THE YELLOW ROLLS-ROYCE (MGM 1965) Warner Home Video
Still counting
the considerable profits from Anthony Asquith’s The V.I.P.’s (1963), MGM reunited its director with screenwriter,
Terrance Rattigan for The Yellow Rolls-Royce
(1965); a tedious, if mind-bogglingly all-star drama, intent on following at
least part of the life cycle of its famed luxury automobile as it changes hands
between various owners en route to the inevitable scrapyard. Mercifully, we are
spared the indignation of watching all that polished chrome and leather turned
into a crumbled cube inside a compactor; the movie incongruously ending in
mid-tale with the titular town car disembarking a European steamer, presumably
bound for even more whacky misadventures on the open roads in the United
States. One can only imagine what chichi Beverly Hills or Bel Aire excursions
could befall it. Without a doubt, there
remains enough tempered sex and intrigue, even a war in the Balkans, to
threaten the Rolls and its occupants. Producer, Anatole de Grunwald has
assembled a glittery roster of established stars to add majesty to this
mishmash and some superb travelogue cinematography via the inimitable visual
stylist, Jack Hildyard . In short, The
Yellow Rolls-Royce had everything one could wish for in a movie except
plot; Rattigan’s vignettes disastrously episodic and thoroughly dull in
spots.
Asquith and
Rattigan were old chums, each deriving a certain perfunctory contempt for the
British aristocracy. Indeed, Asquith’s father had been Britain’s Prime Minister
during the early part of the 20th century, while Rattigan came to
the art of poking holes in its stiff upper crust by way of being the son of a
high-ranking U.K. diplomat. Kindred spirits, Asquith and Rattigan had shown
great promise, gaining success and momentum as a team. Hence, The Yellow Rolls-Royce ought to have
worked. It doesn’t. At times, it has the look of an epic. But it submarines our
expectations for a light and frothy comedic gem or even a winsome travelogue,
afflicted with Tourette fits buffered by a staggering amount of overly-dramatic
melancholy, almost always leading into a somber denouement. All too quickly, The Yellow Rolls-Royce starts to feel
like an anthology piece, with disparate acting styles and plots barely
sustainable at just over two hours. Because of Asquith and Rattigan’s background,
the film’s first act has an air of stodgy authenticity, nee intimacy, wholly
absent from the rest of the picture. Yet,
despite its travelogue format, The
Yellow Rolls-Royce doesn’t cover much ground, its journey from glamorous
showpiece to all but forgotten clunker, resurrected to its former glory, hits
multiple potholes and encounters far too many detours along the way; the road
trip periodically interrupted by some heavy-handed melodrama – or is it the
other way around? If only the narrative could
have lived up to Jack Hildyard’s breathtaking cinematography, or the caliber of
this internationally acclaimed all-star cast.
Since the
early 1930s, MGM had been one of a few studios to successfully carry off the
ensemble motion picture; the jam-packing of A-list talent into ‘B’, ‘C’ or even
‘D’ grade filler becoming more standardized, conventional and heavily recycled after
the ‘30’s big scale wonderments; Grand
Hotel (1931) and Dinner At Eight
(1934) set the tone. What helped to propel these earlier offerings to
popularity and acclaim (and snag the former a Best Picture Oscar besides) was
the tenuous balance between carefully crafted melodrama and the spectacle of
seeing so many big names casually pass before the camera, briefly sharing the
same claustrophobic space and occasionally mingling in one another’s
stratosphere. By the end of the 1940’s, this sort of ‘look who’s here’ had run its course to become passé, the audience
more blasé then bemused. Even so, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio with ‘more stars than there are in heaven’,
could not resist the formula for very long. So, in the mid-forties they remade Grand Hotel as Weekend At The Waldorf (1945); a watered down chestnut that, oddly
enough, rang cash registers all over the country and turned a handsome profit
besides. In the mid-1950’s, independent showman, Michael Todd tried his hand at
the superstar gristmill, transforming Jules Verne’s cavalcade of short stories,
collectively lumped together as Around
the World in Eighty Days (1956) into yet another Oscar-winning Best
Picture.
Indeed, there
was still box office gold to be mined by the mid-sixties; producer/director,
Stanley Kramer taking it to the absurd extreme in 1963 with It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In
hindsight, Kramer’s flick seemed to suggest both how far the star-studded
cavalcade picture had come, and yet, emphasize it had nowhere left to go –
except down. It would take another decade and the likes of visionary
disaster/master, Irwin Allen to re-envision the ensemble picture yet again,
this time adding peril to pageantry with The
Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The
Towering Inferno (1974). The Yellow
Rolls-Royce cribs from a template much closer to home. The V.I.P.’s had been a curious moneymaker for MGM at a time when one
had been desperately needed. A contrite tale of a bored sophisticate, played
with lugubrious charm by Elizabeth Taylor and her slightly possessive husband
(real life married, Richard Burton) and the former’s infidelity with an oily
intercontinental suitor (Louis Jourdan) had been puffed out in all the right
places by a few well-placed star turns from Orson Welles, Maggie Smith and Rod
Taylor; all of them destined to never get off the ground during a dense fog
bank, their various peccadilloes played out mostly inside the V.I.P room at
London’s Heathrow airport.
In hindsight, The Yellow Rolls-Royce lacks the
continuity of these aforementioned movies on several levels, chiefly because it
chooses to chart the course of an inanimate object. The people who invariably
come to possess it for a limited amount of time are simply necessary to keep
the tank full of gas. But they never meet as the car exchanges hands, their
stories incidental to what eventually happens to the automobile. Unlike MGM’s earlier efforts, The Yellow Rolls-Royce lacks the
benefit of solidarity among its stock company. In the good ole days, Metro
would have assembled a roster from homegrown talent under ironclad contracts.
The homogenized look would also have extended to a uniform acting style. Watch
an MGM picture from the 1930s or 40s and it becomes apparent there’s well-oiled
machinery – all pistons firing in unison.
Without a star
system in place, MGM did what was necessary; hire from without, picking up
brand names the way one might gather paperclips – by the handful. Alas,
decisions in casting were largely predicated on the hot star du jour; Rex
Harrison (everyone’s favorite Prof. Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) assuming the fatally dull part of a boring
aristocrat, Lord Charles Frinton; more invested in his box at the races than
his crumbling marriage to Lady Eloise (a very wooden, Jeanne Moreau). From France too, came Alain Delon, herein, a
thoroughly wasted stud-farm Lothario, lurking in the peripheries of a
disastrous affair between Mafioso, Paolo Maltese (George C. Scott) and cheap
trick on a string, Mae Jenkins (Shirley MacLaine). Sweden’s contribution to this international
jet set is Ingrid Bergman, playing a heavily mascaraed haughty socialite,
brought down a peg or two by the outbreak of a Balkan uprising; her valiant
Partisan hero played with lethal turgidity by Omar Sharif.
The Yellow Rolls-Royce begins with
Lord Charles Frinton, who spies the shiny automobile in a high-end luxury car
shop in London. A Marquess, handling London’s foreign affair office with a
certain noblesse oblige, and well aware he’s late in acknowledging a more
meaningful date, Frinton buys the canary yellow car as a 10th wedding
anniversary present for his wife, Lady Eloise (Jeanne Moreau). It should please
her immensely, as presumably everything about their marriage has been copacetic
thus far; except the lady of this sprawling country estate is having a torrid
affair with Charles’ aid, Fane (Edmund Purdon). Purdon’s career is one of those
utterly wasted opportunities in Hollywood: a pretty face who proved he could
mime through The Student Prince
(vocals supplied by Mario Lanza) and beefcake his way in a sword and sandal
quickie, The Egyptian (both made in
1954); who faked acting enough to get by on his good looks and worked steadily,
but never managed to rise above a largely forgettable tenure in films and on
TV.
On the eve
Fane is being sent off to the Far East to oversee affairs of state, a position
presumably orchestrated to take both he and Eloise far away from Charles for a
very long while, Charles unveils the luxury sedan for his wife’s benefit at a
lavish house party. It’s too much, and it makes Eloise momentarily resist all
the plans she and Fane have previously concocted. Good to see the gal has some
scruples left in her brain, even if her heart is fickle. Eloise and Fane plot a lover’s rendezvous,
unintentionally thwarted by Charles when Eloise announces she has a headache
and the ever-dutiful Charles follows her to bed. The next day, Charles, still
oblivious to what’s going on, plans to watch his prize racehorse ride to
victory in the Gold Cup. The qualifying race goes off without a hitch. But then
Charles is given an earful as to his wife’s whereabouts from the deliciously
wicked, Hortense Astor (Joyce Grenfell). Disbelieving her innuendo, though
nevertheless with curiosity peaked, Charles leaves his private box moments before
his horse is set to run. He discovers Eloise in Fane’s arms inside the backseat
of yellow Rolls-Royce. The horse wins the race, but Charles has been cut to the
quick. He begrudgingly accepts the Gold Cup; a very bittersweet victory –
returning home with Eloise and instructing his chauffeur to return the car to
the showroom at once because it ‘displeases’
him.
From here, the
story jumps ahead to Naples, Italy where Paolo Maltese (George C. Scott), the
right arm of Al Capone, is entertaining his fiancée, Mae Jenkins (Shirley
MacLaine) with hired gun, Joey Friedlander (Art Carney) in tow. To say Mae’s a
diamond in the rough is being kind. Actually, she’s uncouth, though bumped out
in all the right places; enough to mildly amuse Paolo, even as her periodic
ennui leaves him fuming. Mae takes an immediate liking to the yellow
Rolls-Royce currently parked inside an Italian showroom. Paolo strong arms the
salesman into selling him the car – then learns of a gangland coup back in
America that demands his immediate attention. In the meantime, Mae takes up
with a gigolo, Stefano (Alain Delon) whom this motley trio first befriended while
taking tourist photos at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Stefano seduces Mae, offering
her a legitimate romance, alas with a pauper, to her pampered life of crime
with Paolo. Their chance for happiness ends when Paolo’s returns. Pushed to
consider her choices, Mae resolves to wed Paolo in America at the earliest
possible convenience, leaving Stefano heart sore and betrayed.
This middle
act is probably the weakest in the film; a loose regurgitation of the first
ill-fated love story, ever so slightly redressed with an even more bittersweet
and hard-candied center. As with the first segment, the cast – although accomplished
in their own right – struggles to find a tangible chemistry to make their dumb
show click. Arguably, it never does. George C. Scott is a flamboyant Mafioso;
Art Carney, his empathetic stooge. These are two old hams in their prime. But both are working from caricatures to
fashion a performance. There’s a lot of needless bumbling around, obviously
meant to show off the resplendent and sundrenched Italian locations. It all
looks as it should. Tragically, as with the first sequence, these locations are
piecemealed with some woefully transparent sets constructed at Pinewood Studios.
To some degree, the sets are less obvious during the first segment, already
taking place in Britain, although no one could confuse Rex Harrison’s box at
Ascot for the real thing. The soundstage recreations through this movie are
brutally artificial.
As Mae and
Paolo drive away to an uncertain future, our narrative jumps ahead again, to
Trieste, circa 1941 on the eve Hitler is planning a military push into the
Balkans. The Rolls-Royce is seen stripped of its tires, slightly beat up and
resting on blocks inside a Yugoslav garage. Once again, the car catches the eye
– this time of a wealthy American, Gerda Millett (Ingrid Bergman); a frivolous
creature carting around her nattering Pekinese. Bribed by Yugoslav patriot,
Zoran Davich (Omar Shariff) to smuggle him back into the country, Gerda first
resists; then reluctantly acquiesces, only to find herself embroiled in the
machinations of an organized freedom fighter.
An unlikely romance blossoms between Zoran and Gerda as they rescue
beleaguered townsfolk from Hitler’s bombs, survive a hotel bombing raid
themselves, then band together with a troop of Partisans standing guard at a
mountain retreat, and preparing to confront the advancing German army. The
romance ends prematurely when Zoran informs his lover the best way she can help
him is to return to America and persuade President F.D.R., presumably, a
personal friend, to enter the fight against Fascism of Europe’s behalf. Gerda
agrees and is smuggled safely beyond the border. The final shot in the movie
shows a somewhat battered, but still intact, yellow Rolls-Royce being hoisted
out of a European steamer’s cargo hold in America; its future uncertain, though
likely ongoing.
The Yellow Rolls-Royce would be
marginally satisfying as a screwball comedy if it weren’t such a crazy quilt of
uninspired melodramatic remnants seemingly stitched together from castoffs of
other movies. Composer, Riz Ortolani has given us an infectious main title,
also serving as the Rolls-Royce’s theme throughout the picture; bright and
bouncy and immediately hummable. Ortolani, with lyrics by Norman Newell, also
gives us a sultry ballad, ‘Let’s Forget
About Domani’, sung with a smoldering sensuality by Katina Ranieri. The
song did well on the hit parade, particularly Sinatra’s re-orchestration. But
otherwise, The Yellow Rolls-Royce is
something of a grand disappointment. It
isn’t simply that the events depicted herein lack continuity from one to the next.
Rather, Terrance Rattigan’s integration of character, plot and dialogue is so
remedial as to suggest a complete lack of investment in the project.
If anything, The Yellow Rolls-Royce illustrates the
obviousness in the exercise; its attempt to recall all those star-studded
spectacles from Metro’s heyday falling flat – and worse, completely resting on
the laurels of its star power. Without a solid script to take us beyond the
hook and worm stage of its pedestrian plot, the film becomes a series of badly
timed, woefully mislaid skits, its cacophony of drama, occasionally agitated,
though never to a point where we care about any of these characters.
Traditional soap operas have more cohesion than this movie; a genuine shame
too, because the cast is outstanding. None are pressed to the limit of their
abilities, but each is a fondly recalled face and an asset to the picture. It’s
frustrating, however, to think of their cumulative mega-wattage expended on so
unworthy a subject.
Interestingly,
The Yellow Rolls-Royce did
respectable business in the U.S., grossing $5.4 million. A more curious oddity: the critics rallied to
treat it with kid gloves. The Sunday Telegraph was particularly genial, saying,
“anyone willing to be taken for a smooth
ride could hardly find a more sumptuous vehicle, star-studded, gold-plated,
shock-proof and probably critic-proof, too”. Time Magazine raved, “It’s an elegant, old-fashioned movie about roadside sex” that
looks “appropriately over-privileged in
high-powered personalities and spectacular sets.” Even The New York Times
could not help but fall under its sway, although with a slightly more critical
eye, commenting, “It’s a pretty slick
vehicle…pleasing to the eye…but it hardly worthy of all the effort and noted
personalities involved.”
Warner Home
Video’s anamorphic widescreen DVD is generally a delight. Despite several sequences
suffering from slight color fading, image quality is most often sharp and
pleasing; full of bright and saturated colors. Flesh tones tend to appear
slightly pasty, but fine detail is nicely realized, as are contrast levels. The
audio is mono and, at times, quite strident. (It would have been prudent of Warner
to give us at least Riz Ortolani’s buoyant main title represented in stereo.)
Apart from a well-worn theatrical trailer, there are NO extra features. Bottom
line: conflicted, but leaning towards a recommendation – for the flawed fluff
and fun of it all. While I cannot deny its star power, the story left me flat!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
0
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