MODESTY BLAISE

UK, 1966, 119 minutes, Colour.
Monica Vitti, Terence Stamp, Dirk Bogarde, Harry Andrews, Michael Craig, Clive Revill, Alexander Knox, Rossella Falk, Joe Melia, Tina Aumont.
Directed by Joseph Losey.

Modesty Blaise is based on a popular comic strip. It was a spoof of the Bond films of the 1960s – and over the top.

It is a strange film for director Joseph Losey, best noted for much more serious films. He had directed Dirk Bogarde in The Sleeping Tiger, The Servant, King and Country and was to direct him in Accident, all very serious films.

Losey was blacklisted in the United States at the end of the 1940s and moved to England, making films under a false name in the 1950s. The early 1950s were his best period with films like The Criminal, Eva and The Damned. After Modesty Blaise he made more bizarre films like Boom and Secret Ceremony but also made Figures in A Landscape and the fine The Go- Between.

Italian actress Monica Vitti, who appeared in many of Antonioni’s films, is the comic-strip hero. Terence Stamp is her sidekick. And a white-wigged Dirk Bogarde is her arch-enemy, planning to steal diamonds that the British Government is sending to the Middle East to pay for oil privileges.

The film echoes the rather psychedelic style of the mid-1960s.

1. How serious was this film meant to be? Critics took a dim view of it - that Losey should not have made such a frivolous film; that it was an abuse of the spy genre. Have these criticisms any validity?

2. This film was a parody. What values have parodies? How did Losey use the spy genre to show it in its true light, to enjoy it, to examine the genre itself?

3. How was the film a satire on the British - especially the Minister, the secret agents, British financial interests overseas, their methods of procedure and diplomacy?

4. How were the heroics of other films satirised?

5. Modesty Blaise as a woman? The satire in so far that the woman was a heroine spy and not a man? her comic
capabilities and her excessive brain power and physical strength?

6. Willy Garbib - as the supporter of the spy, a man portraying the usual role played by a woman in spy films? How was Willy a caricature of the supporter of the principal spy? How humorous was this role?

7. How was the British secret service satirised? Their agents, their bowler hats, their official talk, their authenticity, very English way of doing things?

8. Gabriel - as a villain, how evil was he? The role of Mc Whirter as his assistant? Were they worthy enemies of Modesty Blaise and Willy? Their hideout, the Mediterranean settings, the yachts, the whole atmosphere of Gabriel and his headquarters, their rooms etc?

9. Mrs Fothergill and the other women? What were they satirising? Did the film become slightly serious when Mrs Fothergill was hanged?

10. Comment on the spoof of spy film, comedy gimmicks. How were ordinary things. eg boats. phones. used in a gimmicky way?

11. Were the dramatics of the testing of spies and their loyalty humorously done?

12. The dramatics of the final shootout? Modesty and Willy two against all the rest? Their posing on the rocks? Their singing the song and showing off their shooting? The arrival of the sheik and his Arabs - like any Saturday Matinee show? The intercutting of the sheik and the Arabs with Modesty and Willy?

13. The satire of the villain being punished at the end, Gabriel and his cries for champagne?

14. The use of colour? The use of elaborate and modern colour design?

15. This film was based on a comic strip character. Was this evident? Did the film utilise the spy thriller conventions well?