Opération Caprice

I don't know why the most people think, that "Caprice" is a mad movie, it is no true. This one is the follow-up of "The Glass-Bottom Boat" and is in every case bigger an greater, but not better. Frank Tashlin did a very good job, when he first cooperated with Doris but he used her for his crazy and hardly understandable sense of humor. You have to laugh about the whole movie, you can't take anything in it seriously. That's the trick of it. There are very funny moments, e. g. when Doris goes to cinema to watch "Caprice" and when she strikes again a sexual attack. Perhaps a few of you really enjoy this movie as I do. Take it easy and with a little smile. For all others: Doris didn't like the movie herself.

A SUPER title for a film! Many have slammed this film. Doris Day detests it and will NOT talk about it. Why? It's polished, sexy, and stunningly filmed by Leon Shamroy! I believe this was his last film (although I may be mistaken). I agree that the plot was not exactly 007. But put it up against many of today's films and it's a fine body of work in many ways, albeit not in all ways. I personally do not think that Richard Harris was a good choice as a leading man for Doris Day. In 1966-67, my uncle was a longshoreman in Long Beach. He was also a rough rugged actor/stuntman in action films. He was doing something at Twentieth Century Fox and I asked him about Caprice. Could he get me in to see them film? So he went to the publicity department to get me some stills from the days shooting. Which he did. They were never officially released by Doris nor her husband. I felt fortunate to get both of them. The day came when he was taking me to the set where they were filming what he was working on and we would visit "Caprice". I skipped school and everything! Doris Day had fell filming and pinched a nerve in her back. She was in traction for quite awhile. They told us that they may have to scrap the film if she couldn't get back to work on it soon. I walked all around the sets. Remember the Eiffel Tower? They were really lush and that bed suspended from those big chains really swung(I sat on it inspite of the signs, I couldn't resist!). I, just a kid, was really impressed by it all. Martin Melcher spared nothing. It was lush! The interior of the jet was cool as well. At the end of the day, my uncle was able to get us a peek into Doris' bungalow at TCFox. WOW! They had great houses for their stars on the lot.

She had great clothes in the wardrobe area for the film. I remember how cool they all looked so perfectly maintained for filming. I particularly remember that pink hat she wore(I thought it was ugly). There were two of them as I recall. And several Platinum wigs. She refused to dye her own hair that color so the hair dresser, Barbara, said. I felt like a fly on the wall around there. The sets all said "HOT SET, DONT TOUCH ANYTHING!" I didn't. I felt VERY privileged.

Caprice was also Doris Day's last commercial recording on the Columbia label, for whom she recorded her entire recording career. It was a single that received good airplay on stations around the world that played easy listening stuff back then. It certainly wasn't as good a recording as "Move Over Darling"! For instance, they LOVED it in Portugal and Spain! The single was released with a high quality picture sleeve there! It's nothing to rave about, but lush, and rich just like the film "Caprice".

Hope you enjoy these memories of mine.

This is one of those movies that was originally panned but holds up today, probably because the story and fashions are so of the era as to make it somewhat interesting.

Doris is bedecked in all sorts of fabulous mod clothes in this confusing story about double agent cosmetic spies. There are some cute scenes, one in a restaurant and another in a movie theater (which is disconcerting because of the 20th Century Fox logo and their music starting - you think the movie may be starting over).

Anyway, Doris sings Caprice on the movie screen while her character attempts to get a lock of hair from the woman in front of her. Meanwhile, the woman's boyfriend, embracing his girlfriend, has one hand on Doris' leg.

I disagree with one of the comments that said that Doris was a 45-year-old who thought she was 20, due to her outrageous makeup. In actuality, that was the makeup of the period, and she didn't look strange to me at all.

This is a terribly silly film but enjoyable for the cast, some good scenes, and as a '60s artifact.

While skiing, an Interpol agent is shot and killed in the Alps of Switzerland. Not long afterward, "Patricia Foster" (Doris Day) is caught red-handed trying to sell industrial secrets from the cosmetics firm she is employed with to a rival company. She is immediately terminated and subsequently hired by the rival American firm to become an industrial designer for them. This results in her working with a man named "Christopher White" (Richard Harris) who is actually a secret agent employed by the same firm that initially fired Patricia. Or so it all seems. What follows is a complicated story involving industrial espionage, double agents, secret formulas and murder. Anyway, as I said before, this is a complicated story and in order to fully understand it a person has to see this movie all the way to the end. Along with that, I think a person needs to take into consideration the fact that this movie was filmed in 1967 and as a result some of the action may seem rather basic by today's standards. Likewise, some of the humor may seem a bit tame as well. Even so, although some of it seems quite mild, it was still an enjoyable movie for the most part. Additionally, as far as the actors are concerned, both Doris Day and Richard Harris performed reasonably well together and, along with that, Irene Tsu (as "Su Ling") also looked quite nice--even if her role was somewhat limited. Be that as it may, while certainly not a great spy film by any means, it still managed to pass the time, and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

For me, this movie had two strengths: 1) Doris's FABULOUS late '60s wardrobe (I would die to have a few of her coats hanging in my closet) and 2) a surprisingly sexy and appealing performance from Richard Harris as the male lead. Having experienced Hawaii and about fifteen minutes of Camelot (at which point I puked and felt it unadvisable to risk my health by watching any more), I have always thought of him as irritating and gross. For some reason, I ate him up in this role, though. The movie thankfully finds a number of opportunities for him to lose his shirt, which is a blessing.

The plot, however, is a mess. Not only does it become impossible to follow who the characters are working for and what they are trying to do, it even becomes difficult to discern what city we are in at any given time (the action veers back and forth between Paris and L.A., with some scenes in Switzerland thrown in and certain sequences on a plane flying God knows where). It mainly held my interest until the stupid ending, which is like a kick in the face to anyone who has devoted an hour-and-a-half of their life to this movie. Halfway through it becomes a whodunit, except with no suspects, and the "resolution" is even less satisfying than you fear it's going to be.

I would also like to have a few serious words with Doris's hair and makeup designers... She looks like a 45-year-old who thinks she's still 20, and it's not a pretty sight. Her wigs are way too light, and her dark eye makeup and layers of false eyelashes border on the grotesque. It's almost astonishing to see her in the shower scene because she looks so natural and charming, and it's quite a contrast to the borderline-Mae-West-in-Myra-Breckinridge look she is going for during the rest of the picture.

I don't know whose idea it was to have Doris go see the movie Caprice starring Doris Day and Richard Harris, and then to have her voice singing the film's title song when she gets in the movie theatre. But it wasn't funny, it was just disconcerting and bizarre. For a minute when they first showed the marquee I thought it was going to turn all meta and reveal that everything up to then had just been scenes from the movie and we would now commence with a story of the "real" Doris Day and Richard Harris. But no such luck. The scene in the movie theatre did at least provide the film with its best performance, by Michael J. Pollard.

Final note... I now have the first two notes of the title song stuck in my head. I can't remember any other parts of it, but I am sure Doris will be singing "Ca-price" in her coy annoying way inside my brain for many days to come.