It’s Double-O Doris in this once-forgotten 60s mod spy comedy.
Other than that the silly old bear offering up an admirable fight to take down Tom Cruise, another new movie recently opened in the form of the goofy action/comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me. With aims to follow in the footsteps of last year’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard, the film stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon as a pair of hapless Americans who find themselves caught up in a bullet-flying international adventure.
The Spy Who Dumped Me offers up plenty of chuckles, a surprisingly strong amount of genuinely decent action and two stars ready to throw themselves into it all. It also calls to mind for me 1967’s Caprice; another instance in which a popular, celebrated actress threw herself into a role seeped in comedic espionage.
In Caprice, Patricia Foster (Doris Day) is an industrial designer who is hired by the head of a major cosmetics corporation (Edward Mulhare) to spy on the competition, specifically the rival company’s main scientist (Ray Walston) who has created a top-secret water-repellent hairspray. When the head of the competition (Jack Kruschen) also hires Patricia to spy on her actual boss, things get complicated as she finds herself relying on her wits as a means of staying ahead of the game. Complicating things even further is Christopher White (Richard Harris), the competition’s right hand man who proves an irresistible challenge for Patricia.
With a couple of notable exceptions, the blueprint of a standard Doris Day comedy vehicle rarely changed; a beautiful blonde gets caught up in some silly, hair-raising situation only to use her instinct, apple-pie smile and (on occasion) angelic singing voice to get her through to the end credits. In a way, Caprice is no different. The film is chock full of the kind of harmless dialogue which populated the majority of Day’s films. “That phone is making me very nervous,” Patricia says to Christopher at one point. “It’s making me nervous too,” he replies. “Let me take you away from all this. I also have a room with no phone.” Even the most throwaway of lines in Caprice feel more charming than cheesy in Day’s capable hands. “I’m the spy who came in from the cold cream,” she sarcastically muses in one scene. Meanwhile the physical comedy of Caprice is totally in keeping with the kind of humor which made so many of Day’s films work. Sequences such as Patricia hanging from a sun deck as she fails miserably at trying to collect evidence as well as thwarting Christopher’s attempt to frame her during their lunch date are both lessons in well-timed comedy slapstick. Finally, although Day’s singing of the title theme may not have a place among her more well-remembered numbers, the enchanting tune is still a great showcase for her always-dreamy vocals.
Even blueprints require alterations however, even if they contain the formula for a successful Doris Day movie. Still, it was the late 60s; the era of In Like Flint and overall general mod flair which meant that what worked in the past needed to be modified if it had any chance of working in the future. As an edition to the mod sub-genre of film, Caprice tries its hardest to please both its star’s fans as well as the changing moods of the general public. The movie more or less accomplishes this. Caprice has enough plot twists, red herrings and character double-crossing to make audiences pay closer attention when they THINK they’ve figured it all out, at times not even trusting the moves and motives of the main character herself. The costumes are pure mod, gloriously capturing the fashion sensibilities of London’s Carnaby Street and at times prove so spellbinding, they threaten to take attention away from the people wearing them. Technical-wise, Caprice is loaded with one hypnotic angle after another. Virtually every other set-up in the film, particularly the ones in Christopher’s swinging bachelor pad, are so in tune with the slightly psychedelic nature of of society, offering up far out lighting and out-of-this-world camera moves.
Although they come from two different schools of acting, both Day and Harris share some undeniable chemistry throughout Caprice. While neither was happy with the material in front of them (Day was in fact signed on for the film by her producer-husband without her consent), the two stars play so well off of each other. Day is completely ethereal in the more seductive moments with Harris, while the actor was rarely ever as free and accessible on screen. The supporting cast also helped maintain the levity of the proceedings with Mulhare, and especially, Walston doing the kind of work which made them the kind of dependable character actors they were always known as.
The combination of late 60s mod and Doris Day just didn’t hit home with critics when Caprice was released in the summer of 1967 as the film was given one nasty review after another. Audiences likewise turned up their noses at the film, causing it to be one of 20th Century Fox’s biggest bombs and knocking Day out of the number one position of current top ranking stars, a title she’d held for the better part of a decade. Harris meanwhile spent no time disowning the film for years to come, though continued to always speak highly of his famous co-star, oftentimes commenting how he learned more about comedy from Day than any formal training could have taught him.
Caprice may have been quickly dismissed as just another excuse to see a popular movie star dodging bullets and little else. It was a sentiment which seemed to be evenly shared by the film’s stars and its audience. In fact, the movie received such little love upon release, that it wasn’t even made available on DVD in America until 2007. Yet in the years since, a number of film students and cinephiles have given Caprice a reappraisal, turning this forgotten comedy into a fascinating curio, whose mix of satire, slapstick, espionage and 60s mod has been deemed worth analyzing. It’s an unexpected reprieve that has surprised even Doris herself who suggested in a recent interview that she might even be tempted to revisit the movie all these years later. Whether she does or not, Caprice remains a pitch-perfect example of how shifting tones and changing times can affect film and how the mixing of cinematic styles as well as the merging of movie eras and can conjure up the most fascinating of results.
