Arabesque (1966 film)
| Arabesque | |
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| Directed by | Stanley Donen |
| Produced by | Stanley Donen Denis Holt |
| Written by |
Julian Mitchell Stanley Price Peter Stone (as Pierre Marton) |
| Based on |
The Cypher 1961 novel by Gordon Cotler |
| Starring |
Gregory Peck Sophia Loren Alan Badel John Merivale Harold Kasket |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
| Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
| Edited by | Frederick Wilson |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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105 minutes |
| Country | the United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3.6 million |
| Box office | $5.8 million (est. US/ Canada rentals) |
Arabesque is a 1966 Technicolor Comedy thriller starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren filmed in Panavision. The film is based on Gordon Cotler a.k.a. Alex Gordon's novel The Cypher and directed by Stanley Donen.
In an undercover mission, Major Sloane kills Professor Ragheeb, an ancient hieroglyphics expert at Oxford University, and steals a hieroglyph-encrypted message. Sloane then asks Professor David Pollock, who has taken over Ragheeb's class on hieroglyphics, to meet with shipping magnate Nejim Beshraavi on a business matter. David declines but changes his mind after being forced to enter a Rolls-Royce Phantom IV, where he meets Middle Eastern Prime Minister Hassan Jena, and his ambassador to Great Britain, Mohammed Lufti. Jena asks David to accept Beshraavi’s offer of employment.
David meets Beshraavi, who asks him to decode the inscription on the piece of paper Sloane stole. David is attracted to Beshraavi’s girlfriend Yasmin Azir, who tells him that Beshraavi had Ragheeb killed and will do the same to him once he decodes the message. Their conversation is interrupted by Beshraavi. David keeps hidden until Sloane brings it to Beshraavi's attention that David and the cipher are missing. Overhearing the conversation, David wraps the cipher in a candy in his pocket, among others, a red one with the number “9.” As Beshraavi’s men search for David, Beshraavi demonstrates to one of Yasmin’s employees, Hemsley (Jimmy Gardner), that he can buy people for their loyalty or else exact extreme revenge. Forced to show himself, David seemingly abducts Yasmin. They flee from one of Beshraavi’s henchmen, Mustapha (Larry Taylor). In the course of the chase, Mustapha and David struggle at the zoological gardens, when another man intervenes and kills Mustapha. He identifies himself as Inspector Webster (Duncan Lamont) with CID. When a guard approaches, Webster kills him before revealing that he is working with Yasmin. Webster knocks David unconscious.
David awakes in a moving panel van in the presence of Webster, Yasmin, and another of Yasmin’s boyfriends, Yussef Kassim (Kieron Moore), who is looking for the cipher. David, seeing the bag of candies on a shelf in the van, tells Yussef that Beshraavi has the cipher. They use truth serum on David, after which he talks what they believe is gibberish about the number “9”. Believing that he was telling the truth about Beshraavi, Yussef tells Yasmin to work on Beshraavi while they throw David out of the vehicle.
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