Feb. 27, 2003 - 11:57 pm
i can't remember exactly how i came across this title. maybe looking for Billy Wilder films? i don't know. but i checked it out and it was pretty good. granted, some aspects of it seemed just wrong to me. like the fact that this sweet girl is falling in love with someone she knows is a total sleazebag, plus he's like 30 years older than her. anyway, it has great direction and acting. i love Gary Cooper, but this is probably the character of his i've liked the least. i guess he's sort of designed to be a sleazy character. he sort of is and sort of isn't.
this is of course a romantic comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper. Hepburn plays a young Parisian cellist whose father is a private detective who gets all of the top cases. mostly he ends up chasing unfaithful wives. and a lot of them end up in the arms of Frank Flannagan (Cooper) when he's in town. Flannagan is a rich bachelor who always seems to get whatever lady he wants and then he always leaves town when they start to want some commitment from him. oh and he always has his string quartet with him ("the gypsies") in order to help make the evenings go more smoothly in his hotel room. but Audrey Hepburn comes to see him one night when she finds out that one of her father's clients is going to shoot him. after that, it's all pudding. well, she actually convinces Flannagan that she's just as much of a player as he is and that she's not interested in any sort of commitment. and then of course you know how it turns out even if you haven't seen the movie.
wow, did anyone else not know that the word "cello" is actually an abbreviation? the real title of the instrument is "violoncello." that freaks me out.
just reading the trivia here on the IMDb. "Cary Grant was offered the part of Frank Flannagan but turned it down because of the age difference between him and Audrey Hepburn." does anyone remember a little film called Charade (1963)?