A Breath Of A Scandal Details

The costumes are nice and the colour's lovely and — needless to add — Sophia Loren looks gorgeous, but there's little ace Casablanca director Michael Curtiz can do to make this somewhat misguided version of Molnar's hoary old play Olympia sparkle, especially when wooden John Gavin is cast as the light in Loren's eye. (Rock Hudson might have made it work.) Still, there are two refugees from Gigi in Maurice Chevalier and Isabel Jeans, who delight both eye and ear (though neither convinces as a Hapsburg), plus wicked Angela Lansbury as Loren's lying arch-rival, so there's some pleasure to be had among the tedium. It's hard to see what the intended audience was for this, though.

Exceedingly flat-footed and boring international co-production of an old Molnar play; if anyone concerned had bright ideas, they don't show.