Diamonds for Breakfast (film)
| Diamonds for Breakfast | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Film poster | |
| Directed by | Christopher Morahan |
| Written by | Ernesto Gastaldi Ronald Harwood Pierre Rouve N. F. Simpson |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Starring | Marcello Mastroianni |
| Cinematography | Gerry Turpin |
| Edited by | Peter Tanner |
| Music by | Norman Kay |
Production companies | ABC Films Bridge Films |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 102 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.3 million[1] |
Diamonds for Breakfast is a 1968 British comedy film directed by Christopher Morahan.[2][3] The film opened in London but was never released in the US. It recorded an overall loss of $1,445,000.[1]
Plot
[edit]Grand Duke Nicholas Wladimirovitch Goduno is a hard-up Russian aristocrat who owns a London boutique. At an art exhibition he slips on a banana skin and, recovering, hears the ghosts of his ancestors suggesting he steals the imperial diamonds. He assembles a team of female accomplices and posing as models they steal jewels by attaching them to carrier pigeons. However Nikolas's aunt ambushes the pigeons, and loses everything gambling in Monte Carlo.
Cast
[edit]- Marcello Mastroianni as Grand Duke Nicholas Wladimirovitch Goduno
- Rita Tushingham as Bridget Rafferty
- Elaine Taylor as Victoria
- Margaret Blye as Honey
- Francesca Tu as Jeanne Silkingers
- The Karlins as triplets
- Warren Mitchell as Popov
- Nora Nicholson as Anastasia Petrovna
- Bryan Pringle as Police Sergeant
- Leonard Rossiter as Inspector Dudley
- Bill Fraser as bookseller
- David Horne as Duke of Windemere
- Charles Lloyd-Pack as butler
- Anne Blake as Nashka
- Ian Trigger as Popov's assistant
Critical reception
[edit]The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Unswervingly vulgar and soporific comedy whose principal joke is the sexual fatigue that overwhelms the hero in his patriotic attempts to keep his lady accomplices happy. The fantasy element is clumsily inserted (with great-grandfather's ghost looking remarkably like an extra from Ivan the Terrible (1944)), and N. F. Simpson's contribution to the script is discernible only in the accurately clichéd comments of the visitors to the Soviet exhibition and in the conversation of the elderly English Duke who boasts of having "slept through two World Wars". Mastroianni seems as embarrassed by his slapstick gags as Rita Tushingham does by the combination of Liverpudlian kookiness and romantic initiative with which the script burdens her; and only Warren Mitchell as the perspiring Russian (quoting Marx dogmatically, but still crossing himself for luck) strikes the right farcical note."[4]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "ABC's 5 Years of Film Production Profits & Losses", Variety, 31 May 1973 p 3
- ^ "NY Times: Diamonds for Breakfast". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. 2012. Archived from the original on 21 October 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
- ^ "Diamonds for Breakfast". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 12 February 2024.
- ^ "Diamonds for Breakfast". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 35 (408): 200. 1 January 1968 – via ProQuest.
External links
[edit]- Diamonds for Breakfast at IMDb
- Diamonds for Breakfast then-and-now location photographs at ReelStreets
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- 1968 films
- 1968 comedy films
- 1960s crime comedy films
- British crime comedy films
- 1960s heist films
- Films directed by Christopher Morahan
- British heist films
- Films produced by Carlo Ponti
- ABC Motion Pictures films
- Paramount Pictures films
- Films set in London
- Films with screenplays by Ronald Harwood
- 1960s English-language films
- 1960s British films
- English-language crime comedy films
- 1960s British comedy film stubs