Caprice (1967)

The later movies of Doris Day now look like period artefacts: here she plays Patricia Foster – an agent (“The Spy Who Came in from the Cold Cream”) working for an international cosmetics company run by Jack Kruschen – in a confection co-produced by her then-husband, Martin Melcher.

Witty director Frank Tashlin shows his usual deft hand with a daft plot and is skilled in getting the most out of Leon Shamroy’s cinematography, despite Day’s seeming insistence that her close-ups were filmed through multi-layered gauze.

Day’s co-star is a quaintly-cast Richard Harris, in the same year he made Camelot, whose own insistence on wearing blue eye shadow in this particular context effectively sabotages his right to be taken seriously, and, anyway, comedy isn’t exactly his forte.

Ray Walston and Michael J Pollard bring some effortless entertainment to the proceedings but, frankly, this is best viewed as a 1960s period piece, not quite as chic and as modish as it thinks it is, but by no means negligible, either.

Patricia Foster
Doris Day
Christopher White
Richard Harris
Stuart Clancy
Ray Walston
Matthew Cutter
Jack Kruschen
Sir Jason Fox
Edward Mulhare
Madame Piasco
Lilia Skala
Su Ling
Irene Tsu
Inspector Kapinsky
Larry D Mann
Auber
Maurice Marsac
Butler
Michael Romanoff
Mandy
Lisa Seagram
Barney
Michael J Pollard

Director
Frank Tashlin