Peter O'Donnell Movies
For a time in the 1960s and '70s, Peter O'Donnell bid fair to be the next Ian Fleming, and although he didn't quite get there, he did alright with his best-known creation, Modesty Blaise. Born in 1920, O'Donnell began his writing career in 1936, and served in the British Army's Royal Signal Corps from 1938-1945. He resumed his writing career in 1946 by scripting comic strips, and later wrote for romance and women's magazines. In 1963, at just around the time that Fleming was succumbing to cancer, O'Donnell published his Modesty Blaise comic strip, which went Fleming's James Bond one better -- the Modesty Blaise books were filled with sex and violence, and featured a female protagonist. Raised in a gambling house by a man of many quasi-legal trades, Modesty is a hard-hitting, hard-loving heroine with a libido as big as Bond's and the martial arts skills to match. A series of novels followed in due course, all filled with liberal doses of sex and sadism, and there was a flawed film adaptation made of the character by director Joseph Losey. A proposed television series got as far as the pilot stage in the 1970s, but it wasn't until 2003 that an introductory film, My Name Is Modesty, was made, which may yet get the character to the big screen successfully. Oddly enough, O'Donnell has also written ten very successful romance novels under the name "Madeleine Brent." O'Donnell, who had been looking for someone to take over the writing of Modesty Blaise during the 1990s, retired from doing the comic strip in 2001. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Peter O'Donnell's novels and comic strip was previously brought to film by actress Monica Vitti and director Joseph Losey in an eponymous 1966 spy spoof. Quentin Tarantino had been interested in bringing the character to the screen for a series of films, but the idea languished. Reportedly, Miramax rushed My Name Is Modesty into production because their option on the material was on the verge of expiring. While there were rumors that Luc Besson was going to direct, with Natasha Henstridge starring, that version never came to fruition. The film was released straight-to-video with Tarantino's imprimatur. Relative newcomer Alexandra Staden plays Modesty, and the film serves as a prequel, an introduction to the character of O'Donnell's work. It opens in the Balkans where some soldiers happen upon a resourceful little girl, a wild child. The film then flashes forward to Modesty as a young adult running a casino for the shady businessman, Louche (Valentin Teodosiu). When ruthless bandits attack the casino and the staff is taken hostage, Modesty secretly signals her partner, Garcia (Raymond Cruz), that there's trouble, then buys time by engaging the bandit leader, Myklos (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of the original Nightwatch), in a battle of wits. She uses the roulette wheel to barter the lives of the hostages for bits and pieces of her life story. And so the film flashes back to her orphaned past, showing how she was taken in by Lob (Fred Pearson), a wily older gentleman, who taught her to read and write several languages and how to thrive in a dangerous world. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alexandra Staden, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, (more)
A popular British comic strip series served as inspiration for this light-hearted espionage adventure, which if nothing else certainly shows the marks of its origins in the mid-1960s. A large departure for director Joseph Losey, better known for brooding interpretations of Harold Pinter works (The Servant, Accident), the film is emphatically bright and colorful, taking on at times a nearly psychedelic feel. The strangeness is emphasized by the unusual casting, including Italian star Monica Vitti in her first English-speaking role as the title character and Dirk Bogarde, playing against type as her arch-nemesis. Essentially everything is played for its camp value, including the rather convoluted, James Bond-like plot, which concerns the hijacking of a shipment of diamonds heading for the Middle East. Like its mod-era sets and costumes, this unusual, inconsistent effort is certainly intriguing and attractive, but might seem rather dated to some. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Monica Vitti, Terence Stamp, (more)
