I never got to see this original Terrence Rattigan film directed by Anthony Asquith the first time in theater. But I certainly remembered the song Forget Domani. Frank Sinatra had a huge selling record of it and you could hear it back in 1964 about as often as you could hear the Beatles on the radio.
The creative well ran a little dry for Terrence Rattigan in The Yellow Rolls Royce, a film of three separate stories involving the owners of a really flashy Yellow Rolls Royce. Rattigan's first two stories are essentially the same story with different characters. In the first diplomat Rex Harrison buys the car spanking new out of the show room for his wife Jeanne Moreau. She uses it of course to meet boyfriend Edmond Purdom who works under Harrison in the Foreign Office and is about to be transfered to South America.
The second story has the car pass to George C. Scott who is an American gangster with moll Shirley MacLaine. She falls for fellow gangster Alain Delon. Both the first two stories resolve themselves in the same way.
The third story is the charm and the original one. By now visiting American dowager Ingrid Bergman has the car and has the charming Omar Sharif talk his way into hitching a ride from Trieste to Belgrade on the eve of the invasion of Yugoslavia by Hitler. That offer of help leads Bergman on an odyssey into how the other half lives she never bargained for. I do so love the scene where just as she's ordering a fine meal in an expensive restaurant in Belgrade, the air attack starts and the disruption of service upsets her so.
If Rattigan had done something a little more original for the second story The Yellow Rolls Royce might truly be a classic. As it is it's not bad. Asquith certainly captured the ambiance of the Thirties and antique car lovers will love this film.
The creative well ran a little dry for Terrence Rattigan in The Yellow Rolls Royce, a film of three separate stories involving the owners of a really flashy Yellow Rolls Royce. Rattigan's first two stories are essentially the same story with different characters. In the first diplomat Rex Harrison buys the car spanking new out of the show room for his wife Jeanne Moreau. She uses it of course to meet boyfriend Edmond Purdom who works under Harrison in the Foreign Office and is about to be transfered to South America.
The second story has the car pass to George C. Scott who is an American gangster with moll Shirley MacLaine. She falls for fellow gangster Alain Delon. Both the first two stories resolve themselves in the same way.
The third story is the charm and the original one. By now visiting American dowager Ingrid Bergman has the car and has the charming Omar Sharif talk his way into hitching a ride from Trieste to Belgrade on the eve of the invasion of Yugoslavia by Hitler. That offer of help leads Bergman on an odyssey into how the other half lives she never bargained for. I do so love the scene where just as she's ordering a fine meal in an expensive restaurant in Belgrade, the air attack starts and the disruption of service upsets her so.
If Rattigan had done something a little more original for the second story The Yellow Rolls Royce might truly be a classic. As it is it's not bad. Asquith certainly captured the ambiance of the Thirties and antique car lovers will love this film.