filed under color, MidCentury Modern, retrocinema retroflight.
The V.I.P.s (1963)
Half a dozen First Class passengers suffer hardships when their trans-Atlantic flight is delayed by London fog.
Elizabeth Taylor headlines this glacial melodrama based loosely on a real-life event that happened to Vivian Liegh when she tried to escape husband Laurence Olivier with a younger actor (here played by Richard Burton and Louis Jordan, respectively). Their flight was delayed, giving Olivier the time to find them and talk her out of it!
Supporting plots come from a desperate businessman Rod Taylor and his unrequited secretary Maggie Smith. Orson Wells is a film director trying to flee Britain to avoid a tax penalty, as his ditzy actress girlfriend makes a play for power. And Margaret Rutherford in an Oscar-winning role as a dotty member of the fading royal class who’d rather get drunk than get on a plane. In a surrealist twist, actor Richard Wattis plays a nearly identical officious airline manager in Come Fly with Me, made the same year.
Boring and impersonal, there’s nothing to do in this film but briefly admire the modern architecture and then wait at the bar until your flight is called.
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