This is one of those English mystery movies--it's a mystery as to what it's supposed to be about, what the audience is supposed to feel, why it was made... Laurence Harvey, that sly little sexpot, is cast as a terribly nice chap with a titled and ostensibly wealthy father who goes around the world having sexless relationships with women of different nationalities. He marries one after being stuck in a lift with her for a few hours and deciding he is in love. (They have had a nice chat--can't you see the face James Bond is making?)

The writing is banal and keeps hinting at something saucy or comic that never materialises. Though the movie is set in the years before and during World War I, everything is in a Fifties high-fashion palette of sugar-almond colours--pastel blue and green, mauve. If I had to pick one moment that exemplifies the phoniness, it's when Harvey dons native dress and greasepaint in order to sneak into a harem to save an innocent girl (yes, that old thing). Reminded by his chum that he must not speak, he enthusiastically agrees by rolling his eyes, jerking his head to one side, striking a pose, and sticking his tongue all the way out. In other words, he behaves not at all like a young Englishman of the early twentieth century and entirely like an actor throwing himself into an acting exercise.

I laughed once.