PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES (1963) *** William Holden obviously understands more about the creative process than most people want to, and we always suspected that Audrey Hepburn was more conversive in depravity than she let on. It's a wonderful, bona fide French script, slightly Hollywoodized in translation, which makes it all seem more genuine (phony) if not necessarily better. So it's up to the horses. Holden gets so many beautifully set up scenes and lines that it's easy to miss how well he's doing with them. No, he's not the only actor who could have pulled it off, but he does a damn good job and it's even easier to end up looking doofy running around drinking and trying to be that arrogant and derisive. Audrey, on the other hand, is absolutely unique in anything she does, and merely playing her through the clichés isn't going to change that, no matter how much you draw the audience's attention to the silliness of it all. Her personal magnetism is authentic, even if nothing else is, which ensures that there's always something entertaining going on. But the star of the show, unquestionably, is Tony Curtis. Deployed nearly perfectly (i.e. five minutes of screen time or less), he rises to overact spectacularly, in multiple and varied scenes demanding little else, going from zero to explosion is mere seconds. When it comes to overplaying your part, Holden has a solid grip on the idea, Audrey can do it just like everything else, but Tony is unquestionably the master. It's a certain kind of brilliance. One can only look on in stupefied admiration, laughing in the manner of the guilelessly manipulated. It's not easy to write tongue-in-cheek satirical pretentious slapstick egocentric metaphorical schlock this hokey, no matter how much people would like to think it is, and once managed nearly impossible to keep it this fun. I only wish they would have made a sequel centered on Audrey's drink-inspired vampire delusions and, of course, expanding the scope to include Godzilla and the Vienna Boys Choir (but with all the action taking place on the same cave set).
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