MODESTY BLAISE (1966) **1/2 The very swingin' London set try and do Batman. And they would , believe you me. Except he's a girl. Here. In this, in this he's a girl but it isn't really him. No connoisseur of '60s fashion and design should go another five minutes without checking this out, immediately! Everything's so cool looking and it's not like there's no plot. They just get....it's not even that they get distracted as much as decide to do some other things first. What's your hurry, are you a narc or something? All of the geograms on holographic wallpaper...it's difficult not to imagine just a little bit of what the early days LSD set were going through while watching this...well, ok, maybe just a little bit this is soooo way out there. I've never seen so much attention to glasses, to the vessels within which liquids are contained. And the suits! No wonder they got distracted. No one makes films that look like this anymore, no one ever did. No one ever could have. You puttin' on a soirée for the terminally artsy and perennially hip? You could do a lot worse than having this running in a loop on one wall. So it works great, as an accessory. As a film....well, they do get back to the plot eventually...and I wasn't in a big hurry for it either, but my own personal sense....well, why not lose ones self, however temporarily, in the lurid divertissements of Amsterdam ...and there's nothing wrong with Monica Vitti, she's good, but I shudder to think what this could have turned into with Ursula Andress or Claudia Cardinale in the title role. As it is Dirk Bogarde requires little effort in stealing every scene as an all-time icon of married-to-a-female-witch gayness. Style and sophistication in whatever suit trumps spades. The blue-bloodedest aristocrat never held himself with more sophistication, and what colour is blue for blood anyway, and why oh why must they hold themselves? If that's your scene-or you really desperately want in-you will spend the rest of your days wondering why this isn't one of the most famous and celebrated films of all days. Greatest ever apology for a bombing, and wonderfully derisive dismissal of a particularly dreary artist. That really should be enough for an afternoon.
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