Arabesque Reviews

Stanley Donen, known primarily as the director of musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, was also quite adapt at making stylish espionage thrillers that gleefully mish-mashed genres and ideas together just to see what sparks would fly off. Charade is, without a doubt, the better of the two films, but Arabesque can be just as stylish and entertaining.

The plot, that silly little thing, concerns an American professor teaching at Oxford who gets wrapped up in the assassination plot of a foreign diplomat. Gregory Peck is the professor who specializes in Arabic hieroglyphics, and Sophia Loren is the enticing woman who keeps shifting her alliances and story. Peck gets to show off some action-hero muscles and gets his rich voice around some hilariously caustic quips. He really delivers the goods. I always think of him as an Atticus Finch-type, and here he gets to let loose and have a good time. Loren, hired mostly to be eye candy and to wear faintly ridiculous outfits, acquits her comedic skills to good use here. She can make standing in the shower naked except for a towel wrapped around her head into a humorous moment and almost distract you from her va-va-voom body and earthy beauty. Did I mention that she’s actually the Cary Grant role, if we are to continue our comparison to Charade? She’s the secret agent who constantly changes her allegiances and back story to suit the moment, but since it’s Sophia Loren we happily believe whatever story she’ll tell us. But much like Hepburn, she’s given an impossibly stylish wardrobe to go along with. This means that Peck has been given the Hepburn role, he is the innocent for falls hard for the roguish ally and gets wrapped up in something that seems simple at first but spirals out of control very quickly. But he gets to quip like Grant and be just as pro-active in the plot and action scenes.

Arabesque contains a very mod England visual style, which I enjoyed greatly. It’s a bit like Hitchcock played for laughs and with a more sexually suggestive sense of humor. Throw in a dash of Sean Connery-era James Bond stunt work, and you’ll be in the ballpark for what this film is like. Very chic, very tongue-in-cheek, with a plot that takes a backseat to movie stars having a mad-cap good time in an espionage thriller, Arabesque is an entertaining little film. This kind of spy-based intrigue film which aims for witty insouciance instead of seriousness just doesn’t get made anymore, what a pity.