Viewing this movie after a 30-year gap, I realize I need to appreciate the movie as a Peter Ustinov film rather than as a Sophia Loren film. While Sophia Loren is a delight for the eyes with her hour-glass figure, she proves that she cannot act competently as an elderly lady--her hoarse voice is as phony as phony can be.Ustinov and Romain Gary carry the film. I have had the good fortune to have met Ustinov as a film critic in 1984 and discussed the few films he had directed. He was delighted as a small boy that someone remembered that he was once a director as most people recall him as actor. Ustinov the director is a superb wit and his visual digs at French and Russian society are hilarious (Romain Gary, I guess, contributed to the verbal digs at the Poles). Ustinov and Gary do not even spare the British. The farcical comedy is at its best in the opening 15 minutes with some good camerawork and some fine, witty dialogues.Ustinov is not a top notch director but he can provide sufficient material for the laughs to keep flowing. For instance, he does not show the face of Paul Newman as the car driver, but the audience can guess that the director is hiding a crucial fact. The brothel scenes, the escape in the balloon, the actions of the police, are orchestrated with admirable finesse for a director who is detailing a farce.That Carlo Ponti allowed Ustinov to direct this venture is a credit to Ponti as the outcome was more rewarding for Ponti's wife Loren than for Ustinov for the average viewer. The French actors were superb: Phillipe Noiret, Michel Picolli, Claude Dauphin, Jacques Dufilho, and Marcel Dalio. Claude Dauphin stood out as the best among the range of French talent. The images of a prince playing with a bomb as though it were a plaything reduces the farce to absurdist black humour as is the choice of the assassin's dress (a priest's cassock!). So is the coughing signals alerting members of the police force during a concert. It is fun that can be enjoyed at all levels--thanks to Ustinov and Gary more than due to the contributions of the formidable line-up of actors.

Ustinov has imbued this "sleeper" with an outrageously twisted sense of humour, and Loren celebrates every nuance of its irreverent edges. She is as marvelous as the ancient dowager worshipped by Cecil Parker as she is as the irrepressible Corsican laundress who falls for anarchist Newman but never loses her sense of the absurdity of man. What a treat!

I had stayed away from this film because the critics panned it so viciously. Serves me right, because it was absolutely wonderful from beginning to end. Ustinov punctuates the rich satire in the script just perfectly with his grandiose direction. The cinematography is lush, and Sophia is outrageously good, as the strongly principled woman ahead of her time, who sees and is amused by all the rich ironies of life. Cecil Parker gives the movie it's opening tone and it never misses a best. But the writing is the strongest single aspect of the work, always remaining true to its characters, while making pungent observations on UK moral codes, class struggles, the battle of the sexes, the institution of marriage, and many others. Enjoy! 10/10

This movie is a "bit of fluff" but a very lovely "bit of fluff". The costumes are wonderful and Sophia Loren makes them look even better. Entertaining story told in vignettes about a pretty racy lady who may, or may not, be even racier than intimated. Also, she has a chauffeur to die for. Yum!!!