Jacqueline Bisset

  • Under the Volcano (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) For old-school Hollywood fans, it’s remarkably easy to be attracted to Under the Volcano. Just look at the cast and crew: Directed by John Huston; featuring Albert Finney and Jacqueline Bisset; a character study of an alcoholic diplomat in the last stages of a broken-down marriage in 1938 Mexico. It’s all incredibly glum, with the incredibly downbeat ending kicking depressed viewers well after they’re down. So, yeah—if you’re expecting a good time, this is not the film to watch, even if you can argue that the protagonist’s self-destructiveness makes the ending a foregone conclusion from the get-go. (But remember—the film goes the extra mile to make the ending even worse than what you can expect.)  Production values are not bad, showing off the location shooting at nearly every turn. Finney is not bad in an extremely drunk role, but Under the Volcano itself fails to adhere—the atmosphere makes it clear that it’s not going to end well, and that doesn’t give much reason to care about the inexorable spiral toward the end. As much as Huston has a celebrated series of classics under his belt, a deeper look in his filmography reveals that he has plenty of less-than-impressive films in his lower tier. Something to keep in mind for completists.

  • The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) As far as 1970s jewel thief movies go, The Thief Who Came to Dinner is about as ordinary as they come. Ryan O’Neill stars as a computer programmer who decides to quit his job after being seduced by jewel thievery, and exchanges his first score for addresses of other places with jewelry stashes. Jacqueline Bisset plays the generic girlfriend role, while Warren Oates completes the main trio as an investigator who develops a fondness for the object of his pursuit. The rest is rather standard material, albeit occasionally convoluted for its own sake. I probably would have enjoyed the result more if I thought more highly of blandy-bland O’Neill and his inexplicable run of popularity in the 1970s. The atmosphere of 1970s Houston is interesting, and the result is quite watchable even if you don’t think much of it. It’s just that the film invites comparisons to other films that don’t work to its advantage—although The Thief Who Came to Dinner works better if your expectations are firmly in check.

  • The Deep (1977)

    The Deep (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) The production history of The Deep is almost more interesting than the film itself: Hot from the massive success of Jaws, author Peter Benchley’s next novel was quickly snapped up by Hollywood and turned into a summer tentpole film. Underwater filming in the newest widescreen colour format required new cameras and lighting systems, and much of the film was shot using the real actors (albeit in underwater sets requiring no deep dive). The result was… well, an acceptable thriller. The contrivances are significant (requiring criminals to take an interest in recovered WW2 morphine and one wreck lying atop another much older wreck with Spanish treasure) but the film is generally well executed. Setting counts for a lot in even run-of-the-mill thrillers, and underwater diving was a bit of a novelty at the time (although reprised a few times since then). Nick Nolte is pretty good as one of the co-leads, but Jacqueline Bisset steals the show with an opening sequence in a wet white T-shirt (an image so famous that there’s a very, very complete blog post about it). It all combines into a capable underwater thriller, perhaps not as remarkable now as it was back then, but still an entertaining-enough 1970s blockbuster film with some very good cinematography.