Bovie Movie

In preparing his romantic comedy Two For the Road, director Stanley Donen decided to utilize many of the cinematic techniques popularized by the French “nouvelle vague” filmmakers. Jump cutting back and forth in time with seeming abandon, Donen and scriptwriter Frederic Raphael chronicle the 12-year relationship between architect Wallace (Albert Finney) and his wife (Audrey Hepburn). While backpacking through Europe, student Finney falls for lovely music student Jacqueline Bisset, but later settles for Hepburn, another aspiring musician (this vignette served as the launching pad for the film-within-a-film in Francois Truffaut’s 1973 classic Day for Night). Once married, Finney and Hepburn go on a desultory honeymoon, travelling in the company of insufferable American tourists William Daniels and Eleanor Bron and their equally odious daughter Gabrielle Middleton. Later on, during yet another road trip, Finney is offered an irresistible job opportunity by Claude Dauphin, which ultimately distances Finney from his now-pregnant wife. Still remaining on the road, the film then details Finney and Hepburn’s separate infidelities. The film ends where it begins, with Finney and Hepburn taking still another road vacation, hoping to sew up their unraveling marriage. While critics did nip-ups over Stanley Donen’s “revolutionary” nonlinear story-telling techniques, audiences responded to the chemistry between Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, not to mention the unforgettable musical score by Henry Mancini. Note: many TV prints of Two for the Road are edited for content, robbing the viewer of Finney and Hepburn’s delightful “Bitch/Bastard” closing endearments.

Wait Until Dark is an innovative, highly entertaining and suspenseful thriller about a blind housewife, Susy Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn). Independent and resourceful, Susy is learning to cope with her blindness, which resulted from a recent accident. She is aided by her difficult, slightly unreliable young neighbor Gloria (Julie Herrod) with whom she has an exasperated but lovingly maternal relationship. Susy’s life is changed as she is terrorized by a group of criminals who believe she has hidden a baby doll used by them to smuggle heroin into the country. Unknown to Susy, her photographer husband Sam (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) took the doll as a favor for a woman he met on an international plane flight and unwittingly brought the doll to the couple’s New York apartment when the woman became afraid of the customs officials. Alone in her apartment and cut-off from the outside world, Susy must fight for her life against a gang of ruthless criminals, led by the violent, psychotic Roat (Alan Arkin). The tension builds as Roat, aided by his gang, impersonates police officers and friends of her husband in order to win Susy’s confidence, gaining access to her apartment to look for the doll. The climax of the film, a violent physical confrontation between Susie and Roat in her dark kitchen, is one of the most memorable and frightening scenes in screen history. All performances are outstanding, particularly those of Audrey Hepburn who plays a vulnerable, but self-reliant woman, and Alan Arkin, in perhaps his best role, as the ruthless, manipulative Roat.

James Bond heads East to save the world (and to learn how to serve saki properly) in this action-packed espionage adventure. When an American spacecraft disappears during a mission, it’s widely believed to have been intercepted by the Soviet Union, and after a Russian space capsule similarly goes missing, most consider it to be an act of American retaliation. Soon the two nations are at the brink of war, but British intelligence discovers that some sort of UFO has crashed into the Sea of Japan. Agent 007, James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent in to investigate. After staging his own death to avoid being followed, Bond, disguised as a Japanese civilian, teams up with agent Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba) and his beautiful associate Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi). With their help, Bond learns that both the American and Russian space missions were actually scuttled by supercriminal Ernst Blofeld (Donald Pleasance) in yet another bid by his evil empire SPECTRE to take over the world. As he battles the bad guys, Bond finds time to romance both Kissy Suziki (Mie Hama) and Helga Brandt (Karin Dor). You Only Live Twice was one of Sean Connery’s last outings as James Bond. The next Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, would star George Lazenby as 007, and while Connery would return for Diamonds Are Forever, in 1973, Roger Moore took over the role. (Connery would play Bond one last time, in 1983’s Never Say Never Again, which was produced outside the official series.)