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A rare critic who understood the humor of this "comedy in close-up," Godard has Belmondo and Seberg echo its punchline under the sheets in À Bout de Souffle: "We're improving international relations." The Cold War thawed by Eros breaks Janet Leigh free from her pert-ingénue chrysalis and unveils her for the camera as an exotic object of desire, with off-screen engine whooshes punctuating the three-gasp salute ("A woman... A lady... A dame!"). Out of Soviet airs and into an Alaska military base, she nonchalantly discovers such capitalist amenities as hot showers while the colonel (John Wayne) contemplates this "new form of Russian propaganda." Superbly adept at throwing her head back in lustrous close-up, the defecting pilot proceeds from dark green uniforms to white bathing suits to purple and gold harem costumes—the big-galoot Yank appreciates the Commie's comeliness though their passions are consummated mainly up in the sky, as their jets insinuatingly wheel, dive and twirl around each other against a backdrop of whip-cream abstractions. Romance and betrayal in Palm Springs, back in the USSR for the acid test of marriage. "In other words, I'm attractive to you in every way except politically?" Josef von Sternberg looks at Howard Hughes' fixation on airplanes and boobs analytically, an artist filming a coarse double-entendre ("The bottom of her tank is still damp") with Zen serenity. The enigma of slang, the espionage and counter-espionage of relationships (cf. Dishonored), the Buñuelian perversity of the heroine's Anna/Olga schism. Ninotchka's silly chapeau is briefly seen, the foundation for Rocky & Bullwinkle is amply laid. As for "dated Red-baiting," well, there's the sizzling bloody steak that lures Leigh away from a kiss. "Oh, you Americans..." Cinematography by Winton C. Hoch. With Jay C. Flippen, Paul Fix, Richard Rober, Roland Winters, Hans Conried, and Ivan Triesault.
--- Fernando F. Croce |