I thought I was done but they keep pulling me back in!

While I’m rewatching a number of movies for Jekyll and Hyde, I thought I was done watching anything new. I’d seen it all except for a couple of films that simply weren’t available.

Oops. This week my research reading turned up one for the appendix and two films miraculously turned up on Amazon or YouTube. I can’t think of any way it could happen again, though. Due to the rush to get the book done, only one movie gets a review this week.

The appendix-bait is PARIS — WHEN IT SIZZLES (1964) [the on-screen titles show a dash though the poster below does not] because there’s an uncredited Mel Ferrer playing Jekyll and Hyde (i.e., he’s dressed in a top hat and cape, drinks a foaming potion, transforms) in a party scene. Otherwise I used this as a talking lamp while I worked on other stuff.

A Hollywood studio head (Noel Coward) realizes they have 48 hours before shooting starts for The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower and they haven’t received one page from scriptwriter Richard Benson (William Holden) or even a hint what it’s about (even if Benson were a genius this is absolutely batshit). As Benson’s living in Paris, the studio sends over Gabrielle Simpson (Audrey Hepburn) to become his minder: cling to him like a leech but get the damn script written!

Richard, it turns out, hasn’t written one damn thing so now he and Gabrielle have to conceive and write the script in two days. In between supposedly witty banter, they toss off ideas — war movies! Horror movie! Love story! — before settling on a caper film. As they imagine it out, and also imagine themselves as the two leads, the characters constantly shift — is the pretty girl the master safecracker Rick meets reallly an innocent tourist? What if she’s a police spy? Or a prostitute with a heart of gold? And what does it mean that the girl is going to steal the Eiffel Tower?

This is one of those movies with the ingredients to make a fun, quirky film but it just doesn’t work. Hepburn is adorable, as always, but she and Holden don’t have the spark they did in Sabrina, the dialog is annoyingly arch and the story feels less quirky than “let’s throw some more stuff at the wall! Something’s got to stick!” Part of the problem was that Holden had fallen for Hepburn on Sabrina and having her within arm’s reach but uninterested turned his alcoholism, already bad, up to 11. The director had to work around Holden’s problems which led to adding Tony Curtis in a supporting role and Marlene Dietrich in a cameo (details here). It didn’t help; the movie tanked as it deserved to. Still, Hepburn looks adorable and irresistible, as always. “It is a well-known fact that I am not only a brilliant safecracker, I am a liar and a thief.”