As part of my continuing acquisition of DVDs, I picked up a bunch of Audrey Hepburn movies – several of which I already owned. That's probably the most annoying thing about collecting discount DVDs – they're cheaper in collections but you get more and more duplicates.
At any rate, my wife likes Audrey Hepburn a lot, so I was interested to see a movie I'd not heard of before in the collection: Paris When It Sizzles.
Her co-star is William Holden and I found it strange that I had never heard of it, since a Holden/Hepburn matchup should have produced a great film.
And then I watched it, and now I know why it's forgotten.
The film is about a script writer in Paris (Holden) who has to turn in a script in two days and hasn't written a thing. Hepburn is the typist who has been sent to put the final polish on the script he hasn't written.
Together they hash out a story and the movie constantly goes forwards and backwards as they put together a plot and naturally they play the starring roles in the love story.
At first, it's very clever, but after a while, it becomes tedious. It's like the classic Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy Duck finds himself at the mercy of the cartoonist. The action will stop abruptly, location and costumes will change, and then it proceeds in a different direction.
I actually dozed off after a while because it was becoming so tiresome.
That being said, it's a bright, sunny kind of movie with a first rate cast and cool Nelson Riddle score and I suppose as a time-waster, it is entirely satisfactory. The problem is that it simply doesn't measure up to what one expects from either of its stars.
Which is why I never heard of it.
Chateau Lloyd 
Leave a comment