England,
1968, 107 min
Shown in 1995
CREDITS
- dir
-
Stanley Donen
- prod
-
Stanley Donen
- scr
-
Peter Cook
- cam
-
Austin Dempster
- editor
-
Richard Marden
- cast
-
Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eleanor Bron, Raquel Welch
- source
-
Films, Inc.
-
COMMENTS
Stanley Donen appeared in person to receive the Akira Kurosawa Award.
OTHER
Shot in Britain at the height of the brief “Swinging London” era, Bedazzled is a brisk satire (God comes in for some rough treatment) of the Faust story in mod clothes. Some of the humor may have dated, but the film catches the rare antagonistic rapport between the "Beyond the Fringe" duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In the years after their remarkable debut, they wrote and performed—often brilliantly—on British television. Donen saw some of their work and suggested a collaboration. It so happened they had a script ready, a version of the Faust story essentially written by Cook (Moore did the music for the film). The script has Stanley Moon (Moore), a shy cook, forlornly in love with a waitress but unable to voice his feelings. He is about to kill himself when along comes the devil, George Spiggott (Cook), with a life insurance plan. Cook is handsome enough to be a lead actor, and his Devil is the most intriguing character in the film, often wise and human, and able to give Stanley his first fun in life. (Cook died earlier this year, so Bedazzled is a tribute to him too.) Eleanor Bron is the love interest, while Raquel Welch playing Lust in very little is also interesting.
—David Thomson
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
