Penelope (1966)
(On Cable TV, February 2022) I’m always amused at how you can gauge the popularity of an older movie shown on Turner Classic Movies just by its image quality. Pristine resolution, colour and sound? We’re probably talking about a well-known, widely-seen, big-budget film that has earned significant restoration work, making it look even better than what audiences saw in theatres at the time. Muddy picture with fuzzy sound? Well, then we must be watching something like Penelope, which was good enough (or rather—starred actors bankable enough) to be worth a perfunctory rescue from the archives during the standard-definition era of TCM broadcasts, but has not been revisited since then. It’s easy to see the film’s mixed impact. On one hand, you’ve got a very attractive Natalie Wood as a banker’s wife running around robbing banks and rich people out of sheer boredom, and Peter Falk doing an early run in the Columbo mould as a dogged police investigator. That, by itself, is enough to rescue the film from obscurity. On the other hand… it doesn’t do much with the rest. Despite taking place in mid-1960s Manhattan, having Wood looking her best and playing around with heist plot elements, director Arthur Hiller struggles to make something out the premise’s strengths. The more it delves into the psychology of the protagonist, the uglier the comedy gets, and the film makes surprisingly little use of the irony of a banker’s wife robbing from her husband’s bank. (Although there’s a cute moment late in the film when insurance payouts trump honesty.) Penelope simply doesn’t spark into anything worth remembering (especially considering the existence of several much stronger mid-1960s heist movies) and there’s a lack of focus on the comedic potential of it all. No wonder it’s still considered with the same lack of enthusiasm that greeted its initial release. So, yes, the next time you see Penelope on TCM and squint at the fuzzy picture, remember that the alternative isn’t as much a crystal-clear restoration as the film sitting unseen in the archives.
