"Modesty Blaise"

I'm the villain of the piece

and I have to condemn you to death.

But I am the heroine.

Don't I get away?

Perhaps.

[Richard] I'm Richard Brody

and this clip is from Modesty Blaise,

a 1966 spy comedy directed by Joseph Losey.

It stars, of all people, Monica Vitti, Antonioni's muse,

in the title role as a freelance spy

with sophisticated connections

who is recruited by the British government

for a delicate mission.

For practical purposes Abu Tahir is a democrat

and we support him.

[Richard] In order to maintain good relations

with the Middle East oil producing country,

the British government is making a major gift of diamonds

to the country's leader,

in the process eluding revolutionaries

seeking to depose him.

[gunshot]

It's based on a British comic strip

and that's exactly how the movie feels.

From the very start, the movie has an exaggerated comic tone

and an uproariously psychedelic visual style to match.

But there's method to Losey's madness

and the presence of Monica Vitti

ought to be a dead giveaway.

[60s music]

Though the movie is obviously

a take off on the world of 007,

Losey is after the absurd paranoid madness

of a world of surveillance and espionage.

[60s music]

Most of the movie's incredible complex set pieces

depend on amazingly far-reaching networks of communications,

including a drone that's far ahead of it's time.

[beeping]

The psychedelic decor suggests

a world of deceptive and hallucinatory appearances.

Virtually every object serves a function

other than the one it seems to.

[dramatic music]

And the investigative powers

deployed by all the players in this high stakes game

seems to border on the miracle of telepathy.

The result is a nerve jangling chaotic paranoid clash

of styles, moods, and tones.

As in the films of Antonioni,

Losey is both fascinated and appalled by modernistic design.

Which, on the one hand, has an irresistible aesthetic allure

and, on the other hand, seems to be

a most potent form of mind control.

[60s dance music]

If the political frenzy of Zabriski point exploded

the colorful styles of swing in England from blow up,

the result might be this film.

[laughing]

[man singing opera]

Losey even seems to be winking at Antonioni

in his depiction of a craggy, isolated,

Mediteranean island as in La Ventura.

Here, however, even that remote natural setting

is infused with the forms of technological modernity.

The first half of the film takes place

in picturesque and well preserved Amsterdam.

But even there, the most technically intricate

Rube Goldbergesque mechanisms of telecommunications

emerge from the quaint facades with all their deadly force.

[whooshing]

[boat engine]

[metal hitting concrete]

[water splashing]

[explosion]

[screaming voices]