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With: Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren, Alan Badel, Kieron Moore, Carl Duering, John Merivale, George Coulouris, Duncan Lamont, Ernest Clark
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Written by: Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, Pierre Marton (Peter Stone), based on a novel by Gordon Cotler
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Directed by: Stanely Donen
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 105
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Date: 05/05/1966
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Eye Candy
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Stanley Donen's follow-up to Charade (1963), again with help from screenwriter Peter Stone (using a pseudonym), was another attempt at a flashy thriller in a vaguely Hitchcockian style. Gregory Peck plays Professor David Pollock, who is asked to translate some hieroglyphics. The paper gets wrapped up with a piece of candy and it becomes the movie's "MacGuffin." Sophia Loren plays Yasmin Azir, a sort of femme fatale, who flips back and forth between being good and evil (and, of course, winds up good and in love with Peck). While this convoluted story doesn't add up to much, Donen established a new visual style for himself, all reflections, odd angles, and convex surfaces, paving the way for his next film — one of his greatest — Two for the Road. Kino Lorber released Arabesque on Blu-ray in 2025, a new 4K scan from the original camera negative, so it looks amazing. Film Historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson provide a commentary track. We get a vintage featurette on composer Henry Mancini, and trailers.
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