ARABESQUE (1966) ** The Charade production team decides to move in on James Bond turf. Stanley Donen gets an "A" for Hitchcock studies, and the application is reasonably seamless, at least as Hitchcocky in spots as the man himself, but there are slight conceptual problems. Gregory Peck is no Cary Grant, much less Sean Connery. He throws off well-written lines without much snap, though at the punching he's credible enough and he definitely emotes evenhanded academia. For that matter Sophia Loren has never been the actress that Audrey Hepburn was, though her screen presence is hardly inferior and she's worth more than a gaggle of Bond girls for reasons that go far beyond her legendary beauty (focus in this film is on her eyes and legs, incidentally). It's not all Peck's fault either, for all the well played cinematic gimmickry (psychedelics, mirrors, windows, strange angles from the floor, staggering) some of the scenes just go on too long. So you have a historic screen presence trying to react to a poorly cast male lead struggling almost mightily with lines that should be flipped, shot with a strange filter and direction within a pattern that was questionable in the first place.
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