A couple of decades before “high concept” was invented came this high concept picture – a killer is hired to kill himself. Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed) is the assassin in question and Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg) the journalist doing the hiring. So Ivan challenges the other members of his murderous outfit to kill him before he despatches them. The odds are about ten to one. Initially involved in shadowing Ivan, Sonya becomes drawn to his aid when it transpires there is a bigger conspiracy afoot.
Set just before World War One, the action cuts a swathe through Europe’s glamor cities – London, Paris, Vienna, Venice – while stopping off for a bit of slapstick, some decent sight gags and a nod now and then to James Bond (gadgets) and The Pink Panther (exploding sausages).
Odd a mixture as it is, mostly it works, thanks to the intuitive partnership of director Basil Dearden and producer (and sometime writer and designer) Michael Relph, previously responsible this decade for League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961), Masquerade (1965) and Khartoum (1966).
Playing mustachioed media magnate Lord Bostwick, Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) has a decent chomp at an upper-class British action. It’s easy to forget was one of the things that marked him out was his clear diction and he always had an air about him, so this was possibly less of a stretch.
Ramping up the fun is a multi-cultural melange in supporting roles: Frenchman Phillipe Noiret (Night of the Generals, 1967), everyone’s favourite German Curt Jurgens (Psyche ’59, 1964) playing another general, Italian Annabella Contrera (The Ambushers, 1967) and Greek George Coulouris (Arabesque, 1966) plus British stalwarts Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) as a brothel madam, television’s Warren Mitchell (Till Death Do Us Part), Kenneth Griffith and Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967).
The action flits between sudden danger and elaborate set pieces. When Ivan announces his proposal to his board he promptly fells a colleague with a gavel just as that man throws a knife. Apart from folderols in a Parisian brothel, we are treated to a Viennese waltz and malarkey in Venice. There are disguises aplenty, donned by our hero and his enemies. Lighters are turned into flame throwers.
And there is a lovely sly sense of humour, an Italian countess, wanting rid of her husband, does so under the pretext of Ivan gone rogue. Oliver Reed (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) and Diana Rigg (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1970), adopting her best Julie Andrews impression, are in excellent form and strike sparks off each other. Their verbal duels are a joy to watch. Basil Dearden, in his second-last picture, invested the movie with considerable panache. It takes more skill to carry off this kind of movie, as much satire and spoof as anything else, than a straightforward action or crime picture.
Relph conjured up the screenplay based on an unfinished Jack London novel published posthumously in 1963 with the assistance of crime writer Robert L. Fish.
Shouldn’t work as well as it does. Surprisingly enjoyable.
The Magnificent 60s 