Great Catherine

“GREAT CATHERINE” has a great clown named Zero Mostel. Although the cast of this British-made comedy also includes Peter O’Toole, Jeanne Moreau and Jack Hawkins, and moves with style, wit and dialogue that could have come only from George Bernard Shaw, the glorious hamming of the portly American makes the picture.

Surely Mr. Mostel’s antics would have won the playwright’s approval. The source of the movie is an obscure one-acter first staged in 1913. The story, with the Empress of All the Russias craftily prying a handsome soldier loose from his fiancée, has since been warmed over often: There was Ernst Lubitsch’s “A Royal Scandal,” for instance, with Tallulah Bankhead rattling the palace windowpanes. This time, the one-eyed, cross-eyed Patiomkin, chancellor to the Queen, is played by Mostel, who all but pulls down the palace with his bare hands. He comes on so strong in the opening 20 minutes, and explodes thereafter with such wild, slapstick abandon, that the rest of the picture pales and teeters uncertainly. This includes game performances by Mr. O’Toole, as the handsome visiting Briton; by Miss Moreau, as the sultry-eyed monarch; by Mr. Hawkins, as the suave British Ambassador to Moscow, and by Angela Scoular, as his daughter and Mr. O’Toole’s spunky fiancée.

Braced immeasurably by the Shavian lines, as arranged by the scenarist, Hugh Leonard, and stylishly piloted by the director, Gordon Flemyng, the picture is also beautiful in its lavish décor, costumes and color photography. In one delicious scene, Miss Moreau and Mr. O’Toole vigorously re-enact the Battle of Bunker Hill with models of guns, ships and soldiers, making a wreck of the miniature battleground and harbor. In another bright bit, as the Empress tickles her trussed-up British prisoner, Mr. O’Toole says, “If you don’t stop, I shall write to The London Gazette.” And in the most imaginative cinematic touch of all, which Shaw would have enjoyed, a horde of fiery Cossack dancers bursts in on a sedate ballroom crowd for some dazzling choreography. From then on, the last third of the film droops rather aimlessly. But Mr. Motel has already made his mark.

Jamming on a disheveled wig and slashing at it with a hairbrush, amid clouds of powder, Mr. Mostel is overpowering. Whether he is raging, whining, denouncing Voltaire, funneling wine or haiting the Empress, the picture is his—and Shaw’s, in that order. —Nytimes.com