Showing posts with label Audrey Hepburn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Audrey Hepburn. Show all posts
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| Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn |
Nicole (Audrey Hepburn) lives in a big house in Paris with her father, Bonnet (Hugh Griffith of Craze), who forges paintings and sculptures and sells them to the highest bidder. Now Bonnet has agreed to lend a phony Cellini statue to a museum, which Nicole warns him is a mistake. It sure is -- the statue has to be authenticated for insurance purposes and it is sure to be exposed as a fake, which will also ruin Bonnet's reputation and call into question every sale he ever made. Nicole decides to steal the statue before the inspection can take place, and enlists the aid of a burglar, Simon (Peter O'Toole of The Ruling Class), that she caught apparently trying to steal one of her father's paintings. There's an undeniable attraction between the two, but can they actually steal the sculpture from such a heavily guarded museum ... ? Although director William Wyler [The Heiress, The Letter, Carrie, four star movies all] wasn't exactly a suspense specialist and was an odd choice for this assignment, he had worked with Audrey Hepburn more than once, and the film still has entertainment value, although it's hardly one of Wyler's best. Hepburn gives another terrific performance, matched by O'Toole, Griffith, and Eli Wallach as a suitor and art collector. Charles Boyer is fine in a brief bit as a colleague of Simon's. Bonnet is in many ways a reprehensible character with no true appreciation of art or artists when you get right down to it. Wyler directed Funny Girl after this, another odd choice.
Verdict: Light and fun if minor. ***.
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| Alone in the dark with a killer |
Blind Susy Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn) is unaware that some men who have come to her apartment pretending to either be friends of her husband or police officers are actually crooks looking for a drug-filled doll that a woman handed off to Susy's unsuspecting husband, Sam (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Gradually she realizes that something is wrong, and prepares to fight for her life when the gentlemen come back from a wild goose chase she's sent them on. The main trouble with Wait Until Dark -- which was based on a stage play by Frederick Knott (Dial M for Murder) -- is that the suspense is minimal because the audience is clued in to what's going on from the very beginning. Hepburn gives a very good performance and the rest of the surprisingly C List cast are fine, although Alan Arkin seems about as threatening as Boris Badenov. Julie Herrod is excellent as the neighbor child Gloria who is alternately helpful and bratty. Henry Mancini's score does what it can to increase the limited excitement. It's hard to figure why Arkin and Crenna were billed above the title along with Hepburn.
SPOILER ALERT: Susy has been encouraged by her husband to be as independent as possible despite her blindness, which leads to two problematical developments. We already know she can walk by herself to her husband's office, so instead of barricading herself in her apartment, why doesn't she just leave and ask for someone to help her get to the nearest precinct? [St. Luke's Place where this takes place runs right into Seventh Avenue and the men watching her place have gone off on the wild goose chase.] At the very end when Sam sees her bloodied and huddled by the refrigerator, he waits for her to get up and make her way towards him, but surely in a situation like this he would forget his independence edict and go hug the woman he's supposed to be in love with after such an ordeal? Also, in a moment that made some nervous nellies in the audience jump in fright, Alan Arkin leaps out of the darkness at Susy after he's been stabbed and falls to the ground unconscious. Maybe he might have been able to painfully lurch after her, but leap? The moment is ludicrous instead of startling.
Verdict: If you want to see a better Frederick Knott adaptation watch Dial M for Murder instead. **.
Spoto doesn't spend too much time detailing the terrible childhood and awful privations Belgium-born Hepburn suffered during the Nazi occupation of Arnhem before we're off exploring her rapid rise to stardom and her many memorable film roles. Originally trained to be a dancer, Hepburn's deportment and good looks earned her the title role in the play Gigi and many accolades from the critics of the day, although Hepburn thought she was still learning how to act throughout the lengthy run. [Whether or not she was disappointed that the role of Gigi went to Leslie Caron in the big-screen musical adaptation, Spoto doesn't say.] She had already had a good role in the British film Secret People, but now found herself working with such famed directors as William Wyler and Billy Wilder and such actors as William Holden, with whom she had a brief affair, and Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire, who were not always easy to work with. She was most often paired with much, much older men, such as Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck, and later, Cary Grant in Charade. She won an Oscar, had what she considered her greatest role in The Nun's Story [befriending the real-life nun and the book's author, who apparently were a long-time lesbian couple], and "stole" the role of Eliza Doolittle from Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady where she spent hours on singing lessons only to learn Marni Nixon had already dubbed all of her songs. Although Hepburn wasn't much different from other actresses in that she had affairs even while married to actor Mel Ferrer [who directed her in Green Mansions and appeared in such films as Born to Be Bad and Eaten Alive, not to mention a solid role on Falcon Crest], Spoto treads lightly, as if not wanting to spoil her image; he's very tough on Ferrer, however. Hepburn left films to become a full-time wife and mother, made a few movies of varying quality some years later [Robin and Marian; Bloodline], then had perhaps her most fulfilling role as a hands-on goodwill ambassador for Unicef, flying on military planes to such desperately hungry nations as Ethiopia and witnessing the starvation and its effects first-hand. She had two disappointing marriages, but found some happiness with companion Robert Wolders in her final years before succumbing to cancer. Enchantment is a good read, fast-paced, well-researched, and makes it clear that movie stardom is not always a recipe for lasting happiness.
Verdict: Solid and very readable biography. ***.