The Yellow Rolls-Royce
1965
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Written by Terence Rattigan
Produced by Anatole de Grunwald
Music by Riz Ortolani
Part one – 1931
Rex Harrison – Charles, The Marquis of Frinton
Jeanne Moreau – Eloise. The Marchioness of Frinton
Edmund Purdom – John Fane
Michael Hordern – Mr Harnsworth, car salesman
Lance Percival- assistant car salesmen
Gregoire Aslan – The Albanian Ambassador
Moira Lister – Lady Angela St. Simeon
Part two
George C. Scott – Paolo Maltese
Shirley MacLaine – Mae Jenkins
Alain Delon – Stefano
Art Carney- Joey Friedlander
Part three
Omar Sharif – Davich
Ingrid Bergman – Gerda Millett
Joyce Grenfell- Hortense
It’s officially 1964 (filming started in April 1964), but is effectively 1965
Release dates: UK 30 December 1964, USA 13 May 1965
This wasn’t on my radar at all. I was trying to find a DVD of The VIPs and amazon didn’t have it, but kept suggesting this instead. Anthony Asquith and Terence Rattigan had just collaborated on The VIPs and The Yellow Rolls-Royce carried on the idea of a cast of major stars. A LOT of major stars.
Asquith and Rattigan had worked together on the film versions of his stage plays … French Without Tears in 1939, then The Way To The Stars was a version of Rattigan’s Flare Path in 1945, then there was While The Sun Shines (1947), The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951) as well as the film version of The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde in 1952. Asquith had also directed The Millionairess with Peter Sellars and Sophia Loren.
The concept of three distinct stories, linked by the car comes from a 1947 German drama In Those Days,
French Jeanne Moreau plays an English aristocrat. Egyptian Omar Sharif plays a Yugoslavian freedom fighter. French Alain Delon plays an Italian photographer. Swedish Ingrid Bergman plays an American grande dame.
IMDB
Let’s add that Joyce Grenfell, who is British plays a lady from the Southern USA complete with Scarlett O’Hara accent … but then Vivian Leigh was English too.
Genevieve? The Fast Lady? The yellow Rolls Royce? (one could add Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,and Herbie) The car is the star. The Roll-Royce Phantom in the film is a bizarre concept for as late as 1931 where the chauffeur was exposed to the elements in the front seat while the passengers were cocooned in privacy in the cabin. It was rather like a stagecoach in that respect. The separation also made it more suitable with its draw down blinds as a passion wagon, which is what it serves as in each of the stories. ‘In the Back Seat Of My Car’ as the Paul McCartney song puts it.
Part one
We start out with the shrouded Roll-Royce on the back of a truck being delivered to the showroom. Lord Charles Frinton – The Marquess of Frinton (Sir Rex Harrison) is Under Secretary of State of the British Foreign and Colonial Office.
Lance Percival is the salesman. Rex Harrison is Lord Charles.
Lord Charles sees the Rolls in the window of the showroom … window shopping. He enters the showroom and buys the new Rolls-Royce Phantom as a 10th wedding anniversary present for his wife Lady Eloise, The Marchioness of Frinton (Jeanne Moreau). He’s not interested in the car itself, and he’s in a hurry. He admires the crystal decanter in the rear, but is somewhat annoyed at the lack of a telephone – by which he means a device for giving instructions to the driver when the soundproof screen is up. They will fit one.
Michael Hordern and Rex Harrison
The obsequious manager is played by Michael Hordern, who is always a pleasure to see. His assistant (Lance Percival) wants to tell his lordship all about the advanced mechanical specifications of the vehicle, but Lord Charles couldn’t care less.
Lord Charles: It is a Rolls Royce, isn’t it? I assume it must… go!
We have a sub-plot involving the Albanian ambassador (a comic foreigner) who needs to discuss an emergency with Macedonia. He is invited to the house party where he can behave comically and dress inappropriately, as foreigners do.
There is a huge formal dinner back at the country house. Lady Eloise is most upset when he suggests taking the new car for a chauffeur-driven spin, because she had planned a rendezvous with her lover, John Fane (Edmund Purdom) that very night. Fane has been despatched to Caracas on Foreign Office business and wants a last tryst.
Lady Eloise: We can try the summer house at ten …
But before that, Lord and Lady Frinton set off in the Rolls, where Lady Eloise keeps looking testily at her watch.
Lady Eloise is anxious to get back for a quickie in the summer house
However, Lord Charles has become keen on the drive and is too lordly to know about running-in cars for a thousand miles or so:
Lord Charles: Osborne! Drive flat out now.
On return Lady Eloise is so put out she decides to go straight up the huge staircase to bed. The eager (and perhaps hopeful, after such a lavish gift) Lord Charles decides to abandon his house guests and follow her.
The next day they’re off to attend Royal Ascot horse races. Lord Charles has a horse competing named June 10th (after Terence Rattigan’s birthday) which competes for a cup, to be presented by the King. The rival favourite is called The Frenchman, possibly an allusion to his wife’s nationality. It’s not noted, but Jeanne Moreau’s accent could never pass as a native speaker. It’s definitely French. I suppose for an English audience that explains her penchant for infidelity … we tend to assign such matters to the French: French kiss, French letters.
John Fane (Edmund Purdom ) and Lady Eloise (Jeanne Moreau)
Eloise and John are certain Lord Charles will be watching the important race and decide to meet in the car while the race is being run. The trouble is the sneaky Lady Angela (Moira Lister) tells Lord Charles what’s been going on and her suspicions about the Rolls-Royce.
Thus he abandons his plan to watch the race and finds Eloise closeted in the back of the Rolls in passionate embrace with John Fane.
Lobby card. With the gold cup.
Lord Charles gets back to find his horse has won the cup. And he missed it. The aristocratic couple agree to pretend nothing has changed. However, he can no longer bear to look at the Rolls-Royce:
Lord Charles: Oh, Osborne … Have the motor car returned to Hoopers. It displeases me..
Part two
20, 023 miles
So the car is sold and shipped off to Italy. We don’t know the date, just the car’s mileage, but we’re in a car showroom in Genoa. Paolo Maltese (George C. Scott) is an Italian-American Mafioso (you can tell, he has a white suit)
Paolo is looking at cars with his assistant / driver Joey (Art Carney). His girlfriend, Mae (Shirley MacLaine) takes a shine to the yellow Rolls-Royce. The salesman explains that a maharajah lost it in the casino.
Mae: Look – The car is smiling! It’s got eyes, a nose… and a mouth! You know what else it’s got? Class! Paolo, l want this one!
Paolo: If my loved one wants a Rolls-Royce, my loved one gets a Rolls-Royce.
Paolo buys the car.
Mae (Shirley MacLaine), Paoulo Maltese (George C. Scott) and Joey (Art Carney)
Paolo tells his name and people bow and scrape to “A distinguished friend of Signor Capone.” That was one I picked up. The Italian said Capon-ay. I had the same discussion in the Carbone restaurant in Greenwich Village. It’s called Car-bone. I asked why it wasn’t Car-bone-ay and was told ‘Car-bone-ay is Godfather One. Car-bone is Godfather Two.” It works with Al Capone too then.
It will be ideal for a tour to show off Italy to his fianceé. Mae finds all these sites incredibly boring. They go to Pisa and Paolo had looked the history and architecture up, but she couldn’t care less.
Taking the Pisa: Mae (Shirley MacLaine) and Paolo (George C. Scott)
Paolo: Listen. THAT is the Baptistery. From all over the world people are coming here everyday just to look at it.
Mae: Well, I guess they just must like baptisteries. (she walks aay)
Paolo (to Joey) Without exception, Joey, without challenge from anyone anywhere, this is the most stupidest, the most unfeelingest, the most uncooperative broad in the whole planet … And this is the girl, my fidanzata, that I am bringing home to meet my folks. Of all the women in the whole world that I can choose from to be my wife, who do I choose? An ignorant slob of a hatcheck girl who thinks Pisa – Piazza del Duomo in Pisa, Joey – is a stopping-off place between hamburger joints.
They see a young tourist photographer, Stefano. That’s a 60s phenomenon that has disappeared – taking photos of tourists and giving them a ticket with the frame number on. Stefano is played by Alain Delon, who does a good job of looking handsome AND a very good job of appearing to have an Italian accent, rather than a French one. I guess he might be caught out if he was trying to do an English one, as we’d leap on any French intonation or pronunciation, but he gets away with it well. Delon was already the biggest star in France and popular throughout Europe and was said to have taken way less than his normal fee in the hope of creating a stir in the USA. It didn’t happen.
Stefano (Alain Delon) and Mae (Shirley MacLaine)
He has a far better ear than Jeanne Moreau, that’s for sure. He tells Mae she must be a film star.
Mae: I’m not a film star. I’m a hat check girl at a club in Miami.
We move to Florence. Stefano blags a lift with them, though he has to sit up front in the open section. Then Stefano is off to Rome. The three Americans motor down to Naples.
Paolo must return for a few days to Miami for “business”, and takes the boat from Naples carrying a violin case (Yes, we have seen Public Enemy and know what’s inside).
Mae. Nice car but boring on your own.
This leaves Mae to continue the cultural tour, for which she couldn’t care less, with Joey the driver left to chaperone her.
They drive down to the Amalfi coast, and meet Stefano again. He gets to sing Domani (the theme song) in a restaurant and Mae and Stefano dance cheek to cheek.
Joey (Art Carney), Stefano (Alain Delon) and Mae (Shirley MacLaine) about to go for a swim
Stefano takes Mae for a swim which involves diving into a grotto. Joey doesn’t fancy the underwater passage so remains on the beach. At last! They’re alone! Together! They discuss their roles in life, and that his is flirting with older ladies while he takes photos. He’s a gigolo, and so she explains who Paolo is in life.
Mae: So he’s a gangster, and I’m a gangsters moll … you’re scared!
After a snog in the grotto, they go back to the beach.
Mae in the back of the yellow Rolls-Royce. Stefano is about to climb into the car!
Mae gets in the car pulls down the blinds and removes her swimming costume. Stefano opens the door, gasps in wonder and gets on board.
Joey goes back up to the car and realizes what is going on (I suppose old Rolls didn’t have modern suspension systems and rocked a bit.) Joey has a say:
Joey (Art Carney) realizes what’s happening in the car.
Joey: I don’t want to know. If I knew, and Paolo knows I knew, I’d be deader than the deadest duck in Europe.
The same theme as the first story then. Better not to know.
Paolo (Georg C. Scott) with his beloved violin in its case
Paolo returns sooner than expected … it’s an eight day trip each way, but we assume he was only there a couple of hours. Mae tips Stefano but he returns the cash, keeping the first photos of her instead. Which he later tears up.
They see a photo of a gang slaying in Miami in the newspaper. That was his “business” over there. Yes, a 16 day return journey seems excessive when there were local Miami mobsters no doubt happy for the work. She is stuck with him, much as Lady Eloise was stuck with Lord Charles.
Part three
Trieste 1941.
The car is for sale. Trieste in Italy 1941. The USA has not yet entered he war, and Germany has not yet invaded Yugoslavia, just over the border. This means it’s late March or early April. (It looks much warmer and later!)
The hotel in Trieste
The Rolls is bought by Gerda Millett (Ingrid Bergman) a rich American, who is travelling with Hortense, her lady companion from the deep South USA … played extraordinarily by Joyce Grenfell, who I can only imagine with an advanced RP accent, but she is a Southern Belle. Throughout Gerda will walk around with a fluffy lap dog as if it’s a fur collar.
Gerda (Ingrid Bergman) and Hortense (Joyce Grenfell)
Gerda is planning on making a trip into Yugoslavia to see the new King, Peter. At the next table, Davich (Omar Sharif) is listening and fools her into giving him a lift back to his homeland by hiding in the boot. He is invited into the car.
Davich: I travel light. Shakespeare, Tolstoy and a toothbrush.
As they get near the border, he informs her at gunpoint that he is a Yugoslav partisan. He has to be smuggled into Yugoslavia in the boot of the car and she uses her powerful personality to stop the border guards searching it.
Davich wants to get back to join the partisans because he is certain the Germans are about to invade. They don’t go into the politics which are complex and reverberate today … the Croatians were fascists and favoured the Germans. The Partisans were communists under Tito. The Serbian royalists and the Serbian partisans also fought each other, and the Germans were assisted by the Italians and Hungarians … no, Balkan politics is best not to attempt to explain.
No, this is NOT a still from The Sound of Music. It just looks like it.
They stop off in Ljubljana (now in Slovenia) at the best hotel, which is still inferior by Gerda’s standards. The town is bombed and the restaurant staff flee while Gerda calmly helps herself to the buffet. It turns out that she is extremely brave, and takes the tablecloths to use as bandages and hurries to the bomb sites with Davich and rescues children.
B&W publicity still
She has seen what the Germans have done and determines to drive Davich to join the partisan group. The driver is dismissed.
Davich (Omar Sharif) and Gerda (Ingrid Bergman)
Romance blossoms and they embrace … in the back seat of that car! (The springs in that seat must have been getting worn out). Anyway, there was nowhere else to sleep.
B&W publicity still
She gets a red headscarf, loads the car with partisans, armed to the teeth, and sets out to transport them through the mountains with hairy driving. Davich persuades her that as an American and a neutral, she should leave.
Davich (Omar Sharif) and Gerda (Ingrid Bergman). And the dog.
She does. We finally see the car some years later driving on a freeway near New York.
OVERALL
I must admit a degree of prejudice against such an aristocratic producer and director. I used to dismiss the playwright Terence Rattigan who wrote the script … certainly, his reputation was at its lowest when I was studying drama in the 60s, but as the years have passed, the Rattigan Revival in the theatre, has revealed his qualities. I’d now choose to see any of his plays. I thought this film might be of interest because infidelity was a favourite Rattigan theme.
The early 60s saw him diverting from film adaptations of his own plays to original film screenplays. On the basis of this one we have clichéd Upstairs Downstairs meets Downton Abbey (but not as good).
Then we have funny Americans in Italy with a handsome foreign chap. Rattigan was fond of the older man / younger man contrast in search of a partner.
Then we have the adventure story, which is no A Farewell to Arms.
It’s the kind of film I’d mildly enjoy half asleep in the middle of a twelve hour flight, undemanding, easy to watch, doesn’t matter much if you drift for ten minutes because the plotting is weak.
COMMENTS
Director Anthony Asquith and playwright Terence Rattigan are now so hobbled in hackdom, that they make Pinero look like Pinter. Even their formulas have formulas. Consequently, everything in The Yellow Rolls-Royce is played, written and directed in the wrong key … Ingrid and Sharif give the Rolls the only touch of class it has in the whole movie.
Andrew Sarris, Village Voice, 20 May 1965
Lukewarm all star concoction lacking either good stories or a connecting thread.
Helliwell’s Film Guide
“The Yellow Rolls-Royce,” … performs, despite its color, opulence and surface polish, largely like an assembly-line job. It is, it should be stressed, a pretty slick vehicle, that is pleasing to the eye and occasionally amusing, but it hardly seems worthy of all the effort and the noted personalities involved in the three glossy but superficial stories that make up this shiny package. One is reminded of the now classic Rolls-Royce advertising slogan, “The loudest noise comes from the clock.” In this “Yellow Rolls-Royce” there is very little that jolts, shocks, excites or surprises.
A.H. Weiler, New York Times 14 May 1965
SOUNDTRACK
Domani won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song.
TERENCE RATTIGAN PLAYS ON THIS BLOG:
All On Her Own by Terence Rattigan, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Flare Path, by Terence Rattigan, 2015 Tour, at Salisbury Playhouse
Harlequinade by Terence Rattigan, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Ross by Terence Rattigan, Chichester Festival Theatre 2016
Separate Tables by Terence Rattigan, Salisbury Playhouse
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan (FILM VERSION)
The Deep Blue Seaby Terence Rattigan, Chichester 2019
While The Sun Shines by Terence Rattigan, Bath, 2016
French Without Tears, by Terence Rattigan, English Touring Theatre 2016
THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …
A Taste of Honey (1961)
Play It Cool (1962)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Nevada Smith (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Performance (1970)
[…] film is 1965 (well, 3o December 1964 premiere!). THE YELLOW ROLLS-ROYCE (linked) is a Terence Rattigan script, with three separate stories all involving the same car, […]
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I hope that eventually you will be able to review The VIPs. It’s a much better movie, with much better use of its stellar cast. The themes of infidelity/older/younger man are far more engrossing and better developed than in The Yellow Rolls-Royce. This movie plods along with mostly boring characters and plots – long and tedious and hard to care about any of its cast, with the possible exception of Ingrid Bergman’s Gerda. My opinion, of course.
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