The Brass Bottle (1964)
(On TV, May 2021) I’ve arguably seen the best of the 1960s comedies, so now I’m watching the rest—and there’s plenty to like in the lesser-known movies that amused people at the time. They’re less polished, feature lesser-known actors, strike one-note premises until we’re wrung out and often display jaw-dropping attitudes, but they’re meant to entertain and some of the gags still land. In The Brass Bottle, troubles begin for an architect when he takes possession of an ancient bottle that contains… a genie. A genie who’s curious to understand the world after hundreds of years of solitude, very eager to help his master, not constrained by any law or science, and certainly not limited to a mere three wishes. Seeing Barbara Eden in a supporting role may have you reaching for the nearest I Dream of Jeannie summary and yes: Both works are adapted from the same novel, and it was Eden who played Jeannie in the TV show. But even with those common strands, The Brass Bottle stands as a distinct film. For one thing, the casting is really good: Tony Randall gets a leading role as the architect, the genie is played by a terrific Burl Ives (who reliably steals every film I’ve seen him in) and the beautiful Kamala Devi gets an amusing supporting role as another genie eager to please (but too summarily dismissed from the film). Much of the film’s comedy comes from confronting the unlimited powers of the genie with the moral reservations of the architect, and the very practical consideration in having a magic-using genie in the very rational world of the 1960s. Our genie eventually settles for residential development and stock market investing—to give you an idea of the film’s tone. But then the real world comes knocking, leading us to a cheat of an ending far too close to “it was a dream.” Still, The Brass Bottle is not meant to be a particularly sophisticated film—I mean, the sequence with the donkey is ridiculous enough on its own—but it still has a few chuckles in the tank, and a rather amusing portrayal of a world fifty years gone.
