THE STATUE
UK/US, 1971, 84 minutes, Colour.
David Niven, Virna Lisi, Robert Vaughn, Ann Bell, John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor?, Hugh Burden.
Directed by Rodney Amateau.
The Statue was written by Alec Koppel, playwright of such films as I Killed the Count, and Denis Norden, the witty commentator and wordsmith. They have concocted a 1970s-style sex comedy, the story of a statue and a puzzle about phallic issues.
Some are surprised to see David Niven in this film, though he carries off the central role with great aplomb. Others considered it more like a variation on a Benny Hill story.
Niven portrays a linguist who receives all kinds of honours including a Nobel Prize. His neglected wife, Virna Lisi, sculpts a large statue of him but alters the genitalia. The comedy is about his quest to find out who was the model for the statue.
This was the kind of film that was being made in the early 1970s given the changes of standards and permissiveness in plots during the 1960s. Later decades may well take this kind of film for granted, given the greater openness (or permissiveness) in the topics for films. It was directed by Rodney Amateau, television director who, at this time, directed Peter Sellers in Where Does It Hurt.
1. The impact of the film, entertainment value, quality as comedy?
2. The good taste of the film? Bad taste? Which sequences illustrated this best?
3. The colour, locations, breezy music, theme song, etc.? Appropriate for this kind of light comedy?
4. The quality of the screenplay in terms of comedy and taste? Dialogue, jokes, wit, situations? The handling of the comedy by the principal actors? By John Cleese?
5. Audience response to contrived situations like this? The humour, the cleverness? The obviousness?
6. How satirical was the film? Was the satire sharp, or was it overcome by the broad comedy? What was being satirised?
7. The validity of the sex theme? Prudery, audience response to the statue, the characters' response to the statue, the focus on the penis, the preoccupation with male sexuality, penis envy?
8. The significance and tone of the opening, a universal language, the Nobel Prize? The transition to preoccupation about the statue?
9. David Niven's style as Alex? Was he delineated well as a character? His work and ambitions? Relationship with his wife? Preoccupation about the statue? His search? The contrast with Rhonda? Her work an a sculptor? Her relationship with her husband? Response to his love, to his jealousy? The American ambassador and his relationship with them both?
10. The minor characters like Harry and his world of psychiatry and television, the lawyers, the Americans, the C.I.A.? What did they contribute to the quality of the comedy?
11. The importance of the details of Alex's search, photos, the baths, the show, wife-swapping on the yacht? The spying and the C.I.A., the United States backed search?
12. The presentation of the Americans and their attitudes and style? The C.I.A. and the elderly woman in charge?
13. How satisfactory was the solution? The humour? The irony for the American ambassador?
14. What entertainment value? Any other values?
