ARABESQUE

I have to confess that I struggled to get through this 1966 comedy spy thriller, and my attention was increasingly going AWOL as it went on.

It’s directed by Stanley Donen as the follow-up to his successful effort in the same genre in 1963, ‘Charade’.  That film is set in Paris, stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, as well as a strong supporting cast, and has an entertaining plot.  Donen, who is best known as a director of musicals, was able to take these ingredients and make them into a charming soufflé of a film.

In the case of 'Arabesque' the ingredients are less promising: we have Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren with not much by way of a supporting cast, and a plot which most critics found confusing.  The end result for me was less a soufflé, more like a rubbery omelette.

Cary Grant turned the project down which suggests he knows a bad script when he sees one.  He may also have wondered whether he would have made a convincing professor of Egyptology (spoiler alert: he wouldn't).  Although Gregory Peck is more professorial he lacks the comic timing required for the part, although to be fair the dialogue is so uninspired even Grant might have struggled with it.

There’s a cringeworthy scene early on where Loren’s character is obliged to stand naked in a shower cubicle where Peck’s character is hiding (fully dressed).  

Also not great are the plethora of white actors playing Arab characters, notable Alan Badel giving a bizarre performance as a Bond-like villain.

The influences of Bond and the Swinging Sixties are all over this film, with its predilection for strange camera angles and the combination of mirrors and lighting at every opportunity.  It looks great in a garish psychedelic way, but this doesn't compensate for the film's deficiencies, such as the convoluted plot.

The odd interesting sequence jumps out of the general morass, such as a bad guy using a wrecking ball to good effect, the use of a combine harvester as a weapon, and a spectacular helicopter crash at the end.

But these moments are not nearly enough.

RATING: x Curb Your Enthusiasm