Word: donen
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...London locations: Trafalgar Square, the Zoo, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. A consultant on film fads surely recommended the modish scenes of violence, since the villains pursuing Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck from one landmark to the next seldom just take out a gun and shoot. Instead, Director Stanley Donen (Charade, Indiscreet) assigns a helicopter and a wrecking crane to tasks of mayhem, and later, in a quiet English field, three lumbering farm machines-all, of course, painted in primary hues-turn murderous...
...Director Donen dissipates his cast's effectiveness by having everyone affect a tone of languorous boredom, presumably as a clue that Arabesque belongs in the realm of sophisticated comedy. To mask weaknesses and justify the movie's title, Donen puts his camera to a series of Olympian trials, filming at dizzying angles through, under, or into the reflections of sunglasses, grillwork, optical tools, windshields, mirrors, table tops, television screens and the chromium trim of a Rolls-Royce. The cinematic busywork offers sporadic fun, but also suggests the unsteady posture of a show that always seems about to fall...
What's going on is sort of confused. Director Stanley Donen (Indiscreet) apparently started out with a sensible idea: with Grant and Hepburn on the payroll and Paris for a setting, why not tell a love story? But somewhere along the production line, he decided to make a thriller instead. Then he turned the thriller into a sophisticated comedy of murders. Then he let the comedy degenerate into a bloody awful farce, the sort of shaggy rat story in which the customers are the real victims-they are inexorably gagged to death. He: "Would you like to see where...
Surprise Package (Columbia) is stuffed with expensive ingredients: Yul Brynner MItzi Gaynor, Noel Coward in front of the camera Director Stanley (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) Donen behind it plus a script by Harry (Reclining Figure} Kurnitz based on a novel (A Gift from the Boys} by Columnist Art Buchwald. But as far as entertainment is concerned, Package contains only what is known in show business as a bomb Director Donen clearly intended to tell a shaggy-dog story the way John Huston did in his hilarious Beat the Devil but unfortunately, Donen's dog turns...
Once More, With Feeling (Stanley Donen; Columbia). "Wouldn't you like to slip into something loose?" Yul Brynner purrs seductively to his bride. "Yes," Kay Kendall snarls. "A taxi...