Robert Wagner

  • The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) While my appreciation for 1960s crime caper The Biggest Bundle of Them All remains temperate, the film has appreciated slightly in time because it’s a wholly average example of something that has also appreciated in the intervening decades. It’s not a new phenomenon—the Tarantino-clones of the late 1990s are far more interesting now that we’re not deluged with them; the classical musicals of the 1950s are still great fun now that we’re not as tired of the genre as audiences were at the time. So, anyone in the mood for a 1960s crime caper comedy is on rather firm ground with The Biggest Bundle of Them All, especially considering the wild casting of the film, its European style (courtesy of its setting, its English director Ken Annakin and having been shot in Cinecittà) and pop-optimism. It pairs well with the later The Italian Job (despite not being in the same league) in how it plays with lucrative violence-free crime and ironic punishment. The casting spans decades of celebrities, with old-school titans such as Edward G. Robinson and Italian neorealist director Vittoria de Sica (!) rubbing shoulders with then-newer actors such as Raquel Welsh and Robert Wagner and black cinema pioneer Godfrey Cambridge. Welsh is clearly the sex-symbol hook on which much of the film was sold at the time—and The Biggest Bundle of Them All doesn’t pass an occasion to showcase her assets, even in a small part. It’s risky to call the film funny—overdone in many ways, a bit lame in others, it’s perhaps more accurate to call it “light-hearted.” There’s untapped potential in the final result: the film doesn’t quite manage to capitalize on its assets, leaving viewers amused but dissatisfied. It probably does play better now to anyone who’s a fan of those 1960s crime comedies.

  • Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind (2020)

    Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Considering the richness of Natalie Wood’s life (the films, the forty-year-long career, the child star, the beauty, the men she dated, the family, the clashes with the studios, the awards) and the tragic circumstances of her death in 1981, any documentary about her has an embarrassment of material to showcase. Documentarian Laurent Bouzereau chooses a middle path in Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, trying to strike a balance between the film that her daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner (the film’s defining voice) wanted to see as a celebration of her mother’s life, and the more sensitive discussion of her death, which is what most viewers are interested in. After the rapid-fire overview of her career, the film moves to a climax of sorts when Gregson Wagner interviews her stepfather, Robert Wagner, about what happened on the boat the night Wood died. While Wagner’s responses are emotional, they’re also incomplete and don’t reveal anything new. While clearly designed to exonerate Wagner of any wrongdoing, the film ends up being this semi-hagiographic, semi-regurgitated look at Wood that packages her life and one version of her death into content fit to feed into the streaming maw — but does not bring any new light on the topic. So, Wood fans, keep your expectations in check and take the documentary for what it is—a reminder of a vivacious screen presence gone too soon, a celebration of her less-visible facet as a mother, and a public statement by her family. Considering that of the four people that were on the boat that night, two are dead and the two others are Christopher Walken and Robert Wagner, maybe we’ll eventually get a more satisfactory answer. But then again, maybe not. One thing’s for sure—if you’re looking for a more even-handed approach to Natalie Wood’s life and death, read a book.

  • Titanic (1953)

    Titanic (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) Most movies are released, seen, discussed and then slowly fade away from memory. A few have the arguably worse fate of permanently being overshadowed by a sequel or remake. While the 1953 version of Titanic wasn’t necessarily remade by the blockbusting 1997 version, there’s only so many ways you can tell the same story, and so both movies will remain forever linked. It’s certainly not the only “earlier version” of the Titanic story (Wikipedia helpfully lists at least three more of those films made prior to 1953), but it’s the one with the most star power, what with Barbara Stanwyck and a very young Robert Wagner in the cast. It’s also one with the bigger budgets, although that money did not stretch to cover historical accuracy—there are significant issues here in terms of factual history, which is highlighted by some generic subplots running through the film in typical Hollywood fashion. The drama is staid, but it does have its moments. Special effects are fair for the time, which may not pass muster today. Considering the film’s context, unflattering comparisons with the 1997 version may not wrong, but they may be misguided—this was blockbuster filmmaking in the early 1950s, and you can almost feel the wheels turning toward the kind of wide-scale spectacle that would be popular toward the end of the decade. A better comparison is with the near-contemporary but superior 1958 film A Night to Remember.