Blame it on James! The success of the Bond franchise had the studios casting about for their own super spy piece of the action and some really bad films were made as a result, like Dean Martin's Matt Helm, James Coburn's Flint and this U. K. made big budget feature directed by the heretofore highbrow Joseph Losey and starring his usual prestigious leading man, Dirk Bogarde. Obviously these film makers felt they couldn't beat 007 for thrills, gadgets, tough masculinity and laconic humour so instead they went, in their own slightly different ways for high camp, cheap laughs, gaudy pop-art sets and unhumorous knowing in-jokes.
I really wanted to like this movie but it gave me nothing to like. As a Brit, I can vaguely remember the Modesty Blaine newspaper comic strip but this day-glo disaster seemed to bear no resemblance to it at all. Here the heroine, played coquettishly by Monica Vitti sports different hairdos and clothing almost every day, seems to fall quite easily into the villains' clutches and relies far too much on her looks to fool her male protagonists. Her faithful sidekick Willie Garvin is played by the rising Terence Stamp who has obviously been told to bring his broadest Cockney accent and not much else to the set. To think he turned down the starring role in "Alfie" for this.
It starts off well actually with the explosive death of an obvious Bond-type agent, leaving the field clear for Blaine to save the day but from there, the excitement peters out, there are no memorable set-piece action sequences, the humour is dreadfully forced and unamusing and there's no sexual allure from any of the leads. It runs on for two hours over a silly plot to steal back diamonds with not even a world-threatening megalomaniac to stir things up. Bogarde for some reason sports an albino wig in an over-the-top effete performance surrounded by hunky young men in crisp white shorts or sporting hunky naked torsos.
Here are just three lowlight embarrassing scenes each of which will curl your toes so much you'll never wear shoes again, one where a female baddie kills off a mime artist who begs for mercy in dumb-show fashion, another where Bogarde for some reason literally flips his wig and lastly when Vitti and Stamp start singing an impromptu duet, trust me, Sonny and Cher they're not.
With a bloated, all over the place finish involving lots of Arabs, boats and horses, it really is an unholy mess of a movie and I can think of only two minor redeeming features, the catchy pop title song, although it's flogged to death from first to last and some of the Bridget Riley-type pop-art interiors.
A film with a lot to be modest about.
I really wanted to like this movie but it gave me nothing to like. As a Brit, I can vaguely remember the Modesty Blaine newspaper comic strip but this day-glo disaster seemed to bear no resemblance to it at all. Here the heroine, played coquettishly by Monica Vitti sports different hairdos and clothing almost every day, seems to fall quite easily into the villains' clutches and relies far too much on her looks to fool her male protagonists. Her faithful sidekick Willie Garvin is played by the rising Terence Stamp who has obviously been told to bring his broadest Cockney accent and not much else to the set. To think he turned down the starring role in "Alfie" for this.
It starts off well actually with the explosive death of an obvious Bond-type agent, leaving the field clear for Blaine to save the day but from there, the excitement peters out, there are no memorable set-piece action sequences, the humour is dreadfully forced and unamusing and there's no sexual allure from any of the leads. It runs on for two hours over a silly plot to steal back diamonds with not even a world-threatening megalomaniac to stir things up. Bogarde for some reason sports an albino wig in an over-the-top effete performance surrounded by hunky young men in crisp white shorts or sporting hunky naked torsos.
Here are just three lowlight embarrassing scenes each of which will curl your toes so much you'll never wear shoes again, one where a female baddie kills off a mime artist who begs for mercy in dumb-show fashion, another where Bogarde for some reason literally flips his wig and lastly when Vitti and Stamp start singing an impromptu duet, trust me, Sonny and Cher they're not.
With a bloated, all over the place finish involving lots of Arabs, boats and horses, it really is an unholy mess of a movie and I can think of only two minor redeeming features, the catchy pop title song, although it's flogged to death from first to last and some of the Bridget Riley-type pop-art interiors.
A film with a lot to be modest about.