A Monumental Cock Up

If you've ever wanted to watch a film in which David Niven takes illicit photographs of other men's cocks, then The Statue (1971) is most definitely for you.  Whether this Anglo-Italian co-production - which is meant to be a 'daring' sex comedy - represents a low point in Niven's career is questionable in view of some of his late period movies such as Rough Cut, Escape to Athena or Vampira.   Nevertheless, it does represent a truly bizarre choice of vehicle for one of the UK's most popular film stars.  The premise of the film is simple: Nobel Peace Prize winner Niven's sculptress wife creates a huge nude statue of him, perfect in every detail, except that the genitals aren't his.  Naturally, Niven decides to find out whose they are and proceeds to try and view the bacon bazookas of every man he suspects his wife might have had an affair with.  This results in bizarre and, to be frank, quite disturbing scenes of Niven in a steam bath, contriving to peek under other blokes' towels, rushing the stage at a 'happening' and trying to snap the leading man's cobblers with his telephoto lens and attempting to pull his chauffer's trousers off.  All of which means that he appears to onlookers to be some kind of middle aged predatory homosexual - which the film's makers seem to think is absolutely hilarious.

It would be easy to dismiss The Statue as a cheap and infantile sexploitation piece if it wasn't for the fact that, on a technical level, it is very well made. Indeed, the calibre of the cast - which includes not just Niven, but also Robert Vaughn, John Cleese, Virna Lisi, Tim Brook-Taylor and Graham Chapman - attests to the fact that it must have had a pretty decent budget.  To be fair, most of the cast - especially Niven and Vaughn - give excellent comic performances.  The problem is that the script gives them nothing to work with.  Let's be frank, you'd expect a film about a man hunting down the owner of the alien cock being attributed to him in stone would consist of wall-to-wall knob gags.  But no - there's not a single knob gag or cock-related double-entendre as far as I can recall.  Nobody describes the statue as a 'monumental cock up', there is no sniggering talk of  'magnificent erections' and nobody brings up the issue of 'choppers' when the statue is 'castrated' and the offending member stolen.  Truly, a missed opportunity.  I mean, it was made in 1970, by which time I don't think that anyone would have batted an eyelid at such smut in an adult rated film.  Damn it, the average Carry On movie or Bond film of the period had more in the way of knob-related innuendo than The Statue has.

Quite apart from its lack of laughs, the film contains several implausibilities which severely undermine the plot.  First up is the fact that Niven doesn't at first notice that it isn't his knob on the statue - this has to be pointed out to him by a female assistant.  Now, I'm pretty sure that most men can recognise their own bits and would instantly detect an imposter in such a situation.  (OK, I know that we're usually viewing it from an unusual angle, but nonetheless, you always know your own).  Eventually it is revealed that Lisi's model for the offending member was actually Michaelangelo's 'David'.  Which presents a real problem.  The reactions of people to the counterfeit cock seem to imply that it is, at the very least, above average in size, (the housekeeper, for instance, drops the tea tray when she sees it), yet, as we all know, Michaelangelo's sculpture is quite modestly endowed. (The Ancient Greeks associated a large penis with uncouthness and savagery, believing that a smaller penis denoted intellectual refinement and civilised values in its bearer).  One sequence in the film is interesting as it reminds us of the benefits brought by the modern technology we now take for granted.  Wanting a picture of his 'old man' for comparative purposes, Niven finds himself forced to drop his trousers and pants in a public photo booth and then wait for the four shots (each, presumably, showing his todger in a different pose) to be developed.  Nowadays, all he'd have to do would be to take a quick 'selfie' of his nether regions on his mobile phone, in the privacy of his own home.  (With the added advantage that if he wanted to share it, he could attach to a text, tweet or facebook post, rather than having to rely upon Royal Mail, as he would have had to do in 1970).

The Statue was one of those films which used to turn up on late night TV a lot back in the days when I was too young to be allowed to stay up and watch it.   Consequently, I was glad to be able to finally catch up with it, hoping that it wouldn't live down to its poor reputation.  Sadly, it did.  As I've already mentioned, it isn't that it is a badly made or poorly acted film, it is simply let down by a very weak script which misses just about every opportunity for real laughs.  It seems that the writers were trying to eschew the obviously smutty opportunities for satire.  However, the 'satire' on show is very weak and heavy handed. It isn't just the knob jokes that the script fails to exploit - it keeps setting up what you think will become running sources of humour, but then seems to forget about them: Virna Lisi's uncertain grasp of English, for instance, or the whole business of the artificial language, Unispeak, which Niven has devised, which would seem to be a rich source of potential humour.  But both are quickly forgotten.  Still, the film has some pleasures - Niven's comic performance, Vaughn's portrayal of a smarmy, opportunistic US Ambassador, some nice views of early seventies London and Riz Ortolani's typically breezy score, which includes the annoyingly catchy theme song, 'Charlie'.  But none of these are enough to compensate for the poor script which ultimately scuppers the whole endeavour.