
Paris When it Sizzles
Screening on Film
Directed by Richard Quine.
With William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, Grégoire Aslan.
US, 1964, 16mm, color, 110 min.
With William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, Grégoire Aslan.
US, 1964, 16mm, color, 110 min.
This rarely revived film about filmmaking finds a veteran screenwriter (played by William Holden) ensconced in a luxury Parisian apartment and plying himself with Bloody Marys as treatment for a severe case of writer's block. Audrey Hepburn, clad in stylish Givenchy fashions, is his assistant, who alternates as muse and leading lady as the pair begin to enact in-progress versions of the film. By turns, the writer's screenplay for The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower is envisioned as a comedy, a spy film, a musical, even a western. Ultimately, the screenplay comes full circle to include the couple's budding relationship as the true subject for the film.