Blast from the Past
Stanley Donen produced and directed Arabesque, an “Hitchcockian” spy comedy thriller, starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, then at the peak of their careers, in their only teaming.
Grade: C+ (** 1/2*m out of ******)
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Theatrical release poster by R. McGinnis
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The mishmash of a script by Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, and Peter Stone, is loosely based on the 1961 novel, “The Cipher ” by Alex Gordon (pseudonym of Gordon Cotler.
The film, along with Donen’s prior and better work, Charade (1963), is “Hitchcockian” in theme, as its protagonist is an innocent ordinary man thrust into dangerous situations beyond his control.
Tale begins when Major Sloane murders Professor Ragheeb, expert in ancient hieroglyphics at Oxford University, and steals a hieroglyph-encrypted message.
Sloane then asks American professor David Pollock (Peck), who has taken over his class, to meet shipping magnate Nejim Beshraavi on lucrative business matter, but David declines.
He is later approached by Hassan Jena, prime minister of unnamed Middle Eastern country, and his ambassador to the UK, Mohammed Lufti, and Jena convinces David to accept the proposition.
In Beshraavi’s London mansion, he offers David $30,000 to decode Ragheeb’s message. Beshraavi’s girlfriend Yasmin Azir warns David that Beshraavi had Ragheeb plan to kill David once he deciphers the message.
David hides the cipher in candy wrapper, placing it into bag of candies, and pretends to hold Yasmin at knifepoint. But as they seek refuge at nearby zoological garden, David is knocked unconscious.
David and Yasmin go to the construction site Yussef uses as his front, where Webster finds the bag of candies and eventually discovers the cipher. The pair then learn that Webster plans to meet Beshraavi at Ascot Racecourse to betray Yussef. When David knocks the cipher out of Webster’s hand, Sloane attempts to stab David, accidentally killing Webster.
Later on, the hieroglyphics turn out to be a nursery rhyme, but David the note get wet, and the ink washes away; it read “Beshraavi plans to assassinate Jena twelve thirty June eighteenth.”
David, Yasmin, and Jena escape on horses, pursued through crop fields by combine harvester with blades. While crossing the disused Crumlin Viaduct, David drops a ladder down into the helicopter’s rotors as Beshraavi and Sloane pass underneath, causing their burning.
In the happy ending, at Oxford, David and Yasmin enjoy a romantic boat ride.
Arabesque received mixed reviews from critics and audience, but it was a box office success, despite the shadowy plot, confusing characters, and the miscasting of Peck in a cute role meant for Cary Grant.
Donen wanted Grant after working with him in Charade, and the dialogue for Pollock was written with Grant in mind. Donen later said: “Cary didn’t want to be in it. It wasn’t a good script and I didn’t want to make it, but Peck and Loren claimed that it would make money–and they were right.” (See below).
The film went through several rewrites, and the more the script was rewritten, the worse it got. Donen believed that “the only hope is to make it so visually exciting, the audience will never have time to work out what the hell is going on.”
Pro Peter Stone, brought in to make improvements, said that Donen “shot it better than he ever shot any picture. Donen confirmed: “I avoided any sign of studio manner, I tried something like the “living camera” technique. The hand-held camera had been used a lot, especially in Europe, but the trouble was too much wobble because the operator has to carry the sheer weight of the camera. We decided to suspend the camera, to give the operator the mobility without the weight.”
Donen had terrific instinct, like a choreographer. Peck noted that “Even in ordinary dramatic sequence he’d use the body to punctuate what was happening–0standing, relaxing, it was all choreographed. We were always moving, and he used every camera trick. He also loved filming Sophia’s decolletage and her rear end.”
Loren’s request for 20 different pair of shoes for her character led to her Peck as her lover to being described as having a foot fetish. In a chase scene, Peck, who had been injured years earlier, could not run fast enough to keep up with Loren, who kept pulling ahead.
Many scenes were shot at Tyringham Hall in Buckinghamshire, a disaster recovery site owned by the ANZ Banking Group. The railway bridge action scene was shot on the historic Crumlin Viaduct in Crumlin, Ebbw Vale.
The Rolls-Royce Phantom IV was originally owned by Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; it is one of only 18n Phantom IV examples built.
Cast
Gregory Peck as Prof. David Pollock
Sophia Loren as Yasmin Azir
Alan Badel as Nejim Beshraavi
Kieron Moore as Yussef Kasim
Carl Duering as Prime Minister Hassan Jena
John Merivale as Maj. Sylvester Pennington Sloane
Duncan Lamont as Kyle Webster
George Coulouris as Ragheeb
Ernest Clark as Beauchamp
Harold Kasket as Mohammed Lufti
Credits:
Produced, directed by Stanley Donen
Screenplay by Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, Peter Stone, based on “The Cipher” by Alex Gordon
Cinematography Christopher Challis
Edited by Frederick Wilson
Music by Henry Mancini
Production: Donen Enterprises
Distributed by Universal
Release dates: May 5, 1966 (NY); May 24, 1966 (US)
Running time: 105 minutes
Budget $4.8 million
Box office $5.8 million (US rentals, over $12 million)
