TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

GusF Based on the 1962 novel "The Light of Day" by Eric Ambler, this is a mostly ineffectual heist film. The script by Monja Danischewsky is pretty mediocre and seldom as funny as it thinks it is. Jules Dassin's direction is not much better but there are some nice shots here and there and he makes good use of the locations. It is too competent to be awful. The plot concerns an attempt to steal a dagger encrusted with four priceless emeralds, which once belonged to the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. As ideas for heist films go, this is a belter and it is part of what attracted me to the film in the first place. However, as with the heist itself, it is all in the execution and the execution was sorely lacking. That said, it does have one major saving grace.The film stars the superlative Peter Ustinov in a wonderful performance as Arthur Simon Simpson, a small-time English swindler who operates out of the Greek port city Kavala where he attempts to sell cheap tat to tourists. He is recruited by a gang of thieves to drive a car filled with explosives, guns and other materiel which police forces tend to frown upon across the Turkish border. However, said materiel is discovered by the Turkish customs when the car is searched. After Arthur convinces the police that he is not part of the presumed assassination plot, he becomes an informer and the plotters are forced to accept his presence due to a police's claim that only the person who drove the car or the owner - the fictional Mr. Plimpton - are legally permitted to drive it. Arthur, who is not the brightest spark, lets this slip and is recruited yet again, this time as an active participant in the plot to steal the dagger. Ustinov effortlessly steals the show, which sadly was not worth nearly as much as four emeralds, as Arthur and all of the best bits of the film belong to him. In fact, I have never seen Ustinov in a film in which he had more than one scene where this was not the case. Arthur is a very sympathetic and likable character who claims that his father once described him as "a carbuncle on the behind of humanity," which is the best line in the film. As Arthur, Ustinov won his second and final Best Supporting Actor Oscar, the first being for "Spartacus", but really it should have been the Best Actor Oscar since he is the male lead.A major and almost fatal flaw in the film is the casting of the horrendous actress Melina Mercouri as Elizabeth Lipp, a brilliant career criminal / nymphomaniac and the mastermind behind the heist. She fails to deliver a single line in what even approaches a remotely convincing fashion and there are at least a dozen actresses that I would have preferred to have seen in the role. Sophia Loren is the first name that springs to mind. However, that was never on the cards as Mercouri just so happened to be the director's then girlfriend and future wife. Ah, nepotism. I have nothing against it when it works well and the relatives in question have something resembling talent but this is a particularly unsuccessful example. Her scenes with Ustinov should have been hilarious but they were no more than tolerable. They would not have even been that if a lesser actor had been cast as Arthur. While Ustinov's acting was a breath of fresh air, hers was a gust of ill-wind. Their scenes together are like the agony and the ecstasy. She was the agony. Amazingly, she was not nominated for an Oscar. The scenes in which they recorded her laughter on the toy parrot were a little weird, particularly the one in her boudoir, and I began to wonder if this scene was made more for Dassin's private consumption than anything else. Mercouri later left acting - I can't imagine why - and entered Greek politics, most notably serving as the Minister for Culture on two occasions. For the sake of the country's artistic endeavours, I hope that this was a bit better at that than she was at acting. She could hardly have been much worse, to be fair.Maximilian Schell is an excellent actor in any language and he is certainly suave but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was miscast as the Swiss master criminal Walter Harper. His performance is good but it's not one of his best. Harper is Lipp's ex-lover and they have several would-be romantic / sexy scenes between them but they have no chemistry. However, this is more the fault of the director's talentless girlfriend...I mean, the female lead. In stark, stark, stark contrast to her, Robert Morley is a wonderful actor and he was perfectly cast as the eccentric toymaker Cedric Page. He is the strongest cast member after Ustinov. Akim Tamiroff has a very funny supporting role as the alcoholic cook Gerven but none of the other actors really stood out, good, bad or indifferent. Overall, this is not a very good film at all. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars...except for Melina Mercouri.

mowasteph Okay, it had some nice travel-porn and Peter Ustinov absolutely transcends the material here (he was the best thing in this)...but this flick is screaming out for a glamorous remake. Nothing too slick and I don't want everyone in the remake to be gorgeous but seriously...it needs a remake. Also, my husband came up with a much better ending than the one here.So...nice scenery, including a ridiculously good-looking Max Schell, but Ms. Mercouri nearly ruined this movie. She was just too weird. Was she supposed to be alluring? I just found her to be scary looking and I couldn't believe these guys would be falling all over her. I don't mean to be catty...I'm actually older than she was when she made this film but I'm still calling her out on being a little too witch- like. That voice! Like a much-later Lucille Ball after a couple of packs of cigarettes. Puh-leeze.

Spondonman This was the perfect bookend to Rififi, even though that was black & white and French while this one was very much colourful and Pan-European, but both were excellent tense Jules Dassin robbery thrillers.Scintillating plot has jewel heist from the Topkapi museum planned minutely by suave Schell in charge of an eccentric happy-go-lucky gang of thieves including sexpot Mercouri, mechanised Morley, and eventually the crown jewel of the film, Carbuncle (On The Behind Of Humanity) Ustinov. Akim Tamiroff was hardly used but was still unforgettable as the ferociously sentimental drunken cook. Things go wrong but all problems are got round by the brainwork of Schell. Favourite bits from so many: Ustinov's frozen face as the door opens on an ugly guy in the police interrogation room; the vivid humanity on display at the wrestling festival; clambering about in their suits but getting out onto the museum roof and getting into position for the robbery; the ingenious way of lifting the jewels. It's all intricately performed, the letdown being the hurried corny ending (definitely not a Good Idea) – but at least it was still jolly. An even bigger letdown was that there was no sequel!It's fantastic but faulty and bright and breezy but barmy, it led to 7 years of Mission Impossible on TV – which was good too though never as lighthearted as this masterpiece. And the closest this gets to sex is probably the scene with a belly dancer in the background, for violence you would have to make do with the scene of a door being slammed on someone's hands! You really can't go wrong if what you're looking for is 2 hours of inconsequential solid entertainment.

kenjha International thieves plot the heist of a valuable art piece from an Istanbul museum. This one is famed for its heist sequence, and that is pretty good, but the rest of the film is a disappointment on pretty much every level. The script is uninteresting, the direction is sloppy, and the acting ranges from good (Ustinov is amusing) to bad (Schell overacts) to terrible (Mercouri is annoying). Mercouri can't act, she looks creepy, she has a grating voice, and her accent is so thick that it's hard to understand most of her lines. Why was this filmed in English, anyway? This one is a far cry from Dassin's earlier caper film "Rififi." And what's with the homo-erotic wrestling scene?