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Otley
Otley
	British theatrical poster
Directed by	Dick Clement
Written by	Ian La Frenais; Dick Clement
Based on	the novel Otley by Martin Waddell
Produced by	Bruce Cohn Curtis
Starring	Tom Courtenay; Romy Schneider
Cinematography	Austin Dempster
Edited by	Richard Best
Music by	Stanley Myers
Production; companies	Highroad Productions; Bruce Cohn Curtis Films, Ltd.
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	22 May 1969 (UK); March 11, 1969 (NYC);
Running time	91 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Otley is a 1968 British comedy thriller film directed by Dick Clement and starring Tom Courtenay and Romy Schneider.^[1] It was adapted by Clement and Ian La Frenais from the 1966 novel of the same name by Martin Waddell, and released by Columbia Pictures.

Plot

Gerald Arthur "Gerry" Otley is a charming but feckless young drifter who scrapes a living from selling antiques in trendy 1960s London. Gerry's responsibility-free life suddenly takes a serious turn, when he finds himself caught up in a round of murder, espionage and quadruple crossing. He is mistaken for a spy, is kidnapped and detained several times, and becomes romantically involved with a foreign agent working for British Intelligence.

Cast

Tom Courtenay as Gerald Arthur Otley, "Gerry"
Romy Schneider as Imogen
Alan Badel as Sir Alec Hadrian
James Villiers as Hendrickson
Leonard Rossiter as Johnson
Freddie Jones as Philip Proudfoot
Fiona Lewis as Lin
James Bolam as Albert
James Cossins as Geffcock
James Maxwell as Rollo
Edward Hardwicke as Lambert
Ronald Lacey as Curtis
Phyllida Law as Jean
Geoffrey Bayldon as Inspector Hewett
Frank Middlemass as Bruce (as Frank Middlemas)
Barry Fantoni as Larry
Don McKillop as police driver

Production

The exterior action takes place in a number of recognisable London locations: the area around Portobello Road street market in Notting Hill; a houseboat colony near Cheyne Walk in Chelsea; Bowater House in Knightsbridge; the Playboy Club in Park Lane; and the old Unilever milk depot in Wood Lane. A wide range of period British vehicles is featured: Otley drives an E-Type Jaguar, a Ford Anglia and an early 1960s passenger coach, and his disastrous driving test, which turns into an epic car chase, involves a driving-school Vauxhall Viva and a Ford Zephyr.^{[citation needed]}

The film, whose interiors were shot at Shepperton Studios, marked the directorial debut of Dick Clement.

Don Partridge co-wrote and performed the title music, "Homeless Bones", which was released as the B-side of his 1969 single "Colour My World".^[2]

Critical reception

Jack Ibberson of The Monthly Film Bulletin called the film: "[a] vastly entertaining comedy-thriller", writing "the film's main asset lies in the performances, which are uniformly excellent. Tom Courtenay makes the thieving, cowardly Otley a wholly credible and sympathetic character whose all too human failings seem infinitely more acceptable than the double-dealing of the suave characters whose world he reluctantly enters. ... Courtenay's performance is a masterpiece of bewilderment ... delightful entertainment and a credit to all involved."^[3]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "Like Otley, the movie is a bad risk. Everything in it is borrowed and badly used – actors (Tom Courtenay, Alan Badel), situations (the triumph of the fraudulent fool) and even settings, including a rather handsome Thames houseboat that reminded me wistfully of The Horse's Mouth. Otley is the kind of movie that allows you to think about other movies, in those great gaps of time between the setting up of a gag and the moment when it is ritualistically executed."^[4]

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the film was so boring it "could put Sominex out of business"^[5] and admitted to walking out on it, reporting, "I took the CTA to see Otley at the Coronet theater in Evanston. The film began at 6:15 p. m. I returned home on the 7 p.m. train."^[6]

Variety wrote that "the film has an uneasy lack of a point of view and fails to focus viewer's attention on any particular character or plotline philosophy. The frantic, intentionally incoherent episodes are sometimes amusing, but too often suffer from unoriginality."^[7]

Judith Crist described it as "a bright, breezy, light-handed but never lightheaded spies-and-counterspies story".^[8]

In Sixties British Cinema, Robert Murphy wrote, "The only British spy film which succeeds both as a comedy and a thriller is Dick Clement and Ian LaFrenais's Otley."^[9]

Awards

The film won the 1969 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best British Comedy Screenplay.^[10]

References

^ "Otley". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
^ "Don Partridge – Colour My World". Discogs. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
^ "Otley". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 36 (420): 142. 1 January 1969 – via ProQuest.
^ Canby, Vincent (12 March 1969). "Screen: 'Otley' Arrives From Britain". The New York Times. 42.
^ Siskel, Gene (4 January 1970). "Last Year's 20 Biggest Bombs from Filmland". Chicago Tribune. Section 5, p. 1.
^ Siskel, Gene (26 November 1969). "Short Subjects". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, p. 5.
^ "Film Reviews: Otley". Variety. 22 January 1969. 6, 24.
^ Crist, Judith. This Week's Movies. TV Guide, North Carolina Edition, 9–15 December 1972, pg A-4
^ Murphy, Robert (2019). Sixties British Cinema. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 231. ISBN 9781838718244.
^ "Writers' Guild Awards 1969". The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. Retrieved 29 January 2024.