Ruba al prossimo tuo [A Fine Pair] (1968)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) Film comedy is harder than many people think — it’s not enough to write a lighthearted script when you also have to make sure that the acting, cinematography and direction are up to the task of presenting the comedy on the page. If nothing else, A Fine Pair is an exemplary case of what happens when no one in the film’s production seems to be trying for comedy. The premise has Rock Hudson as a NYPD detective being more or less seduced (by Claudia Cardinale, one of the film’s few highlights) into becoming an international jewel thief. You can already think of a few other films of that era with similar premises (most notably How to Steal a Million), but if you’re expecting something along those lines from A Fine Pair, you’re going to be solely disappointed. Where to begin? We can start with Rock Hudson — often presented as the successor to Cary Grant, except that Grant would mumble and wiggle his way into more laughs than Hudson even could. He’s not exactly wrong as the humourless police officer, but as with many of his comedies, he’s asked to deliver more than he can. I’m not going to ding Claudia Cardinale as the jewel-stealing temptress — although I’ll note that she seems to be playing a broad take on similar roles that often dips into national stereotypes. But by far the biggest problem with A Fine Pair is that if you watched the film without sound, you would swear you’d be watching a grimy depressing 1970s crime thriller. The cinematography is in cold black and blue (far more black than blue), with wintertime NYC looking sinister and the rest of the European jaunt not being much better with its decrepit sets and naturalistic lighting. We are a long way from bright Hollywood cinematography and lighting, making the entire thing feel lugubrious at best. Further technical problems keep sucking all the fun out of the final film: ADR dialogue with terrible sound editing and hard cuts between samples, laborious staging of dialogue that feels more painful than amusing, and bad set design that makes everything feel claustrophobic. It’s almost amazing how the film mishandles an easy comic premise in order to deliver something that looks and feels like the most depressing film in the world. Cardinale is, fortunately, not that bad (I’d rather watch her than Doris Day) but that’s not enough when the image is dark enough that we can barely make the outline of her face even at the best of times. Hudson (or Cardinale) completists will eventually make their way to A Fine Pair — I’m told that the film’s long-time unavailability created pent-up interest — but all will agree that this ranks low in the lowest tier of both actors’ filmography.