Arabesque (1966) Arabesque (1966)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (Arabesque) | Backbeats (Arabesque)

IMDb: tt0060121

Quick Facts

  • Director / Producer: Stanley Donen
  • Screenplay: Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, and Pierre Marton (pseudonym for Peter Stone)
  • Based on: The Cipher (1961) by Alex Gordon (pseudonym for Gordon Cotler)
  • Starring: Gregory Peck (Prof. David Pollock), Sophia Loren (Yasmin Azir), Alan Badel (Nejim Beshraavi), Kieron Moore (Yussef Kasim), Carl Duering (Prime Minister Hassan Jena), John Merivale (Maj. Sylvester Pennington Sloane), Duncan Lamont (Webster), George Coulouris (Prof. Ragheeb), Ernest Clark (Beauchamp), Harold Kasket (Mohammed Lufti)
  • Cinematography: Christopher Challis (BAFTA winner)
  • Editor: Frederick Wilson
  • Music: Henry Mancini
  • Main Title Design: Maurice Binder
  • Costumes: Christian Dior (for Sophia Loren)
  • Runtime: 105 minutes
  • Release Date: May 5, 1966 (New York City premiere); May 24, 1966 (US wide)
  • Format: Technicolor, Panavision
  • Production Company: Stanley Donen Enterprises
  • Distributor: Universal Pictures
  • Budget: $4.8 million
  • Setting: London, Ascot, the English countryside, and Oxford

Overview

Stanley Donen's follow-up to Charade (1963), Arabesque sets an American Egyptologist down inside a London assassination plot whose central document is a hieroglyph that turns out to be a nursery rhyme hiding a microdot. Gregory Peck plays Professor David Pollock, an Oxford-based hieroglyphics expert recruited — twice over, by opposing sides — to consult on a cipher whose decoding is supposed to enable or prevent the assassination of a visiting prime minister.b3 b4 b5 Sophia Loren plays Yasmin Azir, the shipping magnate's mistress whose loyalties shift so often the film effectively dares the audience to keep score. Donen, reportedly unhappy with the script, instructed cinematographer Christopher Challis to win on style: the picture is shot through reflections, refractions, glass walls, fish tanks, animal cages, and Maurice Binder's title cards, with Henry Mancini's score chasing them around. The film is openly Hitchcockian — innocent man, MacGuffin, public-event climax — and openly aware it is a Charade rerun in a different key. Critics divided then and still divide on the script: Boxoffice called it "a spy adventure par excellence in the best Hitchcock vein"; Variety found the plot shadowy and Peck's casting in a comedic role uncertain. The visual achievement is undisputed — Challis won the BAFTA for cinematography that year. Christian Dior dressed Loren; Mancini's score was Grammy-nominated.