The director is the highly stylish and talented Stanley Donen who moved from 50's musicals to sophisticated love stories and thrillers in the 60's after the musical form had played itself out. Donen had made Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn a few years earlier, and had done a pretty good job at making a Hitchcock type of light thriller. Probably hoping to hit pay dirt again, Donen reworked Charade as Arabesque, keeping the same basic "who can I trust" situation as he used in the first film. The problem for Donen was the realization that the script was pretty bad.
Gregory Peck was a professional, but he really wasn't known for his light comedy touch. Sophia Loren is a great beauty but she wears some of the strangest outfits ever inflicted on an actress.
To compensate for these problems, Donen and his cinematographer Christopher Callis, photographed the film with as many nutty camera angles as they could think of. There are shots underneath tables, through glass, under the water, fuzzy, distorted, you name it. It's fun for a while but soon the realization sets in that there is nothing going on in the movie.
The movie is a harmless time killer assembled by professionals who tried to spin straw into gold and got pyrite instead.
Written by Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price and Peter Stone (under the alias of Pierre Marton). The running time is 105 minutes.
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