A DANDY IN ASPIC (1968) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Anthony Mann, Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey, Mia Farrow, Tom Courtenay,
Per Oscarsson, Harry Andrews, Lionel Stander,
Peter Cook, Calvin Lockhart, Michael Trubshawe
Bond-era spy stuff starring Laurence Harvey as a double agent assigned to carry out a hit in Berlin. Mia Farrow plays a globe-trotting photographer who seems to show up everywhere he does. Could she be an agent? Everybody else is. There's a tension and remoteness about Harvey's performance that fits a guy who's been in the trade, on both sides, since his teens, and knows he can't trust anybody. Farrow's party-girl act is all surface and no depth. (She doesn't get much to work with.) Tom Courtenay seems miscast as an arrogant prick assigned to keep an eye on Harvey and help out if needed. Lionel Stander chews it up as an old-school Soviet spy. Harry Andrews plays the head of British intelligence. It's a decently done genre piece with a Quincy Jones score that owes something to Maurice Jarre, and some amusing sexual innuendo. (Watch the way Courtenay brandishes his walking stick in a confrontation with Harvey, and Farrow, in a boyishly mod cap and trousers, straddling a tree branch.) Harvey took over the direction when Mann died during the shoot. Farrow gave birth to "Rosemary's Baby" the same year.
