is moves into Reggie’s small hotel, where comedy, suspense, murder, and paranoid gallows humor also set up light housekeeping.
Charade is the movie that made me a fan of both Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone. In fact, I actually saw Charade long before I ever saw any of Donen’s classic musicals. He has fun with Charade’s Hitchcockian aspects, such as the clever corpse-eye-view shot involving a morgue drawer. Every other line of Stone’s screenplay is sparklingly quotable, and Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are among my favorite screen couples. It’s a pity they didn’t have more opportunities to team up onscreen together during their long careers. My family and I have always loved the wry way that Grant, then 59, and Hepburn, then 34, kidded the age difference between them. That was more or less Grant’s idea, according to Donen and Stone on the superb Criterion Collection DVD’s delightful, anecdote-rich commentary track. Grant was concerned that it would be unseemly for a man his age to be chasing a beautiful woman so much younger than him, so he convinced the filmmakers to make Hepburn’s character the romantic aggressor. Personally, I found this gambit to be quite charming, and it makes sense for Reggie’s trusting, romantic, impulsive personality.
Will Reggie and Peter/Alex/Adam live happily and frivolously ever after?
In fact, Audrey Hepburn had the most remarkable knack for being glamorous yet approachable; she was one of the most endearing glamour-pusses in movie history. James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Walter Matthau are in top form in their early pre-Oscar screen roles. Both Hepburn and Paris look their sophisticated best here; let’s face it, Audrey was born to wear Givenchy!Charade’s driving opening theme is my favorite piece of Henry Mancini music (the Pink Panther theme comes a very close second). In fact, the whole score reflects the film’s many moods perfectly. Without giving too much away, I love the clever MacGuffin, too; those who aren’t as into philately as my stepdad may have a new respect for stamp-collecting after watching Charade!
"It begins with an ancient warning. It ends at the edge of Niagara Falls. In between there are 5 murders. Solve the mystery. Or die trying."
Harry DOES believe in spooks!
The poster for Jonathan Demme’s 1979 thriller Last Embrace grabbed me during its release in 1979! The multi-Oscar-winner The Silence of the Lambs was Demme's first major suspense thriller, but it wasn’t the first film he’d made in that genre. That honor goes to Demme’s 1979 thriller Last Embrace(LE), which I first saw and loved during its original theatrical run.
Despite the romantic beginning, Last Embrace means business! Poor Harry and Dorothy Hannan should've gone to Westworld instead!
At the time, LE was touted as a romantic Hitchcockian thriller. While LE definitely has strong elements of Vertigo and other Hitchcock classics, I’ve always considered it to be more of a paranoia thriller with film noir touches, which, as a friend quipped, perhaps makesLE
a kind of “film shachor.” Roy Scheider, cool and craggy yet suave, had long been one of our family’s favorite tough-guy actors. At first glance, he might not seem vulnerable enough to be convincing as a beleaguered paranoia film hero. However, Scheider proved to be perfect casting as Harry Hannan, a government agent with more baggage than Louis Vuitton. Harry is still heartbroken and guilt-ridden about his beloved wife, Dorothy (Sandy McLeod from Romancing the Stone, and Demme's Something Wild), getting killed while she accompanied him as cover on one of his assignments. After he spends time in a Connecticut sanitarium recovering from his nervous breakdown, Harry has barely had a chance to lose his institutional pallor when he’s almost shoved in front of an express train. When he returns to his spy agency in New York City, his slippery spymaster Eckart (Christopher Walken from Pulp Fiction; Oscar winner for The Deer Hunter; and Oscar nominee for Catch Me If You Can; and so much more!) keeps him at arm’s length. Maybe Eckart thinks Harry’s sharp cream-colored suit makes him too conspicuous for undercover work. Worst of all, Harry discovers he’s one of several Jewish men getting death threats written in Biblical Hebrew from an unknown “Avenger of Blood”…and so far, he’s the only one still alive!
Don't mess with New York commuters, especially spies!
Everyone scoffs at poor Harry’s jitters. Who can he trust? Certainly not his brother-in-law (Charles Napier from The Blues Brothers; Melvin and Howard; the animated TV sitcom The Critic), a fellow spook who blames Harry for his sister Dorothy's violent death: “You’re careless with people, Harry.” I think it's safe to say holiday dinners at the Hannan household are tense at best! Our hero eventually joins forces with Ellie Fabian (Janet Margolin from David and Lisa; Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run; Annie Hall). Ellie is a pretty New York grad student who sublet his apartment while he was in the sanitarium. But the vulnerable Ellie seems to have her own issues and secrets. Will that spell doom for both Ellie and Harry? And how does a turn-of-the-20th-century Jewish brothel figure in the sinister fix Harry has found himself in?
"Next time, we're taking the bus!"
Scheider and Margolin had fine chemistry together; their characters’ sensitivity and wariness made me feel for them, and they even had playful moments along the way. Ms. Margolin was at her loveliest, too. (Sadly, she died of ovarian cancer in 1993 at the age of 50. Janet, we hardly knew ye.) Scheider, Margolin, and Walken are aided and abetted by a rogues’ gallery of stellar New York character actors, including John Glover as Ellie’s insecure professor boyfriend; Marcia Rodd as Harry’s nervous agency contact; David Margulies (best known to Team Bartilucci as the Mayor of New York City in Ghostbusters, and Michael Caine's psychiatrist colleague in Dressed to Kill) as a rabbi with connections; Joe Spinell and actor/director Jim McBride as thugs; Captain Arthur Haggerty as a bouncer waiting to use the phone;Mandy Patinkin and Max Wright in bit parts as commuters who may or may not have some ’splainin’ to do; and one of my very favorite character actors, scene-stealerSam Levene (from After the Thin Man; The Killers; Crossfire; The Mad Miss Manton) as the crotchety but likable head of a secret Jewish society; and director Demme himself cameo-ing as a stranger on a train.
As Sam Urdell, Sam Levene can still give any stranger on a train what-for!
Either the milkman is a lousy speller, or Harry's getting death threats in Hebrew!
It's Christopher Walken, yes indeed, as Harry's spymaster!
No spy work for Harry? At least they can enjoy a few bars of "Singin' In The Rain!
Super Harry leaps over the sidewalks of New York in a single bound!
Wine thing, you make Harry's heart sing! Is Ellie dressed to kill, or what?
In the bell tower, bells are ringing for me and my prey!
Those Blues Brothers are driving me crazy!
Some critics complained that despite Demme’s obvious affection for the Hitchcockian material, LE could have used more of The Master of Suspense’s zest, wit, and verve. I won’t deny that the pace slows down at times, but with Roy Scheider at his peak and Janet Margolin’s touching, multifaceted performance, I was willing to be patient. Demme and screenwriter David Shaber (adapting Murray Teigh Bloom’s novel The 13th Man) make up for the film’s flaws with plenty of appealingly quirky Demme-style characterization. Judaism’s key role in LE’s plot was fresh and intriguing, as well as making excellent use of an elaborate, well-crafted red herring. The settings contribute to the film’s Demme-ness; his ace Director of Photography Tak Fujimoto really makes the New York City and Princeton, NJ locations integral to the plot and its Hitchcockian motifs, especially the bell tower sequence and an exciting climax at Niagara Falls (I can hear you making lewd jokes). The film brims with only-in-New-York characters and situations; for instance, the competition for living space in Manhattan provides amusing undertones to Harry’s first awkward encounters with Ellie, kind of like The More, The Merrier with edgy film noir trimmings. Miklos Rozsa’s swooningly romantic yet forboding score pulls together the film’s emotional undercurrents beautifully. Between Last Embrace and Still of the Night, if I’d been Roy Scheider, I’d have stayed out of Central Park and environs for fear of elusive assailants! If anyone knows of a soundtrack for Miklos Rozsa's Last Embrace, let me know, won't you?
Harry and Ellie fall in love -- but can love last when the girl of your dreams has a centuries-old vendetta?
Can this romance be saved, or will their love be on the rocks?
