Movie Review: Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Arabesque (1966)

Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren make an attractive couple in Arabesque, 1966.

It looks like the sight of Sophia Loren about to take a shower is giving Gregory Peck heart palpitations. Which is understandable.

Gregory Peck on the set of Arabesque. In case you weren't aware, this picture should let you know that Gregory Peck was seriously handsome. This picture is on the cover of the book Icons of Men's Style.

The director Stanley Donen imitated many of Alfred Hitchcock’s trademarks in his 1963 film Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Three years later, Donen would borrow liberally from the elements of Charade in his movie Arabesque, starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. According to IMDB, Peck’s role was written with Cary Grant in mind. Like Charade, Arabesque is a thriller where things are not quite what they seem. Peck plays Professor David Pollock, an expert in hieroglyphics. At the beginning of the film, we see him lecture about hieroglyphics, and it feels a bit like The Da Vinci Code. But fortunately, there are no scenes in Arabesque where the plot comes to a screeching halt as someone explains something to us in great detail. Arabesque opens with a murder in an optometrist’s office, and there are plenty of tricky camera angles throughout the movie, as we are constantly looking into mirrors and through prisms. I greatly enjoyed all of the camera trickery, as it made Arabesque more interesting to watch.

Arabesque also borrows from Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, as Peck plays an ordinary man caught up in a plot to kill a prime minister of an Arab nation. North By Northwest is echoed at the beginning of the movie, as Peck is forcibly shoved in the prime minister’s car while jogging, which echoes Cary Grant’s kidnapping at the beginning of Northwest. Other references to Northwest include Peck being given a shot of truth serum and then dumped out onto a highway. Feeling drunk, Peck first thinks he’s a matador and the cars are bulls, but he eventually commandeers a bicycle and gets away safely. This sequence is an homage/rip-off of the scene in North By Northwest where Grant is forcibly intoxicated by James Mason’s hoodlums and dumped in a Mercedes-Benz convertible along a twisting road near jagged cliffs. Of course, Grant also gets away safely. At the end of Arabesque, Donen stages his own version of the famous crop-duster scene from Northwest, as Peck and Sophia Loren have to crawl around while being chased by sharp and pointy farm implements. 

Unfortunately for Donen, Arabesque can’t hold a candle to North By Northwest. Gregory Peck does his best with the light comedy of the script, but as you watch, you can’t help but feel that Cary Grant would have done it better. It’s unfair to compare Peck to Grant, as Peck was not a comedic actor, and Grant was one of the greatest light comedic actors the movies have ever seen. But because Arabesque so blatantly copies other films starring Grant, the comparison is inevitable. 

Peck and Sophia Loren don’t have a lot of chemistry together, which also hurts the movie. She plays a mysterious woman whom Peck meets at the house of a businessman named Beshraavi, played by Alan Badel, who seems to be impersonating Peter Sellers. Peck has been hired by Beshraavi to decipher a code. However, it soon becomes obvious that Beshraavi is going to kill Peck as soon as he finishes deciphering the code. So Peck hides out in Loren’s bathroom as she takes a shower-which I read as a nod to the scene in Charade where Cary Grant takes a shower with all of his clothes on. Like Charade, where the audience and Audrey Hepburn are constantly wondering whose side Cary Grant is on, the audience of Arabesque and Gregory Peck are wondering whose side Sophia Loren is on. (Spoiler alert for Charade: of course Cary Grant’s the good guy! Duh! Cary Grant is ALWAYS the good guy!)

Sophia Loren looks gorgeous, which is pretty much all that the role requires her to do. For his part, Peck looks very handsome and dashing at age 49 and the grey in his hair just makes him look more distinguished, as though he really needed to look more distinguished. Looking distinguished was what Gregory Peck did all day, every day. 

Arabesque isn’t a great film, but it’s an enjoyable enough movie if you’re looking for a 1960’s Hitchcock-lite trifle.

The Films of Warren Beatty-"Lilith," starring Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, and Peter Fonda (1964)

Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg in "Lilith," 1964. Could they be any prettier?

This is a totally appropriate patient/mental health assistant relationship. Just some good, wholesome frolicking in the barn. Nothing could go wrong here.

Peter Fonda and Jean Seberg.

Warren Beatty’s fourth movie was the psychological drama Lilith, released in 1964 and co-starring the lovely Jean Seberg in the title role. Once again, Lilith sees Beatty acting in his James Dean-influenced mumbly/confused/sensitive/angry young man mode, which he had now done in 3 of his first 4 movies. (See also, Splendor in the Grass and All Fall Down.) Lilith is another Tennessee Williams-influenced psychodrama with all of the standard elements-heavy Freudian overtones, overheated sexuality, madness, etc. (See also, Splendor in the Grass, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, -which was actually written by Williams, and All Fall Down.) 

In Lilith, Beatty plays Vincent Bruce, a veteran who goes back to his hometown and doesn’t quite know what to do. It’s implied that he saw combat in the military, but since the movie is set in the present time of 1964 and isn’t a period piece-i.e., set right after World War II or Korea, that must mean that he was a “military advisor” in Vietnam, although it’s never specified where he served. Anyway, Vincent decides to go to Poplar Lodge, a private mental institution, and ask for a job. He interviews with Dr. Brice (Kim Hunter) and gets a job there as an assistant. Vincent quickly becomes a confidant of Stephen, a sensitive young man played by Peter Fonda, in one of his first film roles. Stephen has a crush on Lilith, (Jean Seberg) an attractive young female patient who seldom leaves her room. Vincent is able to gain the trust of Lilith, and she agrees to accompany some of the other patients on a picnic once she learns that Vincent is going along too. Before long, Lilith develops a major crush on Vincent. Which typically might be kind of a problem, except it’s not a problem at Poplar Lodge.

The psychiatrist who runs Poplar Lodge is impressed that Vincent is able to draw Lilith out of her shell, and during a conference about her case asks Vincent, “Do you think she’s trying to seduce you?” Vincent answers, in his mumbly way, “Possibly, but it seems like more than that.” The psychiatrist then asks, “Do you ever feel inclined to accept?” Vincent responds yes. And so, instead of maybe, you know, suggesting that young, fit, super-handsome Vincent possibly spend less time unsupervised with young, stunningly beautiful Lilith, the psychiatrist just lets it go. (“Gee, maybe we should keep Warren Beatty away from the female patients…”) I guess he’s just happy that Lilith is engaging with the world more. Vincent and Lilith go on a bunch of what are basically all-day dates, and Lilith starts engaging with the world a lot more when Vincent makes love with her in a field.

Vincent doesn’t seem to be terribly conflicted about starting a relationship with Lilith, which could be a sign that he’s not in the right job. But they continue to go on a bunch of dates, including one to a proto-Renaissance Festival, complete with jousting contest-won by Vincent, of course. Vincent eventually figures out that Lilith is kind of a nymphomaniac, since she goes off to make out with another female patient in a barn, and says creepy things to little boys she meets when they’re out in public. But that doesn’t seem to change his feelings towards her. 

A couple of times during the movie Vincent sees his ex-girlfriend, Laura, around town. Laura is a very pretty brunette with striking eyes. When I saw her on screen I thought to myself, “Wow, that actress is really attractive, who is she?” Well, as I learned on imdb after watching the movie, Laura was played by Jessica Walter in her first film role. Walter is probably best known for playing abusive matriarch Lucille Bluth on “Arrested Development.” What? Young Lucille Bluth was hot? Yeah, she was. And Laura’s husband is played by a super-young, but still not that young-looking Gene Hackman, also in his first credited movie role. Hackman is terrific in his one scene with Beatty, and he definitely steals the scene from Warren, who is underacting as much as humanly possible. Fortunately, Beatty remembered working with Hackman on Lilith when he was casting Bonnie & Clyde, and cast Hackman in his breakout role as Clyde’s brother. Once Hackman leaves to go to a meeting, Laura says to Vincent, “You know how I told you I’d only really let you make love to me once I was married? Well, I’m married now.” Surprisingly, Vincent just leaves, marking this as one of the only occasions that Warren Beatty turned down sex.

Lilith is an interesting movie, and it’s well-directed by Robert Rossen, who also helmed All the King’s Men, and The Hustler. (One of his lesser films was Alexander the Great, starring Richard Burton wearing a terrible blonde wig, which I reviewed many years ago here.) Jean Seberg, the Iowa-born beauty who became a darling of the French New Wave, thanks to her performance in Breathless, gives a wonderful performance as Lilith, bringing just the right amount of vulnerability and sensuality to the part. Seberg was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Lilith, losing out to Anne Bancroft for her excellent performance in The Pumpkin Eater. Sadly, the coming years would take a terrible toll on Seberg, as her anti-Vietnam War activism caused her to become a target of the FBI. The FBI set out on a campaign to embarrass Seberg, and they spread the rumor in 1970 that she was carrying the child of a prominent member of the Black Panthers. The rumor was false, but it was repeated in publications like Newsweek, and Seberg went into premature labor and her child died two days later. She sued Newsweek for libel and won. Tragically, Seberg would take her own life, overdosing on pills in 1979 at the age of 40. It was a sad end for a remarkably talented and beautiful actress.

The problem with Lilith, for me, was Warren Beatty. Vincent is a very dull character-if he weren’t played by someone as handsome as Beatty, there’s no way anyone would be interested in him. I think the character of Vincent is left extremely ambiguous-and maybe that’s the point, but for me there was too much ambiguity and not enough clarity. You never really know what Vincent is thinking. Maybe the key to Vincent is that he’s going crazy throughout the course of the movie. But if that’s the key, I think that point could have been made much better.  I think the character was poorly written, and I think Beatty was miscast in the role and didn’t do a good job. Vincent is a tricky role to play, because he’s so ambiguously written, and I think Beatty never decided how he wanted to play it. Vincent is also extremely inarticulate, even without Beatty’s mumbling and pregnant pauses and hesitant speech. Vincent’s inability to articulate anything is a problem, because Warren Beatty is above all a great talker. All of his best roles are charmers who talk a lot-so when he’s stuck with a role like Vincent, he’s wasted in the part.  

Another major problem with the movie for me is how easily Vincent oversteps his professional boundaries and starts a relationship with Lilith. The fact that Vincent tells the psychiatrist that he might have sex with Lilith and no one does anything to prevent this from happening is just wrong. I know it’s an integral part of the movie, but it’s just such a terrible decision both morally and ethically. Vincent is supposedly to be helping Lilith, not having a romantic relationship with her. He’s abusing his power by having a relationship with her.

Behind the scenes, Lilith was a very difficult shoot, and director Rossen was in failing health. Lilith was his last movie, and he died in 1966, just a year and a half after Lilith was released. During pre-production, Rossen and Beatty were on very good terms. As Peter Biskind writes in his Beatty biography, “Rossen welcomed Beatty’s participation on Lilith, treating him more like a friend and collaborator than an actor for hire. He involved him in script revisions and casting.” (Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, by Peter Biskind, p.60) Natalie Wood, who had just ended her relationship with Beatty, turned down the part of Lilith. Beatty toured Europe trying to find actresses to play Lilith, eventually suggesting Jean Seberg, who was living in Paris. Seberg accepted the part, and later said it was her favorite role of her career. 

In an article written for Cahiers du Cinema in 1967, Jean Seberg wrote of the relationship between Beatty and Rossen: “At the outset, Rossen and he had a relationship which was strangely fraternal, very intimate, very like accomplices, even. Oddly, this relationship of intimacy stopped at the first day of filming, and from then on, it did nothing but deteriorate more and more.” (Biskind, p.60) What caused the relationship to change? No one seems to know for sure. But it seems clear that Beatty’s deliberateness and his habit of asking a million questions on the set annoyed Rossen to no end. Maybe the problem was that Rossen thought that Beatty should know how to play the part once filming began, whereas Beatty was expecting more of a continuing dialogue throughout filming about the part-which is the kind of relationship he had with Elia Kazan. One story from the set is that Beatty asked Rossen the stereotypical actor’s question, “What’s my motivation?” Rossen yelled back, “Your goddamn paycheck!” (Warren Beatty: A Private Man, by Suzanne Finstad, p.303) Beatty himself said of Rossen, “I saw he wasn’t making a good picture and told him so, which did not endear me to him.” (Finstad, p.303) Well, that would piss anyone off. Beatty also told the film critic Judith Crist that he had tried to quit the production of Lilith, and when the producers wouldn’t allow him to leave the movie; he deliberately stopped trying to act and gave a bad performance. (Finstad, p.304) I tend to believe this story, since Beatty’s performance is so lifeless. It’s a terrible thing for Beatty to have done, and despite thinking that he was getting back at Rossen, he was also wrecking his own career by sabotaging his performance. Jean Seberg wrote to a friend during filming, “Warren Beatty’s behavior is just unbelievable. He’s out to destroy everyone, including himself.” (Biskind, p.61) 

 Lilith opened to lukewarm reviews and an indifferent box office in October, 1964. When filming began in April, 1963, Beatty hadn’t worked on a film in almost a year and a half, and when Lilith was released movie audiences hadn’t seen him since All Fall Down, which had opened 2 ½ years earlier. Beatty had turned down many movies in between All Fall Down and Lilith, including PT 109, the story of President John F. Kennedy’s World War II experiences. Just before agreeing to make Lilith, Beatty was almost set to start filming Youngblood Hawke, but he never signed his contract for the movie and was fired by Jack Warner. Beatty’s next few movies after Lilith were not successful either. His star would continue to dim in Hollywood, and it looked like he might be a one-hit wonder.

Movie Review: Jane Fonda in "Barbarella" (1968)

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968.

This is the picture you find if you look up "sex kitten" in the dictionary.

Another tough day at work for director Roger Vadim.

1968’s campy sci-fi flick “Barbarella,” starring Jane Fonda at her most radiant, is one of the odder movies I’ve seen. I’d heard about the movie for a long time, in particular the famous opening scene where Fonda performs a sexy zero-gravity striptease. The opening titles cleverly scramble around to protect Fonda’s modesty as she strips naked, but we do see her breasts in several shots. And then we still see her breasts, even after she puts on clothes 10 minutes into the movie. When “Barbarella” was re-released in theaters in 1977, it was given the subtitle: “Queen of the Galaxy,” but I think a more apropos subtitle would have been: “Jane Fonda’s Boobs.” 

There’s nothing that can quite prepare you for actually watching “Barbarella,” and all of the silliness that transpires during its 98 minute running time. If you want to see a movie where famous mime Marcel Marceau actually has a speaking role, you’ve come to the right place. However, that’s not the reason most people saw “Barbarella.” The real reason is how unbelievably hot Jane Fonda was in 1968, and all the sexy costumes she’s almost wearing in the movie. 

“Barbarella” was based on a French science-fiction comic about a sexy female astronaut, and was directed by Fonda’s then-husband Roger Vadim. Vadim was most famous for directing his first wife, Brigitte Bardot, in her breakthrough performance “And God Created Woman” in 1956. Vadim earned the envy of every straight man on earth during the 1950’s and 60’s thanks to his marriages to Bardot and Fonda. Oh, and in between his marriages to Bardot and Fonda, he romanced Catherine Deneuve, which officially qualified him for the “Luckiest Bastard Ever” award. For obvious reasons, Vadim titled his 1986 autobiography “Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World.” 

The plot of “Barbarella” is really secondary, but it involves Barbarella carrying out a mission for the President of Earth. Barbarella is supposed to find the missing scientist Durand Durand, who has invented a “positronic ray.” (Yup, that’s where the 80’s British band Duran Duran got their name.) In this future setting, no one on Earth has any need for any weapons, as peace and harmony reign. The President of Earth doesn’t even have any armies or policemen. So why does he choose Barbarella for this mission? Well, because she’s a “five-star double-rated astronavigatrix,” whatever that is. And she’s performed missions for the President before; as he says that one day he hopes to meet her in person. (Probably because he keeps ogling her boobs as he talks to her through a two-way TV screen.) 

Despite being a “five-star double-rated astronavigatrix,” Barbarella actually proves to be quite incompetent, and during the film she’s often reduced to being a damsel in distress who is saved by a succession of different men. Barbarella survives innumerable death traps throughout the movie, ranging from toy dolls with gruesome sharp teeth to a deadly pleasure-inducing machine. Along the way, Barbarella discovers the pleasures of making love, as she meets the hirsute Mark Hand after her spaceship crashes in the icy plains of Weir. Hand saves Barbarella from the killer toy dolls, and when she says she doesn’t know how to thank him, he thinks of the oldest way in the book. (The future doesn’t actually seem that advanced as far as gender relations go.) When he tells Barbarella he wants to make love to her, she is puzzled and responds “What do you mean? You don’t even know my psychocardiogram!” She goes on to explain: “Well, on Earth, for centuries, people haven't made love unless their psychocardiogram readings were in perfect confluence.” Lovemaking is now achieved by taking a pill and touching hands for a minute or until “full rapport” occurs. In one of the funniest parts of the movie, Hand asks Barbarella why people no longer make love the old way. She says, “'Cause it was proved to be distracting and a danger to maximum efficiency! And… and because it was pointless to continue it when other substitutes for ego support and self-esteem were made available.” 

“Barbarella” is ultra-campy, and it thankfully has its tongue planted firmly in cheek most of the time. In addition to the lines about future sex, there are some funny moments, as when Hand takes off his fur jacket, revealing that he is just as hairy without the jacket as he is with it. Hand gives Barbarella one of his furs to wear, and it looks like a skunk, complete with long tail that gets caught in the door of Barbarella’s spaceship. 

Barbarella’s spaceship then crashes again, and she meets the blind angel Pygar, played by the statuesque John Phillip Law, and his friend Professor Ping, played by Marcel Marceau. (Marceau’s voice was dubbed.) Barbarella thanks Pygar for saving her by making love to him, and he thus regains the will to fly. (I told you this movie was campy!) Barbarella then makes her way to the city of SoGo, where she meets a concierge (Milo O’Shea and his giant eyebrows) who is an assistant to the Great Tyrant, the Black Queen, played by Keith Richards’ then girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. Pallenberg also had a small role in another 1968 sex farce which was also co-written by Terry Southern, “Candy.” I reviewed “Candy” here, and the movies do have some similarities, as they tell picaresque tales of attractive young women that make every man fall in love with them. The male performances in “Candy” are better, as you get to see huge stars like Richard Burton and Marlon Brando hamming it up, but Jane Fonda is a much better actress than Ewa Aulin, the Swedish actress who played Candy. 

Meanwhile, as the plot trundles on, Barbarella has to survive another death trap, as the Black Queen captures Barbarella and puts her in a cage to be pecked to death by birds, in an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock. But Barbarella escapes down a hatch and meets the funniest character in the film, a revolutionary played by David Hemmings, fresh off his most famous role as the photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up.” Hemmings reminded me a lot of fellow swinging 60’s British actor Terence Stamp, as they both have the same intense, heavily lidded blue eyes. Hemmings mines his small role for all the comedy it’s worth, as he stammers over his lines and insists that Barbarella make love with him in the new Earth way, by taking pills and touching palms, which literally makes your hair curl. Hemmings then gives Barbarella an invisible key to the Queen’s sleeping chambers. Yes, an invisible key. It turns out that the concierge is actually Durand Durand himself, and he uses the positronic ray to wreak havoc on the citizens of SoGo, killing just about everyone before he gets killed by his own evil invention. Oh, and there’s some subterranean sludge called the Mathmos, which makes SoGo evil, or something like that, but Barbarella’s innocence saves her and the Queen from being destroyed by it. Nope, not kidding about that.

“Barbarella” is a ridiculous movie, but it remains a fun romp because of Fonda’s knowingly humorous performance, and her amazing costumes, designed by Jacques Fonteray and Paco Rabanne. Fonda is amazingly beautiful and sexy as Barbarella, and she brings the right amount of wide-eyed innocence to the role. Barbarella is completely guileless, and doesn’t understand why all of these men are falling at her feet. Had Fonda been a less gifted actress, “Barbarella” could have doomed her to be typecast as a bimbo, but she was able to escape the sex kitten image she created in “Barbarella.” The very 60’s soundtrack is by the superbly talented Bob Crewe, who wrote and produced many hits for the Four Seasons, and is a great singer in his own right. 

“Barbarella” was fun to watch, but I think it must have been more fun to see it back in 1968, when it was shocking audiences and when its boundary breaking would have seemed fresher. But if you want to take a trip back to the swinging 60’s, watch “Barbarella.”