Lightning struck twice when expatriate American director Stanley Donen decided to make another stylish Euro-thriller in the vein of 1963's Charade. This time he paired Gregory Peck with Sophia Loren in an adaptation of Alex Gordon's 1961 novel The Cipher. Henry Mancini's serpentine score combined with Maurice Binder's James Bond-like title sequence sets the scene, and it's no coincidence since Binder designed 14 Bond title sequences, including Dr. No's iconic gun-barrel graphic.
Peck plays David Pollock, an American lecturer on hieroglyphics at Oxford with a knack for putting students to sleep. His life gets more interesting fast when Major Sloane (John Merivale), the man who murdered his predecessor, abducts him on behalf of shipping magnate and sunglasses aficionado Beshraavi (Alan Badel, The Day of the Jackal), who has been plotting against Middle Eastern Prime Minister Hassan Jena (Carl Duering, a German-British actor in dark makeup). It's an offer David can't refuse, so he sets up shop at Beshraavi's well-appointed townhouse.
When she gets a moment alone with him, Beshraavi's fashionable mistress, Yasmin (Loren in a succession of striking Christian Dior outfits), warns David that her paramour intends to kill him after he deciphers the code. After that, the two team up, since she's just as eager to get away from the guy. Their journey takes them to the London Zoological Gardens and the Ascot Racecourse. Along the way, David finds out that some of his new associates aren't exactly who they appear to be—Yasmin above all. On their way to a happy ending, he'll fight off an attempted drowning, a truth serum that makes him dangerously loopy, a thresher determined to shred him to bits, and Sloane in a helicopter with a sniper rifle. In his combination of inexperience and resourcefulness, Peck's out-of-his-depth professor recalls Cary Grant's ad man in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
Tales of Hoffman cinematographer Christopher Challis conveys David's disorientation by filming through chandeliers, rear-view mirrors, aquarium windows, and television screens. He also uses lighting effects to draw attention to Loren's eyeliner-rimmed eyes and elegantly-arched brows, even when the rest of her face is shrouded in darkness. Arabesque shouldn't work as well as it does since the buttoned-down Peck and unrepressed Loren make for an unlikely couple, but Donen plays to their strengths since David isn't exactly a tough guy—not counting one good knockout punch—though Yasmin helps to loosen him up.
Further, the casting of Anglo-Saxon actors as Arabic characters may play poorly from today's perspective, but there's nothing blatantly offensive about the script from Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, and Charade's Peter Stone aka "Pierre Marton," which seeks primarily to entertain rather than to make any cultural points. And if the ending is especially silly, at least the actors have fun with it.
The extra features include chatty commentary from Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, an archival promo reel in which Henry Mancini discusses his craft with jazz critic Leonard Feather, and a passel of trailers and teasers. Recommended.