Arabesque (1966)

David Pollock (Gregory Peck) is an American professor in Oxford who gets roped into figuring out a cipher written in Hittite hieroglyphs that a lot of people are interested in. The prime minister of a Middle Eastern nation who asks Pollock to infiltrate the billionaire Beshraavj's (Alan Badel) organization, which is tied to whatever the cipher says, and a general of a rebellion that dresses and talks like he wants to be James Dean. There are various menacing goons and vans following Pollock around.

In the middle of it all is Yasmin Azir (Sophia Loren.) Initially introduced as Beshraavj's mistress, we're immediately given cause to question that when she insists the house Pollock's being kept in belongs to her, though Beshraavj certainly acts otherwise. But she seems very close with the rebel general, and she helps Pollock escape Beshraavj, before going back to the tycoon with a story.

This is, thematically, a sequel to the Audrey Hepburn/Cary Grant movie, Charade, including having the same director, Stanley Donen. Supposedly, they wanted Grant for Peck's role, and Grant turned them down either because (mundane explanation) he wasn't acting as much by then, or (spicy explanation, per wherever my dad read it) Grant and Loren had a thing, but she turned down his offer of marriage.

So you get Peck, who outright told Donen he was no Cary Grant when it came to comedy. This is true. Peck is a little too stiff, the glib remarks don't quite roll out as smoothly. But he's also basically in Hepburn's spot, the ordinary one in the middle of all the duplicity and scheming. Loren is the one with the constantly changing backstory and uncertain allegiances. So Peck gets to be confused and frustrated and occasionally furious when he feels like Yazmin is stringing him along into danger.

Yazmin, meanwhile, is the one that has to try and keep plates spinning. She has to keep all these different men - Beshraavj, the general, Pollock - believing she's on their side, even as they also have to believe she's just pretending to help the others. Loren isn't Cary Grant when it comes to comedy, either, but she has the charm to make it believable, while offering just enough vulnerability to keep the audience from turning on her. You see it mostly with Beshraavj and the general, rather than Pollock, since they're more overtly threatening, the former couching all his threats in vague terms. Badel has this disconnected delivery, almost like he's quietly rehearsing threats or lines he's going to use later, and it just so happens someone else is actually in the room. He always wears sunglasses, at night, indoors, whenever, so he's not making much eye contact, either.

Of course, the movie takes a roundabout approach to eye contact anyway. Doren apparently brought in an additional scriptwriter to punch up the dialogue, and he would, in turn, punch up the visuals. He uses a lot of shots where we see characters via reflections. They talk to each other with their backs turned, watching each other in mirrors, we see them through some magnifying lens that flips the image upside-down.

At one point Pollock and Yasmin flee Beshraavj's chief goon and end up in an aquarium. They hide behind a pillar, but we see them via their reflection in a fish tank, so it looks like they're hiding behind some stone pillars in the tank. Yasmin and Beshraavj have a charged conversation in one of those infinite mirror set-ups, so you aren't ever looking at them as they talk, just an endless series of reflections.

Supposedly all the "punching up" was to disguise that the plot isn't so great, which I agree with. Charade had the advantage - or the foresight - to make the MacGuffin something concrete, an amount of money people found worth killing for. The information the cipher concealed was kept so secret, it could have been anything. I think we're meant to take it as given that, whatever it is, it's worth killing for, but I think the vagueness works against the movie. Pollock isn't really looking for anything, he just needs time where no one's harassing him to decipher the code. So the movie has to keep people on his tail so he doesn't get time, without the plot actually advancing in any way.