Ursula Andress

  • 4 for Texas (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) There’s a reason why some Rat Pack films get mentioned all the time (such as Ocean’s Eleven and, to a lesser extent, Robin and the Seven Hoods) and others, not as much – such as 4 for Texas. Here, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin headline as two men of dubious morals fighting it out over a money shipment and then a riverboat casino. It’s certainly light-hearted, and having such notables as Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress in supporting roles (plus Charles Bronson and The Three Stooges) certainly helps to make the film more interesting. But there’s a difference between a light-hearted romp and a comedy, and there’s a sense that writer-director Robert Aldrich never quite gets the mixture right – the jokes fall flat, the events never cohere into a compelling narrative and the actors don’t get to showcase what they’re best at. The writing is sexist even by the standards of the time, and the conclusion happens so quickly that it feels as if something’s missing. Dean and Sinatra certainly seem to have fun “fighting” against each other, but that energy doesn’t quite carry to the rest of the film. A misfire, a waste of talent and a surprising bore, 4 for Texas may best remain forgotten, except for obsessive Rat Pack fans.

  • Soleil rouge [Red Sun] (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) There’s an admirable blend of influences at play in director Terence Young’s spaghetti western Soleil Rouge, bringing together a cast as diverse as Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, Toshirō Mifune, Alain Delon and Capucine in a vision of the Wild West quite unlike another. Consider that the plot gets going when a ceremonial samurai sword intended for American President Grant is stolen aboard a train heading east. Mifune and Bronson team up to get it back from the perfidious Delon, with Capucine and Andress providing further entertainment. There are a lot of cool ideas in here, so maybe it’s not so much of a surprise when the execution ends up being just about average. Sure, seeing an American gunman team up with a Japanese samurai sounds like the kind of revisionist western that would be a natural fit for a multicultural genre-blending twenty-first century. But as executed à la Italian western, it’s perhaps a bit more serious than expected and certainly more laborious than it should be. I’m sure that my limited attraction for westerns is at play here, but still – beyond the premise, Soleil Rouge is a far more average western than you’d expect, and that’s just too bad.

  • The Blue Max (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2022) You may wonder why a mid-1960s film about World War I airplane pilots would go on the German side to find its protagonist, and the answer is obvious: he’s not meant to be a likable character. Adapted from a novel showing the transition to a harsher model of war, The Blue Max features George Peppard in the lead role, an egocentric pilot aiming for public recognition. His quest to achieve twenty kills even as he progressively alienates everyone around him becomes the dramatic arc of the film on which the (admittedly more impressive) flying sequences are arranged. You don’t have to watch The Blue Max for its serviceable plot—but if you’re even the least interested in World War I’s aerial front, this film becomes a must-see. The filmmakers were able to capture some captivating footage of mock combat, as well as other impressive stunts, such as a plane flying low between the trusses of a bridge. It’s quite amazing in colour cinematography, especially if you have a clear memory of previous black-and-white efforts such as Wings or Hell’s Angels. The Blue Max is a long sit at 156 minutes, but it goes by much faster once the action moves into the air. The back-projection special effects have not aged well, but the footage in-between them is still a wonder to watch. James Mason and Ursula Andress are interesting in supporting roles, while The Red Baron makes an appearance as a supporting character. In the wider continuity of war movies, The Blue Max certainly feels like a mid-1960s film—still very much an adventure spectacle, but slowly inching toward the war-is-hell post-1970s mentality in sync with its own themes. It’s still very much worth a look today for its aerial footage.

  • Dr. No (1962)

    Dr. No (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Blu Ray, September 2018) I watched all Bond movies as a young teenager (Radio Canada used to play them, one after the other, each Saturday of the summer), so why not do it again as a middle-aged man? Dr. No is where it all begins, with a fully formed character from Ian Fleming’s series of novels. As a first instalment, you can see the general outline of the celebrated Bond formula although it’s not yet in focus nor as finely balanced as later instalments would be. The gadget sequence is a simple gun swap, the action isn’t as fetishized as subsequent movies (fights are over in an instant, although that speaks more to the evolution of the action genre than anything special about this first film) and the plotting is still very much within the realm of the plausible. The film is now fifty-five years old, and it shows in the technology, the cars, the billowing clouds of cigarette smoke, as well as the casual racism and sexism (including Miss Monnepenny’s harassment) built within the fabric of the story. Still, it works because the fundamentals are solid. Sean Connery is splendid as a slightly darker Bond than we’re used to (shooting a guy for no reason, etc.), establishing the character in an instant even as the film feels obliged to play his leitmotif at the slightest occasion. The location shooting is splendid, with plenty of local Bahamian atmosphere and colour. While some editing does feel leisurely, much of the film has the beat-to-beat pacing of modern movies (especially compared to some other early-sixties thrillers). Perhaps Dr. No’s biggest criticism is that, even and perhaps especially for a Bond film, it does feel perfunctory. The formula not having been perfected, the plot is a linear mad-scientist-and-his-lair thing, with a wholly optional Bond Girl (Ursula Andress, looking good in a fairly generic way) along the way. Choosing a non-aligned SPECTRE flunky as an antagonist rather than the more obvious Soviet menace is intriguing, but the film does drop minor characters and subplots like crazy, overplaying some suspense sequences (tarantulas are rather innocuous as venomous threats) while mishandling others such as the Dent face-off. Dr. No, perhaps inevitably, also suffers from uneven pacing—I found the first hour more interesting than the second, but that may have more to do with 1962 anthropology and spending time with Bond in real-world surroundings rather than the more generic infiltrating-the-lair focus of the second half. Still, truth be told, I did have a good time watching Bond’s first outing—it’s fun, the character is strong, and the period feel, almost reaching back in the fifties, is wonderful.