Five Golden Hours

I believe Kovacs said this was his favorite film. It's a quiet, measured comedy with good production values. It was the only real film in which Kovacs was the lead. I've always been interested in the big Hungarian, so any Kovacs movie has a built-in appeal for me. If you're not a fan of his, you might find Five Golden Hours ho-hum. Kovacs was never served that well on celluloid. His forte was exploring the possibilities of television, where he had freedom. With films, he was being packaged as a Hollywood product — not much room for Kovacs kreativity there. He made one more film after this one, Sail a Crooked Ship, which had some laughs.

George Sanders steals the show in this caper, which stars Ernie Kovacs and Cyd Charisse. Kovacs, who only acted part time, is probably better known for his role in "Bell, Book, Candle", which is on TV all the time. Cyd Charisse, professional dancer, plays the mourning widow, and almost had a starring role with MM in Something's Got to Give. Five Golden Hours starts pretty slow. After a dragging first half hour, we finally find out about the widow's financial problems (26 minutes in...) and what "five golden hours" represents.. Then it's after that that Aldo Bondi (Kovacs) proposes a solution to the financial woes. There are plot twists, and the second half of this film could almost be a Mel Brooks movie, (moving much quicker than the first half) when filming on various locations such as a monastery and others. Clever ending... pay close attention!

Ernie Kovacs stars with Cyd Charisse in this film Five Golden Hours. Those hours in fact are the time differential between Rome and New York where Cyd Charisse's late husband used to trade on the Stock Exchange and made a bundle with the instant communications before Rome's trading opened. In point of fact the guy was a con man with a Ponzi scheme.

The scheme fascinates Kovacs who has his own con games working as a professional mourner who fleeces widows out of nickels and dimes. But Cyd Charisse he falls for and who wouldn't. The problem is he's the one conned and has to do some scrambling to get away with it.

Not the best of Ernie Kovacs, for that one has to see him in his television show or in films like Operation Madball or North To Alaska. Still it has a few amusing moments and George Sanders who's never bad.

I'm sure that technically, this movie can be watched without serious worries that it will induce a coma. However, acute lethargy, loss of focus, and boredom are indicated. I know this because I sat through the whole thing, and no long term deleterious effects seemed evident. Very little else was on that early in the morning, and TCM offered it up without commercials so I thought, OK, I'll watch it.

I've never been a huge Ernie Kovacs or Cyd Charisse fan, and after watching this movie, I can't say I'm gonna start ordering their DVD's anytime soon. I mean, it wasn't horrible. The production values were good and the acting was fine. I think the real problem was the script here. The TV Guide review said it was a comedy, but there just wasn't a whole lot of "the funny" happening. I've been around longer than this movie, so I think I'd have noticed.

It didn't give me any nightmares though, so I bumped it from three to four stars. I'm just that nice a guy.

Aldo Bondi (Ernie Kovacs) is an assistant undertaker in a small town in the hills of southern Italy. He starts off basically as a gigolo (albeit a Platonic one), supplementing his income with donations from grieving widows that he meets and comforts at the funerals he arranges.

Unfortunately for him, he falls badly for one of them, Baronessa Sandra (gorgeous Cyd Charisse). At a party at her modern villa, he hears from the upper-crust guests, all of whom are male, about a scam pulled on them by the Baronessa's late husband called the Five Golden Hours. He is fascinated by the con, which convinces the marks that it takes advantage of the five hour time difference between Italy and the New York Stock Exchange but is actually a Ponzi scheme.

He decides to try it himself, and although things start out well, as soon as the Baronessa betrays his trust, things go from bad to worse. Aldo goes from the frying pan to the fire to between a rock and a hard place. Every creative stratagem he thinks of, while it does extricate him from the current predicament, ultimately lands him in an even worse one.

In the last of these, he ends up with Mr. Bing (George Sanders) as a roommate (I won't reveal where), as nasty a part as Sanders has ever played, every bit as cynical and heartless as Addison DeWitt in "All About Eve," but much more jocular and jovial about it. Rather than just being scornfully amused at the misfortunes of others, he revels in them delightedly.

Finally, just as Aldo is about to actually come out of everything smelling like a rose, the wave of his life crashes against the Rock of Gibraltar of the Baronessa again, and his hormones prevail over reason once more.

This is one of only a handful of movies Kovacs ever made before his untimely end, and as far as I know the only one in which he played the lead. It is very nice to see him in such a large part, and he is well able to handle it (even doubly, in one scene). He does not exhibit the breadth of his comedy genius the way he did on his TV show, with one exception: the scene where he tries (successfully) to convince some people that he is cuckoo. His character is more like that in "Bell, Book and Candle," rather laid back and on the quiet side. In this movie, he says his mother taught him the paramount importance of two things: kindness and thrift. His kindness is foremost throughout, and even though he is a scam artist, you can't help but love him and root for him the entire way through.

This is a black comedy in many ways, not a wild, whacky, joke-a-second riot like the Marx Brothers. It reminds me more of Alec Guiness's Ealing comedies or Peter Sellers's films from the late fifties and early sixties. The laughs are not in one-liners or sight gags, but in the development of the plot and characters and particularly the increasingly outlandish situations in which they find themselves. The spectacular town and mountain scenery of Italy also add to the enjoyment.

"Five Golden Hours" is charming, delightful and overall a very funny movie.