Part Deux of the Audrey Hepburn recap/retroactive crush. In Paris When it Sizzles, we get typist Gabrielle Simpson (one of those high-low name pairings that just doesn't work) and William Holden as screenwriter Richard Benson – together in a penthouse apartment with a looming script deadline to meet. They get on swimmingly. Conceptually, you can picture this as being a sort of Twelve Angry Men, only with a boy, girl and stack of blank paper, shot from a thousand different angles in pseudo-realtime. But dang, it's also one of those films-within-a-film, carved out entirely from the contrived fictional prose of a stumped-for-ideas Benson and his inspiration-for-the-weekend Gabby.

Self-reflexivity in the movies generally flies to begin with because filmmakers revel in the play with convention, or in the case of director Richard Quine, get to make shit up. But eventually, when it comes time to wrap the thing, the whole duality/infinity of the scenario makes for one bitch of a workable resolution. Early on, and Quine sure has fun with a script about an unwritten script that, in its formative stages, goes on to mock scene dissolves, genre cliches and other H'wood textbook-isms while simultaneously milking the creative whirlpool of it all, i.e. "maybe we can get Sinatra sing [the title song]" (which he does), or "here, Marlene Dietrich gets out of a Bentley" (which she does), or "let's have Tony Curtis play one of those method actors who scratches and mumbles and pauses a lot" (which he does).

And yet later, when artistic license finds it has no real direction, you get The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower: a Euro romance-slash-vampire movie-slash-heist caper-slash, well, anything else that comes to mind bar the actual stealing. Given that this farce consists of about 50% of the runtime, Paris When it Sizzles is, inevitably, only half an adequate movie; if this weren't an actual send-up, would Paramount have even paid-up? But herein lies the dilemma: Audrey Hepburn, big magic eyes, all the charm and grace and poise in the world. This may be another one of those roles that has her on the intellectual slide (she's his muse, not his collaborator), crowed inexorably by a fade-to-black kiss (translation: shortcut, love), but even so, how do you resist? Answer: you don't.—Tim Wong

» Richard Quine | USA | 1964