A package not a film.
The most surprising aspect of this jet-setting farrago is that Audrey Hepburn's outfits weren't by Givenchy. Superficially the plot initially resembles 'Charade', except it's the murder of her father rather than her husband that sets things in motion; and the climax recalls the same director's 'Wait Until Dark' (unfortunately without Henry Mancini's score). The preponderance of zooms and pans employed by three-time Oscar-winning cameraman Freddie Young is the most obvious evidence that his heart for one wasn't in this nonsense; while his 'Lawrence of Arabia' star Omar Sharif hams outrageously during his brief role. (Although a far superior director had done a more tiresome job thirteen years earlier when he co-starred Audrey Hepburn with Sharif's 'Lawrence of Arabia' co-star in 'How to Steal a Million'.)
You may not care, but with saturated colours worthy of Ozu, an extraordinary international cast (albeit plenty of them sloppily post-synced, including Maurice Ronet sporting a moustache that constantly made me confuse him with Jean Rochefort), expensive foreign locations and a Morricone score poured over it, it's a good enough excuse to again postpone clearing out all those old newspapers.
The most surprising aspect of this jet-setting farrago is that Audrey Hepburn's outfits weren't by Givenchy. Superficially the plot initially resembles 'Charade', except it's the murder of her father rather than her husband that sets things in motion; and the climax recalls the same director's 'Wait Until Dark' (unfortunately without Henry Mancini's score). The preponderance of zooms and pans employed by three-time Oscar-winning cameraman Freddie Young is the most obvious evidence that his heart for one wasn't in this nonsense; while his 'Lawrence of Arabia' star Omar Sharif hams outrageously during his brief role. (Although a far superior director had done a more tiresome job thirteen years earlier when he co-starred Audrey Hepburn with Sharif's 'Lawrence of Arabia' co-star in 'How to Steal a Million'.)
You may not care, but with saturated colours worthy of Ozu, an extraordinary international cast (albeit plenty of them sloppily post-synced, including Maurice Ronet sporting a moustache that constantly made me confuse him with Jean Rochefort), expensive foreign locations and a Morricone score poured over it, it's a good enough excuse to again postpone clearing out all those old newspapers.