“A WHOLE LOT OF SHIRLEY GOING ON”

By Raymond Benson

Joseph E. Levine, head of Embassy Pictures, was at one time a formidable producer and studio head who brought us some outstanding pictures in the 1960s and 70s (The Graduate, The Producers and The Lion in Winter come to mind). In 1967, he managed to persuade the great Italian director Vittorio De Sica (Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, Marriage—Italian Style, etc.) to do a picture in English with big Hollywood stars. De Sica had just previously done an English-language flick, After the Fox (1966). So, in 1967, he made a comic anthology movie called Woman Times Seven, starring Shirley MacLaine in seven different roles opposite seven different leading men (and others).

Anthology movies are often a mixed bag. In almost every case, there are two or three stories that are good, and two or three that are less so. Here, we have seven tales of a woman’s relationship with a man (or men) with a distinctly European slant (especially in its attitudes toward adultery and divorce), as well as a potent “swinging sixties” 1967 vibe that recalls movies like Casino Royale (the one with Peter Sellers, who also starred in After the Fox). The entire movie was shot in Paris, and this Franco-Italian sensibility shines through.

MacLaine is quite winning throughout the picture, playing sexpots, innocent housewives, and society ladies, and in fact she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress for her performance. Her leading men in the tales include the likes of Peter Sellers, Alan Arkin, Michael Caine, Vittorio Gassman, and Rossano Brazzi.

Again, the vignettes here are hit and miss. The opening story, “Funeral Procession,” teams MacLaine up with Sellers in an entry about the family doctor putting the moves on a widow at her husband’s funeral. “Amateur Night” finds our star seeking revenge against a cheating husband (Brazzi) by find camaraderie with the Parisian streetwalkers. “Two Against One” finds MacLaine as a liberal corporate translator whose roommate is away (he’s depicted as none other than Marlon Brando in a photograph!) but entertains two men (Gassman and Scotsman Clinton Greyn) in her apartment—in the nude—but insisting that they can’t touch her. “At the Opera” features the actress as a fashion model who wants to get revenge on a rival. “Suicides” teams MacLaine up with Arkin as lovers who have decided to kill themselves to get away from their respective unhappy marriages and the cold, cruel world in general—but Arkin’s character finds exceptions with the various methods to try, every step of the way. The final episode, “Snow,” finds wealthy MacLaine leading on a would-be stalker (Caine) for the excitement of it, except that the man is really working for her jealous husband (Philippe Noiret).