{"id":5445,"date":"2018-06-17T14:20:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T19:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=5445"},"modified":"2023-01-08T01:52:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T07:52:10","slug":"monica-vitti-was-modesty-blaise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=5445","title":{"rendered":"Monica Vitti was “Modesty Blaise”…\u2026\u2026…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A favorite flick of mine played today on Turner Classic Movie channel.\u00a0 Modesty Blaise (1966), starring\u00a0 Monica Vitti, \u00a0Terence Stamp, Dirk Bogarde, and Harry Andrews.\u00a0 The film, not highly rated by critics, was first viewed by me back in the late August of 1966, as a first run at the\u00a0Midwest Theater in downtown Oklahoma City.\u00a0 It is in my movie collection (DVD).<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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This movie does not rock everybody\u2019s boat.\u00a0 But as I was only thirteen at first viewing, it was a film that introduced me to an adult satiric theme\u00a0that was filled with enough sex and violence (in a campy way and not overt) that was totally interesting\u00a0for me as of\u00a0my\u00a0growing into\u00a0a young adult.\u00a0 Sure, I did not get all the backhanded crap\u00a0that was being presented under a\u00a0\u00a0very stylized and beautifully shot\u00a0film by Joseph Losey.<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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I was\u00a0a James Bond man, and the stuff that followed, such as Dean Martin\u2019s Matt Helm movies were still a\u00a0few years off.\u00a0\u00a0But it was was a perfect afternoon for a young guy, watching Monica Vitti strut her Italian stuff in exquisite clothing (some very\u00a0reveling).\u00a0 This was a modern woman, based on the original material, that would be in vogue today. Wonder Woman\u00a0never had anything on Modesty Blaise.\u00a0 It is hard to realize this fabulous lady, Monica Vitti,\u00a0is now eighty-six years old.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

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There are many things I liked about this movie, including the musical score, the fine acting by all involved, and the look of what has been put on the screen.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

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This movie has held up through the years. Those that liked it still do, and most that did not, still don\u2019t. But the whole Modesty Blaise franchise, from the characters developed by author Peter O\u2019Donnell<\/a> and illustrator Jim Holdaway<\/a> in 1963 will always be developed in media.\u00a0 It is timely, either in film or in comic strip or book strength.\u00a0 A\u00a0 better female heroine might be found, but Modesty Blasie does not need to worry.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

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There are just too many of us world-wide that understand what is all about. And that cannot be explained. And for us, it does not need to be.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION<\/span><\/h5>\n

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Growing up in the 1960\u2019s (I was born in 1953), my formative years, I was\u00a0given the opportunity to view many of the movies of the time.\u00a0 As early as age five I was taken to the \u201cmovies\u201d in a local theater in Northwest Oklahoma City usually on a Wednesday night and a Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 The weekday movie was usually at the Penn Theater with my parents, where the 65c adult admission fit just great with them, and the 15c or 25c admission for the tag along kids was just peachy keen.\u00a0 One a typical Saturday afternoon I was treated with a double feature, or if lucky, a triple feature of child directed flicks at the Penn or the May,\u00a0theaters just\u00a0few miles from home.\u00a0 As I became a self mobile adolescence, I lived in walking distance of the Shepherd Mall Twin, the Villa, and the Plaza Theaters.\u00a0 With at least five venues to view films, I could be found at the theater most often.<\/span><\/p>\n

My parents did not put restrictions on what I could or could not see as I grew up. was\u00a0mostly good, but they did take me to a few movies that were\u00a0just too much to handle as a young child as they did \u201cfry\u201d by brain a couple of times in their selections of film that they took me\u00a0to view.\u00a0 I will never forgive them on that.\u00a0 I still cringle thinking about Bette Davis in \u201cWhat Ever Happened to Baby Jane\u201d\u00a0even though I can sit through that one\u00a0thinking why was that so mind blowing for an eight year old<\/span>.<\/p>\n

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As I reached the age of understanding, I was attending most flicks that opened in town, no matter if they were of the \u201cG\u201d\u00a0variety or the hard\u00a0\u201cR\u201d rating.\u00a0 As of OKC, the \u201cX\u201d rated movies were hard to come by as of the censoring by the leadership in the community.\u00a0 The first major studio\u00a0X rated flick I viewed was Ken Russell\u2019s \u201cThe Devils (1971) as I was a fan of its star Oliver Reed.\u00a0 (A review on that movie is another story line).<\/span><\/p>\n

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I had been influenced by my upbringing that censorship in any form was negative, and\u00a0nobody has the right to tell you what you could or could not do if it did not hurt anyone (but yourself).\u00a0 We, as functioning human beings, should have discretion, and the picking and choosing of what we view is our own business and how we look upon the world with regard to our belief system.\u00a0 As long as it does not hurt someone else.\u00a0 As a Christian, I have self censored myself, but that is choice, not the\u00a0choice someone has made for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A favorite flick of mine played today on Turner Classic Movie channel.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[401],"tags":[1242,1243,1245,1241,1238,1239,1244,1240],"class_list":["post-5445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-freds-movie-first-take","tag-dean-martin","tag-dirk-bogrde","tag-harry-andrews","tag-james-bond","tag-modesty-blaise","tag-monica-vitti","tag-terance-stamp","tag-wonder-woman"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":502,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5445"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10093,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions\/10093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}