Otley (film)

1969 British film by Dick Clement

  • 22 May 1969 (1969-05-22) (UK)
  • March 11, 1969 (1969-03-11) (NYC)
Running time
91 minutesCountryUnited KingdomLanguageEnglish

Otley is a 1968 British comedy thriller film directed by Dick Clement and starring Tom Courtenay and Romy Schneider.[1] It was adapted by Clement and Ian La Frenais from the 1966 novel of the same name by Martin Waddell, and released by Columbia Pictures.

Plot

Gerald Arthur "Gerry" Otley is a charming but feckless young drifter who scrapes a living from selling antiques in trendy 1960s London. Gerry's responsibility-free life suddenly takes a serious turn, when he finds himself caught up in a round of murder, espionage and quadruple crossing. He is mistaken for a spy, is kidnapped and detained several times, and becomes romantically involved with a foreign agent working for British Intelligence.

Cast

  • Tom Courtenay as Gerald Arthur Otley, "Gerry"
  • Romy Schneider as Imogen
  • Alan Badel as Sir Alec Hadrian
  • James Villiers as Hendrickson
  • Leonard Rossiter as Johnson
  • Freddie Jones as Philip Proudfoot
  • Fiona Lewis as Lin
  • James Bolam as Albert
  • James Cossins as Geffcock
  • James Maxwell as Rollo
  • Edward Hardwicke as Lambert
  • Ronald Lacey as Curtis
  • Phyllida Law as Jean
  • Geoffrey Bayldon as Inspector Hewett
  • Frank Middlemass as Bruce (as Frank Middlemas)
  • Barry Fantoni as Larry
  • Don McKillop as police driver

Production

The exterior action takes place in a number of recognisable London locations: the area around Portobello Road street market in Notting Hill; a houseboat colony near Cheyne Walk in Chelsea; Bowater House in Knightsbridge; the Playboy Club in Park Lane; and the old Unilever milk depot in Wood Lane. A wide range of period British vehicles is featured: Otley drives an E-Type Jaguar, a Ford Anglia and an early 1960s passenger coach, and his disastrous driving test, which turns into an epic car chase, involves a driving-school Vauxhall Viva and a Ford Zephyr.

The film, whose interiors were shot at Shepperton Studios, marked the directorial debut of Dick Clement.

Don Partridge co-wrote and performed the title music, "Homeless Bones", which was released as the B-side of his 1969 single "Colour My World".[2]

Critical reception

Jack Ibberson of The Monthly Film Bulletin called the film: "[a] vastly entertaining comedy-thriller", writing "the film's main asset lies in the performances, which are uniformly excellent. Tom Courtenay makes the thieving, cowardly Otley a wholly credible and sympathetic character whose all too human failings seem infinitely more acceptable than the double-dealing of the suave characters whose world he reluctantly enters. ... Courtenay's performance is a masterpiece of bewilderment ... delightful entertainment and a credit to all involved."[3]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "Like Otley, the movie is a bad risk. Everything in it is borrowed and badly used – actors (Tom Courtenay, Alan Badel), situations (the triumph of the fraudulent fool) and even settings, including a rather handsome Thames houseboat that reminded me wistfully of The Horse's Mouth [1958]. Otley is the kind of movie that allows you to think about other movies, in those great gaps of time between the setting up of a gag and the moment when it is ritualistically executed."[4]

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the film was so boring it "could put Sominex out of business"[5] and admitted to walking out on it, reporting, "I took the CTA to see Otley at the Coronet theater in Evanston. The film began at 6:15 p. m. I returned home on the 7 p.m. train."[6]

Variety wrote that "the film has an uneasy lack of a point of view and fails to focus viewer's attention on any particular character or plotline philosophy. The frantic, intentionally incoherent episodes are sometimes amusing, but too often suffer from unoriginality."[7]

Judith Crist described it as "a bright, breezy, light-handed but never lightheaded spies-and-counterspies story".[8]

In Sixties British Cinema, Robert Murphy wrote, "The only British spy film which succeeds both as a comedy and a thriller is Dick Clement and Ian LaFrenais's Otley."[9]

Awards

The film won the 1969 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best British Comedy Screenplay.[10]

References

  1. ^ "Otley". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  2. ^ "Don Partridge – Colour My World". Discogs. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  3. ^ "Otley". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 36 (420): 142. 1 January 1969 – via ProQuest.
  4. ^ Canby, Vincent (12 March 1969). "Screen: 'Otley' Arrives From Britain". The New York Times. 42.
  5. ^ Siskel, Gene (4 January 1970). "Last Year's 20 Biggest Bombs from Filmland". Chicago Tribune. Section 5, p. 1.
  6. ^ Siskel, Gene (26 November 1969). "Short Subjects". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, p. 5.
  7. ^ "Film Reviews: Otley". Variety. 22 January 1969. 6, 24.
  8. ^ Crist, Judith. This Week's Movies. TV Guide, North Carolina Edition, 9–15 December 1972, pg A-4
  9. ^ Murphy, Robert (2019). Sixties British Cinema. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 231. ISBN 9781838718244.
  10. ^ "Writers' Guild Awards 1969". The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. Retrieved 29 January 2024.

External links

  • Otley at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  • Otley then-and-now location photographs at ReelStreets
  • v
  • t
  • e
Sitcoms
Other series
Films
Theatre work
  • Billy (1974)
Clement alone
  • Anyone for Denis? (1982)
La Frenais alone