This fall semester I started taking an Italian language class two evenings a week with my daughter, and Thursday night I was looking to decompress after our first big quiz. (Scores haven’t been revealed yet, but I think we did just fine.) So I started rummaging through my shelves and came across the Warner Archives DVD of Francesco Maselli’s A Fine Pair (1968), an ostensibly breezy romantic caper comedy which reteams Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale, a pairing their public was presumably clamoring for after their previous outing together in Blindfold (1965), a Universal programmer written and directed by Phillip Dunne, the screenwriter of, among many other notable movies, How Green Was My Valley. I’ve had a mad crush on Claudia ever since I first saw her in Circus World (1964) with John Wayne when I was but a youngster, and I always welcome the chance to visit movies of...
- 9/11/2016
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
By Lee Pfeiffer
The seemingly promising teaming of Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale, both at their most glamorous back in 1968, goes hopelessly astray in the comedy/crime caper film "A Fine Pair". The movie is the kind of lazy effort that makes one suspect the only motives for the stars' participation were quick, sizable paychecks and the opportunity to enjoy some exotic locations at the studio's expense. (Think "Donovan's Reef" without the fun.) The film opens in New York City and we find Hudson as NYPD Captain Mike Harmon, a conservative, no-nonsense career police officer who runs his precinct with the same strong-arm tactics that General George S. Patton employed to keep his troops in line. Out of nowhere pops Esmeralda Marini (Cardinale), a glamorous and almost annoyingly perky young woman who has arrived unannounced from her native Italy. Turns out she has known Harmon most of her life as...
The seemingly promising teaming of Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale, both at their most glamorous back in 1968, goes hopelessly astray in the comedy/crime caper film "A Fine Pair". The movie is the kind of lazy effort that makes one suspect the only motives for the stars' participation were quick, sizable paychecks and the opportunity to enjoy some exotic locations at the studio's expense. (Think "Donovan's Reef" without the fun.) The film opens in New York City and we find Hudson as NYPD Captain Mike Harmon, a conservative, no-nonsense career police officer who runs his precinct with the same strong-arm tactics that General George S. Patton employed to keep his troops in line. Out of nowhere pops Esmeralda Marini (Cardinale), a glamorous and almost annoyingly perky young woman who has arrived unannounced from her native Italy. Turns out she has known Harmon most of her life as...
- 4/18/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
I find it surprising that some people were surprised when the fact that Rock Hudson was gay was publicly revealed back in the mid-1980s, as the actor became the best-known person with AIDS in the world. After all, even my mother knew about that. Anyhow, today's jaded crowd, looking at the above photograph, will surely assert that it's so obvious that Rock Hudson was gay. Just look at him! I thoroughly disagree. In fact, I don't see anything "obvious" about Hudson's sexual orientation in the photo. And no, I'm not blind. The guy just looks like a man — gay, straight, anything in between — doing his best to appear classy, or at least what used to pass for classy. Personally, I don't find Hudson very convincing as a "classy" type à la Cary Grant. Whatever his sexual predilections, I've always found Rock Hudson much more believable in rugged roles, such...
- 6/25/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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