But the true star of this movie is Michael Relph, who functioned as both writer of the consistently witty script and its production designer. The BQ could be wrong on this, but we're pretty sure there's very few movies that carry the credit, "....written and designed by..."
In filmmaking articles and books, the contributions of production designers are rarely examined or celebrated.......exceptions, of course, include Ken Adam, with his spectacular Bond sets and "Dr. Strangelove" war room and the legendary William Cameron Menzies, creator of those "Gone With The Wind" orange sunsets and the "Invaders From Mars" sandpit that still strikes fear in the heart of every baby boomer.....
The BQ would now respectfully include Michael Relph's gorgeously lush visions of pre-World War 1 Europe to the pantheon of classic production design......as well as his gallows-humored tongue-in-cheek script, detailing the amoral exploits of an international murder-for-fire corporation.
This classy United Nations of gangsters is at risk on two fronts......the encroachment of World War 1, which will render them bankrupt if everyone starts freely killing each other with no payment involved, and potential exposing of them by a plucky, ahead-of-her-time, investigative reporter (Rigg).
She cleverly undoes them by hiring the Bureau to assassinate its own young chairmen, (Reed), a devilish, quipping rake with a romantic eye for the news gal. Reed, a self-assured swashbuckler, readily accepts his company's kill-or-be-killed challenge.....and the film's off and running, as Reed and Rigg hop around the Bureau's branch offices in France, Vienna, Geneva and Venice....all of these sites rendered by designer Relph as sumptuous fairy-tale illustrations come to life.
We especially savored Relph's premier design accomplishment, the ripely scarlet bordello operated by the Bureau's French representative, (Phillipe Noiret), with its endless three story circular staircase and domed ceiling. The richly imagined sets in this film (the Bureau's round table headquarters, a boisterous beer hall, Venice palazzos, the Zeppelin interior, festooned with hydrogen gas bags) serve to conjure up a turn-of-the-century Europe as fanciful as The Emerald City, Hogwarts or Neverland.
If you've read some previous BQ posts, then you know how much we gravitate to what we call snow globe movies, films that create and self-contain their own specialized universe......a fantasy world that could only exist inside the film itself. Well here's one of the ultimate snow globe movies, an exquisite exercise in cinematic world-building by the extraordinarily talented Relph.
We wouldn't dare end this post without mentioning the film's priceless supporting line-up....Noiret, Curt Jergens, Clive Revill, Warren Mitchell, Vernon Dobtcheff....... and as the Bureau's vice-chairman, Telly Savalas (supplied by Relph with wittier one liners than he got the same year as Blofeld in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"......bemoaning the street jam-up caused by a fallen horse, he declares "How the traffic will flow once it's all motorized!")
Throw in the lilting, insanely catchy title song ("Life Is A Precious Thing") and you have one of the BQ's all time favorite escapist entertainments.......darkly funny, exhilarating and perfectly designed, like suitable for framing work of art. We aim and fire 4 stars (****) at these assassins.... "The Assassination Bureau".....it's to die for.
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