It is a performances centric movie

A Major Disappointment

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Reunite William Holden and Audrey Hepburn, put them in the spectacular titled locale, sprinkle in a few star cameos (Marlene Dietrich, Tony Curtis, Mel Ferrer and Noel Coward) and voila ... a can't miss hit, right? Unfortunately, it didn't work that way. Someone forgot the script.In fact, that's the plot of this completely uninspired romantic comedy. Holden plays an aging, whiskey-swigging screenplay writer who's blocked, Hepburn a typist sent by movie producer Coward to help complete the long overdue story during a weekend. The movie plays out as these two Academy Award winning actors improvise scenarios of every conceivable genre, all of which are colorfully realized by cinematographer Charles Lang (no less) and Hepburn costumed by Givenchy (of course).But it just doesn't work. As a comedy, it's not funny, even with Tony Curtis appearing throughout; as for its romantic angle, the magic of Sabrina is long gone. When the opening scene - a masterful establishing shot from a helicopter of the French Riviera's Hotel du Cap (which doesn't even feature one of its headlining stars) - is the best thing about a movie, it's probably best to avoid it.

In 1964, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden were among the very top movie stars in the world. Because of this and their excellent track records, you would expect "Paris When It Sizzles" to be a very good if not a great film. Well, this would be a mistake, as even though the film featured these two likable and bankable stars, it's a terrible movie--a complete misfire and a waste of their talents as well as Tony Curtis' and Mel Ferrer's (Hepburn's husband at the time)--who appear in a few short cameos. I have no idea if the film lost money, though I am pretty sure it must have. It also, according to IMDb, was Audrey Hepburn's least favorite among her films.William Holden plays an alcoholic* playboy who occasionally takes time off from this busy schedule to write a film here or there. He's been under the gun to stop his partying and get to work when he hires a new secretary (Audrey Hepburn). Most of the rest of the picture consists of the pair talking out the plot to a particularly stupid film. And, as they talk, you see the pair acting out the film as if they are the stars. You also see that despite Holden's best efforts, they fall in love."Paris When It Sizzles" sure has the look of a vanity project. The film is way too cute and self-aware. And, if he love the joke or are a die-hard Hepburn fan (and there are some who simply cannot accept that this actress EVER made a bad film), then you'll probably like the film. But the end results are not particularly convincing and the film that the pair talk about throughout the film is just plain stupid. Overall, the film comes off as boring inside joke.*This is a sad case of art imitating life, as Holden was rather notorious for his heavy drinking that appears to have helped put him in an early grave. This seems to a rather bad inside joke--referring to his drinking problems (which, according to IMDb, were severe enough to force him into rehab just before the actual filming was complete).

This is an interesting study case:As a film, it's hardly any good. Simple direction, ordinary editing, nothing relevant, it's a product of old times, but worse than others that created and followed its model.As entertainment, it lost the value that it might have had in its day. And that's not specially bad about this specific film. Romantic comedy has to be the genre that gets outdated more easily, because it deals with very dated needs and demands of the audiences. So, this film is as outdated today, as any of our days' romantic comedies will be in 50 years.The acting by the main actors is tolerable even though we saw Hepburn, Holden and Curtis do better in many of their other films. And although this is not so well suited to Audrey's character, we still have her class, the most remarkable in filmdom.But something makes this film a remarkable and unique piece that you will eventually have to see if you care about cinema and shift the french printed on it at the beginning of the 60'. So here we have a film literally about film writing. From the very beginning we are allowed to know that we will be watching a film which is making itself, inventing as it goes along. Naturally the main characters had to be a writer, and a typist, who unwillingly becomes a writer as well. We have two levels: that of the reality of the hotel room in Paris, which already is ostensibly artificial (that's why Holden says he had the Eiffel tower placed so he'd know he was in Paris) and the level of the film within, a provisional reality, constantly changing, and affected by what goes on in the room. This constant changes in the film within would provide the entertainment part here (Tony Curtis acts to be funny, and he is).But where things really become interesting is in the french connection: there are a lot of explicit references to the new wave that was hitting Paris and french cinema those days. Those references were always mockery, things about how in those new films "nothing happens". And we get this film as the opposite of that, a feast to the eye, where the narrative is filled with events, regardless how silly they sound, even in the context of the film, and even in the context of the film within! What we have is the old fashioned way, and that's assumed. And the battle field is Paris, at once the stage of the new wave, where deep changes take place, and one of the most cherished locations of the "old days", one the most used places in the history of film, with all its iconic places, charged with symbolism in the post-war American cinema. That's what's at stake here: the rise of new paradigms, that threatened what "american cinema" for the masses meant back than. That's why the provisional title for the film within was "The woman who stole the Eiffel tower". The decadence of Holden's character (that mirrors what Holden himself was going through at this time) can be accounted with a symbolic weight. The 60' were a decade of European bright cinema, that Hollywood would follow, leaded by the so called Vietnam generation.The popcorn selling kiss, that is the more lasting scene of this film in how it fulfills its own assumed cliché is a twilight to a certain type of film. Oh, and we had Audrey...My opinion: 3/5 a bad film that you really have to see.http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Directed by Richard Quine,Paris When it Sizzles is a seriously underrated film that was ahead of it's time in terms of plot and how it's shot.On release it didn't do well and there were serious problems with leading man William Holden.He and Hepburn were back together for the first time since the end of their love affair during the making of Sabrina.She had broken it off when she discovered he couldn't have children,the one thing she desired above all else.He began drinking heavily and often messed up his delivery of lines.The bad reaction on release seems to stem from the content of the film.It's an often hysterical dig at the way audiences just assume a film comes together on it's own,giving no thought to the creative process involved.Also it has great fun playing around with genre and character in a hap hazard array of ways.Most likely audiences just wanted a straight romance,what they got was something else entirely.Gaby(Audrey Hepburn)is hired to become an assistant to famous screenwriter Richard Benson(William Holden)at his hotel room in Paris.The two begin to write a screenplay for a new romantic film.As they begin to write the plots they imagine for the characters are shown on screen,acted out by Hepburn and Holden,featuring some funny cameo appearances especially Tony Curtis as a young method actor. A delightful blend of romance,humour and satire,Paris When it Sizzles is a good old style romantic comedy that features a fine cast and if your attentive fun is poked at films and acting styles without being nasty in any way.