Modesty Blaise (1966) on Netflix
NR19661h 59mActionAdventureComedy
British intelligence recruits Modesty Blaise, a former criminal mastermind, to guard a diamond shipment bound for a Middle Eastern sheikh. She calls in her old partner Willie Garvin.
- Netflix2.5/5
- IMDb5.0/103,538 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
After an agent is assassinated in Amsterdam, Sir Gerald Tarrant, chief of the British Secret Service, recruits Modesty Blaise, a former criminal mastermind, to protect a shipment of diamonds bound for Sheikh Abu Tahir of a small Middle Eastern kingdom. The British government delivers the diamonds in exchange for a discount on the kingdom's oil exports, and Modesty is trusted because she is the Sheikh's adopted daughter. Gabriel, who runs a criminal organization with his accountant McWhirter and his bodyguard Mrs Fothergill, wants the shipment as well. Modesty agrees to the job on the condition that she receives total immunity and the freedom to deliver the diamonds as she sees fit, with Tarrant watching from a distance. In Amsterdam she reunites with Paul Hagen, an agent and former lover, and calls in her longtime partner Willie Garvin.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Modesty Blaise (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Joseph Losey found Monica Vitti difficult to direct because Michelangelo Antonioni, in whose films she had become famous, accompanied her to the set and whispered suggestions to her; she took his direction rather than Losey's. Losey eventually asked Antonioni, whom he admired, to stay away from the studios, and he complied.
- Peter O'Donnell, creator of the Modesty Blaise comic strip, saw his original screenplay rewritten so heavily that he often complained the finished film retained only one line of his original dialogue.
- In 1965 Mim Scala acquired the film rights to Modesty Blaise and planned to cast Barbara Steele as Modesty, Michael Caine as Willie Garvin and Sidney Gilliat as director, but sold the production rights to Joseph Janni, whose clients were Monica Vitti and Joseph Losey.
- The role of Alfie was intended for Terence Stamp, but his friend and former flatmate Michael Caine took it; Stamp instead played Willie Garvin in Modesty Blaise.
- O'Donnell novelised his version of the screenplay before the film's release; the book was a critical and sales success and led him to alternate between novels and the comic strip for the next 30 years.
SPOILER
The film breaks a rule O'Donnell set when he created the characters: Modesty and Willie fall in love and decide to marry, whereas he kept their relationship non-romantic right up to the comic strip's end in 2001.- During one sequence Modesty Blaise shows close-ups of newspapers carrying the Modesty Blaise comic strip, with Jim Holdaway's art and Peter O'Donnell's name visible, and Monica Vitti briefly wears a brunette wig and dresses like Holdaway's version of the character.
- Dirk Bogarde disliked working with Monica Vitti, and said in a radio interview years later that she was the only leading lady he had actively disliked.
