I haven’t seen every Audrey Hepburn film, but I thought I was at least aware of each of them. So, I was intrigued when a blu-ray was announced of 1964’s Paris When It Sizzles. What is this movie and how had I not heard of it before? It reunites the actress with William Holden, her co-star from the excellent Sabrina. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, good God, it is astonishing how bad the results are. They aren’t garden-variety bad. This isn’t simply dull and inspired. This forges new ground in awfulness, compounded by the criminal waste of talent.
You see, this is a “meta” movie long before we even had the term. Holden is an American screenwriter who has squandered the three months he had to write a screenplay for a producer played by Noel Coward. With only two days remaining, a typist played by Hepburn arrives to discover he hasn’t even come up with a story. Given what we’re about to be subjected to, I suspect the author of the dreck we’re watching was in a similar situation when this was conceived.
There are two layers to this production. The outer layer of this rotting onion has the two contriving to write a deeply stupid screenplay. The next is what they are imagining as they write, and their growing love in real-life is mirrored in developments there.
That could be interesting except one of the film’s fatal flaws (and there are many) is it fails to sell us on why she should start falling for him. He’s a drunk and a self-pitying boor. He claims to be a great literary wit, but there isn’t any evidence of that here. What is supposed to be witty repartee between them is painful to hear, as they nitpick each other’s linguistic quirks and word choices.
Holden writes himself into the movie as the hero. With Hepburn as the typist, I was hoping the words she was putting down would turn his character impotent from his real-life analog’s prolific alcohol consumption.
As the movie-within-the-movie becomes increasingly preposterous, it slowly dawned on me it was supposed to be a parody. But something that is trying to be bad isn’t funny just because it skewers subpar works. There isn’t anything in the nested story that would be funny on its own, leaving us with something that is genuinely awful.
Then there’s the parallel story in the “real” world, which is almost as poor. If only to put into contrast how ridiculous the movie they’re writing is, shouldn’t the framing storyline truly be funny and witty?
I know I described this film as having two layers, but there’s a third in a sense, and that is the meta (Christ, is there a different word I can use for this?) nature of the movie we’re watching. The script being commissioned is for Paramount and the movie we’re watching is a Paramount production. References to Breakfast at Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady had me thinking Hepburn’s character might as well have been named Audrey. Tony Curtis appears as essentially himself in the movie they’re making.
Curtis’s character is there as an example of the many stabs the film takes at the trends and conventions of movies. His satire of method acting reflects Holden’s disdain for the style. Other movie cliches needle the predictability of big-budget American films such as this. The film even concludes with a kiss while commenting how ridiculous it is this type of picture always ends that way. At one point, Hepburn describes the script they’re writing as “Preposterous. Total unmotivated.” And she might as well be talking about everything we’ve seen.
That this film was made in 1962 and shelved for two years reveals Paramount was uncertain what do with this stinker. In a weird way, it is a work slightly ahead of its time, though not in a good way, as it foresees such garbage from later in the decade as Skidoo.
I strained to think of more positive things to say about Paris When It Sizzles but found myself at a loss. This is a terrible movie, and I hated it more than I thought possible. I would say it is to the film’s benefit that at least the actors seem to be having a good time, but I don’t think it is. This viewer may not have found themselves laughing at anything, but the actors on the screen do that frequently, and it is at the audience’s expense.
Dir: Richard Quine
Starring William Holden, Audrey Hepburn
Watched on blu-ray