Original title: Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117
Everyone’s favourite secret Cajun agent, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath
(Frederick Stafford) aka OSS 117 finds his R&R in the Alps rudely
interrupted by another mission. Apparently, the number of terrorist attacks on
Important People™ has risen considerably in the last couple of months.
Responsible for all the – mostly suicidal – attacks are perfectly common people
without any radical political backgrounds or histories of violence. 117’s higher
ups have found out that the killers have been mind-controlled with the help of
some sort of drug, and have traced that drug’s production to Brazil, and of send
our hero there.
In Brazil, OSS is first to contact his local colleague, gather information
and go villain hunting according to whatever this information may suggest.
Unfortunately, said colleague turns out to have been nearly killed in the sort
of “accident” that can happen when somebody blows your car up with a grenade,
and the villains of the piece are rather keen on scratching the “nearly” from
this sentence. While they are at it, they’re also trying to murder 117, which
turns out to be rather more difficult than they seem to have expected.
Our hero for his part clearly follows the standard eurospy movie agent
tactics of punching guys and flirting with women, knowing full well that this
will eventually lead him where he wants to go, as the genre conventions
prescribe.
In this third movie in the 60s version of the adventures of OSS 117, and also
the third directed by André Hunebelle, Frederick Stafford replaces Kerwin
Matthews in the title role, and I rather liked him in this one. Sure, I doubt,
as with nearly all eurospy heroes, that his flirtatious moments would charm
anyone (call me the eternal optimist), but he’s really rather convincing at
portraying the more ruthless man of action side of the character, while looking
good enough in a suit to still work in the kind of society spies move in this
sort of film.
Mission for a Killer, like most of the OSS 117 series, belongs to
the relatively classy arm of Eurospy movies that can’t keep up with the budget
of a James Bond outing but clearly aren’t made out of cardboard and spit. There
are actual production values, like partial location shoots in Brazil, and a
script that has problems but is generally coherent and sane inside of the rules
and regulations of the non-realist spy film. Hunebelle, despite not being one of
the revered French masters, was a pretty great genre director, when it came to
swashbucklers and action-based spy movies at least, staging all sorts of
inventive action scenes between rough punch-outs and somewhat ambitious
semi-mass fights. He is particularly great at using the locations as actual
physical spaces, demonstrating an eye for verticality that is often curiously
lacking in directors (or not so curiously when a film simply can’t afford to use
it).
Plot-wise, this is pretty much bread and butter Eurospy business, with the
usual reversals and betrayals, the obligatory capture of the hero, and so on and
so forth, but it’s all well-paced and carefully enough constructed if you are
willing to buy into the basics of how espionage works in Eurospy films (and if
you don’t, you’re probably not exactly the audience for this write-up or the
film), and makes for a fine time when combined with Hunebelle’s skills and a
glass of wine or two.
Politically, there is of course something a bit dubious about a film that has
its hero fighting off revolutionaries against the Brazilian government,
including a bunch of paratroopers landing to rousing music, just the year after
a coup d’état in the real country that replaced a democratically voted-in
government with what would become a twenty year military dictatorship. However,
the novel this is based on was written in 1955, and I don’t really think the
filmmakers were trying to do propaganda work here, and more being a bit careless
with the real world their film has very little to do with anyway. In this
context, the portrayal of the revolutionaries is actually rather fitting, and
pretty damn funny, for the film seems to go out of its way to not give
them an actual political stance while still using the popular version of
revolutionary iconography with them. So there’s not a single actual political
statement made by any of these guys. Instead, we get vague speeches about The
Revolution that completely leave out for what and against what they are fighting
in what I can only see as a truly awkward attempt by the filmmakers to have
their cake and eat it, too.
Showing posts with label andré hunebelle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label andré hunebelle. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
OSS 117 Murder for Sale (1968)
Original title: Niente rose per OSS 117
aka OSS 117: Double Agent
aka No Roses for OSS 117
An organization cleverly known as The Organization is successfully committing a good number of high profile political assassinations. US secret agent OSS 117 (John Gavin), Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath to his friends, decides to do something against it. He does the logical thing and gets some plastic surgery to look like the most wanted international killer of them all, sleeps with a random beautiful woman so she can rat him out to the police, and then awaits rescue by The Organization. Which somehow really does work, so our hero – such as he is – ends up in the palazzo and headquarters of The Organization’s boss, The Major (Curd Jürgens hamming it up lovingly). Situated there, 117 has a fine opportunity to get bored by classical music (philistine!), bed the place’s doctor (Luciana Paluzzi), make enemies with the Major’s right hand man Karas (George Eastman in all his hairy glory), and spy a bit. Eventually, he is sent on a mission, during which he will be poisoned by Robert Hossein, have more sex (this time around with Margaret Lee), come up with plans that make no sense at all, and get involved in fisticuffs and mild car chases.
André Hunebelle’s Murder for Sale is the only time John Gavin was playing the title role in a film about agent OSS 117 (based on a long running series of French pulpy spy novels), and I’m not terribly surprised by it. Now, unlike your serious John Le Carré-style espionage material, Eurospy movies of the sillier Bond-affine variety – to which the film at hand absolutely belongs – don’t live or die on the merits of their lead actors. These guys are mostly there to punch uglier guys and look good in a suit, so basically any more or less handsome visage will do. However, Gavin’s not a terribly convincing puncher, while his acting approach here seems like an attempt to channel Alain Delon’s patented icy coolness, perhaps with an added wink from time to time, which might have sounded like a good idea at the time but mostly results in this OSS 117 feeling very bland rather than cool.
Fortunately, that’s not terribly important, and the rest of the film is a perfectly entertaining example of its style, and one that doesn’t have the slapdash feel of many a Eurospy movie either. Hunebelle had quite a bit of experience with genre movies of all types, and he manages to take the very silly script, pump up the right bits of silly business yet also provide all the minor thrills of face-punching, car chasing and perfectly awkward sexiness one comes for in these films.
The director keeps the pacing up admirably even when there’s no action happening, too. He seems to have particular fun with all the side business that makes a Eurospy movie, like The Major’s version of the dancing troupe you find in so many villain lairs: a string quartet playing Schubert. One can’t help but think that’s quite good for the lair’s security too, for while you can man-dance your way through a Bollywood dance number (just look at Sonny Deol), no vengeful hero’s going to take the time and study the cello to infiltrate your base. And hey, The Major even has a neat self-destruct device for the place, though he doesn’t quite manage to use it, alas.
Not terribly typical for the genre is the film’s aesthetic emphasis not on the pop art culture much more common in Eurospy films but what I can’t help but call posh art – there’s the Schubert, the somewhat tacky old school rich people beauty of the Major’s lair, and a general tendency of everyone furnishing a home here to go for mock Greek statuary to behold. It makes for a nice change from other films of the genre, and must certainly have jibed well with director Hunebelle’s experience with swashbucklers.
It’s all rather lovely to look at, particularly since the director is also rather good with pretty postcard shots for cars to mid-tempo chase one another in and dubious heroes to strut around in front of, nicely leaning into the travelogue aspects so many Eurospy films feature.
Obviously, there’s no depth at all to anything here – unless you make like George Eastman and drop from a roof, of course – and the film’s sexual and social politics are a bit dubious to modern eyes, but for light action and very pretty pictures, Murder for Sale is an excellent choice.
aka OSS 117: Double Agent
aka No Roses for OSS 117
An organization cleverly known as The Organization is successfully committing a good number of high profile political assassinations. US secret agent OSS 117 (John Gavin), Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath to his friends, decides to do something against it. He does the logical thing and gets some plastic surgery to look like the most wanted international killer of them all, sleeps with a random beautiful woman so she can rat him out to the police, and then awaits rescue by The Organization. Which somehow really does work, so our hero – such as he is – ends up in the palazzo and headquarters of The Organization’s boss, The Major (Curd Jürgens hamming it up lovingly). Situated there, 117 has a fine opportunity to get bored by classical music (philistine!), bed the place’s doctor (Luciana Paluzzi), make enemies with the Major’s right hand man Karas (George Eastman in all his hairy glory), and spy a bit. Eventually, he is sent on a mission, during which he will be poisoned by Robert Hossein, have more sex (this time around with Margaret Lee), come up with plans that make no sense at all, and get involved in fisticuffs and mild car chases.
André Hunebelle’s Murder for Sale is the only time John Gavin was playing the title role in a film about agent OSS 117 (based on a long running series of French pulpy spy novels), and I’m not terribly surprised by it. Now, unlike your serious John Le Carré-style espionage material, Eurospy movies of the sillier Bond-affine variety – to which the film at hand absolutely belongs – don’t live or die on the merits of their lead actors. These guys are mostly there to punch uglier guys and look good in a suit, so basically any more or less handsome visage will do. However, Gavin’s not a terribly convincing puncher, while his acting approach here seems like an attempt to channel Alain Delon’s patented icy coolness, perhaps with an added wink from time to time, which might have sounded like a good idea at the time but mostly results in this OSS 117 feeling very bland rather than cool.
Fortunately, that’s not terribly important, and the rest of the film is a perfectly entertaining example of its style, and one that doesn’t have the slapdash feel of many a Eurospy movie either. Hunebelle had quite a bit of experience with genre movies of all types, and he manages to take the very silly script, pump up the right bits of silly business yet also provide all the minor thrills of face-punching, car chasing and perfectly awkward sexiness one comes for in these films.
The director keeps the pacing up admirably even when there’s no action happening, too. He seems to have particular fun with all the side business that makes a Eurospy movie, like The Major’s version of the dancing troupe you find in so many villain lairs: a string quartet playing Schubert. One can’t help but think that’s quite good for the lair’s security too, for while you can man-dance your way through a Bollywood dance number (just look at Sonny Deol), no vengeful hero’s going to take the time and study the cello to infiltrate your base. And hey, The Major even has a neat self-destruct device for the place, though he doesn’t quite manage to use it, alas.
Not terribly typical for the genre is the film’s aesthetic emphasis not on the pop art culture much more common in Eurospy films but what I can’t help but call posh art – there’s the Schubert, the somewhat tacky old school rich people beauty of the Major’s lair, and a general tendency of everyone furnishing a home here to go for mock Greek statuary to behold. It makes for a nice change from other films of the genre, and must certainly have jibed well with director Hunebelle’s experience with swashbucklers.
It’s all rather lovely to look at, particularly since the director is also rather good with pretty postcard shots for cars to mid-tempo chase one another in and dubious heroes to strut around in front of, nicely leaning into the travelogue aspects so many Eurospy films feature.
Obviously, there’s no depth at all to anything here – unless you make like George Eastman and drop from a roof, of course – and the film’s sexual and social politics are a bit dubious to modern eyes, but for light action and very pretty pictures, Murder for Sale is an excellent choice.
Friday, June 28, 2019
Past Misdeeds: Le Bossu (1959)
aka The Hunchback of Paris
aka The King's Avenger
aka The Yokel (seriously?)
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
France in the early 18th Century, during the reign of Louis XIV. Philippe de Nevers (Hubert Noel) and Isabelle de Caylus (Sabine Sesselmann) have secretly married, despite traditional hatred between their families. They have already produced one child, a baby daughter named Aurore. Isabelle has somehow managed to hide the little girl away in the very same building where she lives with her father. Either, Aurore is a peculiarly silent baby girl, or Isabelle's dad is a bit deaf.
De Nevers confides the situation to his uncle, Duc Philippe de Gonzague (Francois Chaumett), hoping Gonzague might sway the king who in turn might sway the Marquis de Caylus towards accepting his and Isabelle's marriage. Unfortunately, de Gonzague is not a man to be trusted, particularly since only Philippe is standing between him and the de Nevers family fortune, so he uses an opportunity opened by the secret of the lovers to have de Nevers and his daughter assassinated. The fiend's men succeed in de Nevers's case but the rather gallant and eminently helpful Henri de Lagardère and his comic relief servant Passepoil (Bourvil) save baby Aurore and flee with her to Spain. On their way (and afterwards) our heroes are not only hunted by whatever scoundrels Gonzague can come up with, but also the King's men, for Gonzague has managed to put de Nevers's death on Lagardère's head.
After some adventures and fifteen years, Aurore (now also played by Sabine Sesselmann) has grown up into a beautiful young woman, leading to the foster father and foster child kind of love story between her and Lagardère most modern audiences run away from screaming, but that I'm willing to accept with a shrug in a sixty year old film based on an even older novel.
Lagardère decides that it's time for Aurore to be able to take her rightful place (and return to her mother so that mum can approve of a marriage for them), and for Gonzague to get his just deserts. For some reasons, Lagardère's plans for putting things to rights include disguising himself as an elderly hunchback and getting a lot of hunchback back rubs from Gonzague. Now, I'm usually not someone to look down upon anyone's kinks, but seriously, Monsieur Lagardère, what the hell?
It's one of the more unfair aspects of genre film history that the great French swashbucklers of the 50s are rarely seen outside the French language space, for the best of them (at least going by the subtitled films I've seen) stand on the same level as Hollywood's best swashbucklers of the era. It can't have helped the films' historical position that some of the genre's best directors in France, like Le Bossu's André Hunebelle, were particularly disliked by the nouvelle vague filmmakers and critics. Not needing to fight the theoretical battles of decades ago - battles which always look rather childish and petulant to me, I have to admit - fortunately means I can enjoy the films of the nouvelle vague directors and those of their sworn enemies.
There is, one has to admit, a certain stiffness surrounding Hunebelle's directorial approach here, a willingness to be lavish and serious in a very old-fashioned way that is anathema to the (in the beginning) much more improvisational nouvelle vague style of filmmaking, as well as to any naturalistic approaches, but it's also a natural approach to the particular kind of escapism the swashbuckler trades in. It's a perspective that treats history as a playground for the kind of story that tends to treat even the greatest hardships the genre's protagonists go through with a certain levity, and that will always end in a happy end.
If you ask me, this kind of escapism is not a bad thing, particularly because escapism by its very nature always carries the knowledge that there's something worth escaping from with it; showing us wish fulfilment fantasies also means understanding what we wish for and why. The wish to see some clear good win over some clear evil may be naive when mapped onto the complexities of real world politics, but it is a part of human imagination whose existence can't be denied.
Anyway, Hunebelle was quite a master at the sort of historical fantasy we know as the swashbuckler, using the fact that he's actually filming in the country his film takes place in (and the existence of an actual budget for his project) to put some impressive locations and mood-setting landscape shots in a genre that is often rather set-bound (though there are of course numerous colourful sets on display here, too), and showing a sure hand for the all-important timing. There's not just never a dull moment on screen but never a moment that doesn't contain something exciting or interesting (one suspects that's pretty much a technique Paul Feval, the author of the much-filmed novel the book is based on, and one of the most important writers to run with the genre after Dumas, would approve of).
Not even Bourvil's comic relief is too painful. I could rather have lived without it, obviously, but then I never wished for him to be slowly, and painfully tortured to death, so we can add his treatment to the film's positives (even though I'm not a fan of the classism that can only use the "low-born" as comic relief).
As a hero, Marais has slightly less charm and slightly more gravitas than the Stewart Granger/Errol Flynn type of swashbuckling hero, but he does have the all-important charisma, and looks good in his action scenes (even those parts not done by a stunt double), which is really all you'd ever want from the hero of a swashbuckler. It's also really funny to see people with a low tolerance for this sort of thing squirm when Sabine Sesselmann makes lovey eyes at him but that might just be an effect of my particular sense of humour, and my utter lack of a moralizing backbone when it comes to love in the movies.
So please repeat after me: "If you don't come to Largardère, Lagardère will come to you!"
aka The King's Avenger
aka The Yokel (seriously?)
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
France in the early 18th Century, during the reign of Louis XIV. Philippe de Nevers (Hubert Noel) and Isabelle de Caylus (Sabine Sesselmann) have secretly married, despite traditional hatred between their families. They have already produced one child, a baby daughter named Aurore. Isabelle has somehow managed to hide the little girl away in the very same building where she lives with her father. Either, Aurore is a peculiarly silent baby girl, or Isabelle's dad is a bit deaf.
De Nevers confides the situation to his uncle, Duc Philippe de Gonzague (Francois Chaumett), hoping Gonzague might sway the king who in turn might sway the Marquis de Caylus towards accepting his and Isabelle's marriage. Unfortunately, de Gonzague is not a man to be trusted, particularly since only Philippe is standing between him and the de Nevers family fortune, so he uses an opportunity opened by the secret of the lovers to have de Nevers and his daughter assassinated. The fiend's men succeed in de Nevers's case but the rather gallant and eminently helpful Henri de Lagardère and his comic relief servant Passepoil (Bourvil) save baby Aurore and flee with her to Spain. On their way (and afterwards) our heroes are not only hunted by whatever scoundrels Gonzague can come up with, but also the King's men, for Gonzague has managed to put de Nevers's death on Lagardère's head.
After some adventures and fifteen years, Aurore (now also played by Sabine Sesselmann) has grown up into a beautiful young woman, leading to the foster father and foster child kind of love story between her and Lagardère most modern audiences run away from screaming, but that I'm willing to accept with a shrug in a sixty year old film based on an even older novel.
Lagardère decides that it's time for Aurore to be able to take her rightful place (and return to her mother so that mum can approve of a marriage for them), and for Gonzague to get his just deserts. For some reasons, Lagardère's plans for putting things to rights include disguising himself as an elderly hunchback and getting a lot of hunchback back rubs from Gonzague. Now, I'm usually not someone to look down upon anyone's kinks, but seriously, Monsieur Lagardère, what the hell?
It's one of the more unfair aspects of genre film history that the great French swashbucklers of the 50s are rarely seen outside the French language space, for the best of them (at least going by the subtitled films I've seen) stand on the same level as Hollywood's best swashbucklers of the era. It can't have helped the films' historical position that some of the genre's best directors in France, like Le Bossu's André Hunebelle, were particularly disliked by the nouvelle vague filmmakers and critics. Not needing to fight the theoretical battles of decades ago - battles which always look rather childish and petulant to me, I have to admit - fortunately means I can enjoy the films of the nouvelle vague directors and those of their sworn enemies.
There is, one has to admit, a certain stiffness surrounding Hunebelle's directorial approach here, a willingness to be lavish and serious in a very old-fashioned way that is anathema to the (in the beginning) much more improvisational nouvelle vague style of filmmaking, as well as to any naturalistic approaches, but it's also a natural approach to the particular kind of escapism the swashbuckler trades in. It's a perspective that treats history as a playground for the kind of story that tends to treat even the greatest hardships the genre's protagonists go through with a certain levity, and that will always end in a happy end.
If you ask me, this kind of escapism is not a bad thing, particularly because escapism by its very nature always carries the knowledge that there's something worth escaping from with it; showing us wish fulfilment fantasies also means understanding what we wish for and why. The wish to see some clear good win over some clear evil may be naive when mapped onto the complexities of real world politics, but it is a part of human imagination whose existence can't be denied.
Anyway, Hunebelle was quite a master at the sort of historical fantasy we know as the swashbuckler, using the fact that he's actually filming in the country his film takes place in (and the existence of an actual budget for his project) to put some impressive locations and mood-setting landscape shots in a genre that is often rather set-bound (though there are of course numerous colourful sets on display here, too), and showing a sure hand for the all-important timing. There's not just never a dull moment on screen but never a moment that doesn't contain something exciting or interesting (one suspects that's pretty much a technique Paul Feval, the author of the much-filmed novel the book is based on, and one of the most important writers to run with the genre after Dumas, would approve of).
Not even Bourvil's comic relief is too painful. I could rather have lived without it, obviously, but then I never wished for him to be slowly, and painfully tortured to death, so we can add his treatment to the film's positives (even though I'm not a fan of the classism that can only use the "low-born" as comic relief).
As a hero, Marais has slightly less charm and slightly more gravitas than the Stewart Granger/Errol Flynn type of swashbuckling hero, but he does have the all-important charisma, and looks good in his action scenes (even those parts not done by a stunt double), which is really all you'd ever want from the hero of a swashbuckler. It's also really funny to see people with a low tolerance for this sort of thing squirm when Sabine Sesselmann makes lovey eyes at him but that might just be an effect of my particular sense of humour, and my utter lack of a moralizing backbone when it comes to love in the movies.
So please repeat after me: "If you don't come to Largardère, Lagardère will come to you!"
Friday, August 9, 2013
On Exploder Button: Le Bossu (1959)
aka The Hunchback of Paris
If there's one thing that's utterly, absurdly wrong with people (including me), it's that we don't talk enough about the great French swashbucklers, films every bit as good as the great US swashbucklers were.
This week's column on ExB tries to begin to make amends for this horrible state of affairs by talking rather excitedly about André Hunebelle's Paul Feval adaptation Le Bossu. If you click on through to read it, you don't have to stroke my hunchback.
Technorati-Markierungen: french movies,reviews,adventure,andré hunebelle,jean marais,sabine sesselmann,bourvil
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