I know I rag on modern movies a lot, but if you ever need reminding that "the good old days" could suck too, then look no further than BLOODLINE, a bloated overpriced mess and easily Audrey Hepburn's worst film. GREEN MANSIONS and WAR AND PEACE often get nominated as Audrey's worst, but those movies were coherent and coherence is a virtue which eludes BLOODLINE entirely.
The biggest problem is the script. It starts out with a good enough hook: the head of a big pharmaceutical company is murdered and his estranged daughter Elisabeth (Hepburn) takes the reigns, both unsure of her business savvy and nervous about all the enemies she's just made in not selling the company to them. Now, someone is trying to kill her to get all her money and she must try to find out who it is. So far, so good.
Then it becomes a mess: we get subplot after subplot-- Omar Sharif is trying to hide his angry mistress from his wife, Romy Schneider is blackmailing everyone and batting big bedroom eyes everywhere, weird flashbacks showing how Hepburn's father became a medical genius in the Jewish ghetto, and then-- oh yeah-- there's a man in a hat making erotic snuff films, murdering sex workers.
What did you say? What does that have to do with Hepburn trying to find out who to trust and who not to trust while evading assassins? Only heaven knows, because to me, it feels like the subplot was thrown in for cheap titillation-- the scenes are graphic and sleazy. (Apparently, Hepburn had no idea about their inclusion and was upset when she discovered they existed too.)
There's no flow to any of this. Scenes begin and end abruptly. They are largely people in rooms talking, with little in the way of interesting subtext or action. The whole movie feels like wheel-spinning, over and over, with Hepburn being hustled from place to place, confused and rather passive most of the time.
Director Terence Young had worked with Hepburn twelve years previously on WAIT UNTIL DARK, a superb slow-burn thriller that remains as chilling as the day it was released, which is why I think he was hired here to work similar magic and bring in the big, big money WAIT had grossed in '67. Considering he is most known for his work on the early Bond movies, the studio likely also thought he would fit the international intrigue elements of the story like a glove. But when the story is a mess, even Orson Welles isn't going to be able to save your movie. I've seen people on here claim Young must be a bad director, but I blame the material-- a viewing of WAIT UNTIL DARK shows he could make a one-room movie absolutely compelling, but that movie had interesting characters, inspired camerawork, and rising stakes. BLOODLINE just chucks its cardboard creations from scene to scene, hoping spooky lighting and spooky music will make us care.
What makes BLOODLINE all the more terrible is that the movie, not content to bungle its own original material, rips off earlier, successful Hepburn vehicles without understanding what made them work. It tries making Elisabeth a sadder version of Regina from CHARADE, but without the wit or spunk that made her interesting. The romance with Ben Gazzara's character, who Elisabeth is unsure whether or not she should trust, is a pale imitation of the similarly tense romance with Cary Grant in CHARADE, only without the chemistry or danger that made that pairing so memorable. Gazzara is about as appealing as white rice and you never get why Elisabeth is so crazy about him either.
The ending scene steals from both CHARADE and WAIT UNTIL DARK at the same time: Hepburn alone in her house, the phone lines cut, the lights out, Hepburn threatened with fire, then forced to decide between who to trust. Only in WAIT UNTIL DARK, the darkness worked because the blind Hepburn was leveling the playing field so her attackers, unaccustomed to the dark, could not find her easily in the apartment she knew so well-- an empowering and emotionally significant development-- whereas here it's just cheap suspense. And in CHARADE, when Hepburn must choose between going to Walter Matthau or Cary Grant, she's bonded extensively with both men over the course of the movie, so of course, we understand her anxiety and hesitation in going to either once she knows both might have reasons to want her dead. She doesn't have that intimacy with James Mason here and she's barely ANY chemistry with Gazzara, so it hasn't even an eighth of the impact of the original scene.
BLOODLINE was Hepburn's second attempt at a comeback vehicle, but audiences didn't take. The movie flopped. Hepburn would make sporadic appearances in movies throughout the 1980s, but otherwise, her heyday as a leading lady had long passed her by. It's a shame, because with the right material (aka not flaming trash) Hepburn could have excelled. She is still charming and lovely, and her acting skills had matured considerably since ROMAN HOLIDAY. Both she and her fans deserved better than this sleazy potboiler, but oh well. We'll always have her classics of the 50s and 60s.
The biggest problem is the script. It starts out with a good enough hook: the head of a big pharmaceutical company is murdered and his estranged daughter Elisabeth (Hepburn) takes the reigns, both unsure of her business savvy and nervous about all the enemies she's just made in not selling the company to them. Now, someone is trying to kill her to get all her money and she must try to find out who it is. So far, so good.
Then it becomes a mess: we get subplot after subplot-- Omar Sharif is trying to hide his angry mistress from his wife, Romy Schneider is blackmailing everyone and batting big bedroom eyes everywhere, weird flashbacks showing how Hepburn's father became a medical genius in the Jewish ghetto, and then-- oh yeah-- there's a man in a hat making erotic snuff films, murdering sex workers.
What did you say? What does that have to do with Hepburn trying to find out who to trust and who not to trust while evading assassins? Only heaven knows, because to me, it feels like the subplot was thrown in for cheap titillation-- the scenes are graphic and sleazy. (Apparently, Hepburn had no idea about their inclusion and was upset when she discovered they existed too.)
There's no flow to any of this. Scenes begin and end abruptly. They are largely people in rooms talking, with little in the way of interesting subtext or action. The whole movie feels like wheel-spinning, over and over, with Hepburn being hustled from place to place, confused and rather passive most of the time.
Director Terence Young had worked with Hepburn twelve years previously on WAIT UNTIL DARK, a superb slow-burn thriller that remains as chilling as the day it was released, which is why I think he was hired here to work similar magic and bring in the big, big money WAIT had grossed in '67. Considering he is most known for his work on the early Bond movies, the studio likely also thought he would fit the international intrigue elements of the story like a glove. But when the story is a mess, even Orson Welles isn't going to be able to save your movie. I've seen people on here claim Young must be a bad director, but I blame the material-- a viewing of WAIT UNTIL DARK shows he could make a one-room movie absolutely compelling, but that movie had interesting characters, inspired camerawork, and rising stakes. BLOODLINE just chucks its cardboard creations from scene to scene, hoping spooky lighting and spooky music will make us care.
What makes BLOODLINE all the more terrible is that the movie, not content to bungle its own original material, rips off earlier, successful Hepburn vehicles without understanding what made them work. It tries making Elisabeth a sadder version of Regina from CHARADE, but without the wit or spunk that made her interesting. The romance with Ben Gazzara's character, who Elisabeth is unsure whether or not she should trust, is a pale imitation of the similarly tense romance with Cary Grant in CHARADE, only without the chemistry or danger that made that pairing so memorable. Gazzara is about as appealing as white rice and you never get why Elisabeth is so crazy about him either.
The ending scene steals from both CHARADE and WAIT UNTIL DARK at the same time: Hepburn alone in her house, the phone lines cut, the lights out, Hepburn threatened with fire, then forced to decide between who to trust. Only in WAIT UNTIL DARK, the darkness worked because the blind Hepburn was leveling the playing field so her attackers, unaccustomed to the dark, could not find her easily in the apartment she knew so well-- an empowering and emotionally significant development-- whereas here it's just cheap suspense. And in CHARADE, when Hepburn must choose between going to Walter Matthau or Cary Grant, she's bonded extensively with both men over the course of the movie, so of course, we understand her anxiety and hesitation in going to either once she knows both might have reasons to want her dead. She doesn't have that intimacy with James Mason here and she's barely ANY chemistry with Gazzara, so it hasn't even an eighth of the impact of the original scene.
BLOODLINE was Hepburn's second attempt at a comeback vehicle, but audiences didn't take. The movie flopped. Hepburn would make sporadic appearances in movies throughout the 1980s, but otherwise, her heyday as a leading lady had long passed her by. It's a shame, because with the right material (aka not flaming trash) Hepburn could have excelled. She is still charming and lovely, and her acting skills had matured considerably since ROMAN HOLIDAY. Both she and her fans deserved better than this sleazy potboiler, but oh well. We'll always have her classics of the 50s and 60s.