Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

I wouldn't like other movies to be like this but this was interesting as a one-off. Four different couples are involved in the serial (progressive) ownership or use of a yellow Rolls so there are 4 different stories to begin, develop, and finish within the movie's length, giving each about a half hour. A number of famous actresses and actors play the roles.

Copyright 31 December 1964 by Anatole De Grunwald Productions—Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. Released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 13 May 1965. London opening at the Empire, Leicester Square: 31 December 1964. Australian release: 18 March 1965. 122 minutes. SYNOPSES: (1) Unaware that his wife is conducting an affair with his assistant (Edmund Purdom), an aristocrat (Rex Harrison) buys a Rolls Royce as a present for his wife (Jeanne Moreau) on their wedding anniversary. (2) An Italian photographer (Alain Delon) has an affair with a mobster's moll (Shirley MacLaine), who is forced to send him packing when the mobster (George C. Scott) returns from a business trip to the USA. (3) A rich widow in Trieste (Ingrid Bergman) hides a patriotic Yugoslav (Omar Sharif) from the Nazis. NOTES: Filming commenced in London on 6 April 1964. Locations were photographed in England, Italy and Austria… Film debut of Art Carney… Last film of director Anthony Asquith, who died in February 1968. COMMENT: Disappointing. Considering the amount of talent both in front of and behind the camera, I would have expected a far livelier, far more entertaining film than this languidly handled, tedious and simple-minded affair. Although Asquith's direction remains stolidly heavy-handed throughout, the main fault, of course, lies in the writing. The idea had great possibilities. Look what Julien Duvivier and company did with a simple tail-coat in Tales of Manhattan (1942)!The First Episode is undoubtedly the most interesting and amusing by far. A sly comedy of manners, it features the debonair Rex Harrison, ideally cast and in great form. Rex can make even the dullest lines seem moderately witty. Moreau and Purdom adequately hold up the other corners of the romantic triangle. More importantly, there are some great supporting cameos, including Gregoire Aslan's flustered ambassador, Michael Hordern's confident car salesman and Lance Percival's bit as his disappointed assistant. Roland Culver and Moira Lister are also on hand (you have to be quick to glimpse her), plus cult favorite, Isa Miranda. This great line-up helps disguise some rather thin material, as well as Rattigan's consistently stodgy direction.With the Second Episode, Rattigan's writing becomes more shallow, its deficiencies emphasized by the inane miscasting of George C. Scott as an Al Capone-type gangster. Fortunately Alain Delon's charming photographer and the fascinating Italian location scenery help make this segment reasonably watchable. Carney is okay and Miss MacLaine tries hard.The Bergman piece comes across as a pretty poor misjudgment that wastes her talents. Fortunately, magnificent scenery comes to the rescue once again, this time aided by lively special effects. Plus Joyce Grenfell (employing her deliciously comic American accent) at the beginning and end of the episode. Riz Ortolani's melodic score also rates as a major asset.

I never got to see this original Terrence Rattigan film directed by Anthony Asquith the first time in theater. But I certainly remembered the song Forget Domani. Frank Sinatra had a huge selling record of it and you could hear it back in 1964 about as often as you could hear the Beatles on the radio.The creative well ran a little dry for Terrence Rattigan in The Yellow Rolls Royce, a film of three separate stories involving the owners of a really flashy Yellow Rolls Royce. Rattigan's first two stories are essentially the same story with different characters. In the first diplomat Rex Harrison buys the car spanking new out of the show room for his wife Jeanne Moreau. She uses it of course to meet boyfriend Edmond Purdom who works under Harrison in the Foreign Office and is about to be transfered to South America.The second story has the car pass to George C. Scott who is an American gangster with moll Shirley MacLaine. She falls for fellow gangster Alain Delon. Both the first two stories resolve themselves in the same way. The third story is the charm and the original one. By now visiting American dowager Ingrid Bergman has the car and has the charming Omar Sharif talk his way into hitching a ride from Trieste to Belgrade on the eve of the invasion of Yugoslavia by Hitler. That offer of help leads Bergman on an odyssey into how the other half lives she never bargained for. I do so love the scene where just as she's ordering a fine meal in an expensive restaurant in Belgrade, the air attack starts and the disruption of service upsets her so.If Rattigan had done something a little more original for the second story The Yellow Rolls Royce might truly be a classic. As it is it's not bad. Asquith certainly captured the ambiance of the Thirties and antique car lovers will love this film.

"The yellow Rolls-Royce" is the best 1940s film made in the 1960s. A tryptich by two artists,Mr Anthony Asquith and Mr Terence Rattigan, it is curiously old-fashioned yet ageless.All three episodes concern love and its betrayal affecting the owners of the car - but it might as well be a walking stick or an armchair,any artefact would have done as a link for the stories. Mr Asquith was that rare thing a Gentleman film-maker.As befits that somewhat rarefied status his work was often elegant,tasteful and pleasing rather than "challenging" and "cutting edge",in other words he knew how to put bums on seats whilst making films that assumed a certain degree of literacy in his audience.He could coax performances beyond the call of duty from previously unsuspected sources viz:- Dirk Bogarde in "Libel" and Paul Massey in "Orders to kill". He is on safe ground with Rex Harrison and Ingrid Bergman but neither Jeanne Moreau,Shirley Maclaine nor George C.Scott are at their best. Alain Delon,at the peak of his beauty,photographs well but will not feel this movie has added to his reputation.Omar Sharif as usual gazes soulfully at the camera.Two years in from "Lawrence of Arabia" that's just about acceptable.Unfortunately 40 years later he's still doing it. Never in the history of movies has so much been owed to one role by one actor.Almost in passing Bergman manages to act him off the screen ,he is so outclassed I nearly felt sorry for him. The British contingent seem happiest with Mr Rattigan's dialogue. Although he never quite got round to creating believable working class speech-patterns he was on far surer ground with characters like the Marquess of Frinton especially if they were played by old friends like Rex Harrison who plays the cuckolded aristo as if to the Manor born. His beloved wife,for whom he buys the eponymous Rolls-Royce,is played by the remarkable Jeanne Moreau still fresh from her triumph in "Jules et Jim".She doesn't seem to believe in her character,perhaps doubting that any intelligent woman would prefer cipher Edmund Purdom to clever witty sexy and seriously rich Rex Harrison. In the second segment George C.Scott is an Italian-American gangster in Europe with fiancée Shirley Maclaine who sees the car and falls in love with it."My baby wants a Royce-Rolls - my baby gets a Royce-Rolls!" he declaims ,gurning furiously.He does a lot of that. Miss Maclaine also falls in love with gigolo Alain Delon,not so likely to be greeted approvingly by her affianced. Art Carney does a nice turn as her bodyguard/confidant but otherwise this is the least satisfying part of the film.I can't make up my mind as to whether Mr Rattigan can't write convincing dialogue for Americans or they can't speak his dialogue convincingly. Finally the bewitching Miss Bergman gets involved with partisans in the Balkans during world war two.She and Joyce Grenfell enjoy themselves hugely until Omar Sharif comes along to spoil it. It is beyond Puffin Asquith's powers of persuasion to get me to believe that Miss Bergman would fall for the cow-eyed one,even allowing for massive amounts of dramatic licence. Still,"It's only a movie,Ingrid",as Mr Hitchcock once said to her,and I don't suppose for a minute she took it very seriously.Nevertheless despite all this,"The yellow Rolls-Royce" falls nicely into my movie-going comfort zone.It has big names in sympathetic roles,first-class production values,lots of familiar supporting actors,its made with love and care by consummate professionals and if there is a sexier sound on this earth than Jeanne Moreau speaking English I have yet to hear it. Try to have a box of "Quality Street" handy when you watch it and you will extract the full benefit from "The yellow Rolls-Royce"experience.