Blindfold (1966 film)

Blindfold
Film poster by Joseph Smith
Directed by Philip Dunne
Produced by Marvin Schwartz
Screenplay by Philip Dunne
W. H. Menger
Based on Blindfold (1960)
by Lucille Fletcher
Starring Rock Hudson
Claudia Cardinale
Music by Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography Joseph MacDonald
Edited by Ted J. Kent
Production
company
7 Pictures
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
  • May 25, 1966 (1966-05-25) (New York)
Running time
 102 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English

Blindfold is a 1966 American motion picture by Universal Pictures, starring Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale that was based on Lucille Fletcher's 1960 novel of the same name. It was the last film directed by Philip Dunne, a successful Hollywood screenwriter of pictures such as How Green Was My Valley and The Robe. Sequences were filmed in Silver Springs, Florida and Central Park in New York City.

Plot

General Pratt, a national security chief, and his aides approach Dr. Bartholomew Snow, a successful psychiatrist for his assistance to the United States Government for which he is sworn to secrecy. A patient once psychoanalyzed by Dr. Snow is a government scientist who evidently has had a mental breakdown. General Pratt, hides the patient, Arthur Vicenti, in a remote place known only as "Base X," forcing Dr. Snow to wear a blindfold whenever he is taken there by airplane and car.

Enemy agents and an organisation who kidnap and sell scientists to the highest bidder want to know what Vicenti knows, so he is in danger. The patient's sister, beautiful Vicky Vicenti, mistakenly believes that Dr. Snow is the one who abducted him. When she has the doctor arrested, Snow tells both the authorities and the press that he and Vicky are actually having a lovers' quarrel and are engaged to be married in order to keep the Vicenti affair secret. Snow is a man with seven failed engagements and sees nothing wrong with using a false engagement to keep Vicky quiet. All are satisfied with the explanation except a suspicious NYPD detective named Harrigan.

A stuttering man named Fitzpatrick turns up for a session with Dr Snow and shows CIA credentials. Fitzpatrick claims to Dr. Snow that it is actually General Pratt himself who is the enemy agent that makes sense to Dr Snow as he could not understand why Vicenti would not have been placed in a military hospital. Unable to find the general, and with the authorities unwilling to reveal whether General Pratt or Fitzgerald work for the US Government, Dr. Snow tries to recreate sounds he heard while blindfolded to trace his way back to Base X.

He does so, only to find that Fitzpatrick has taken both Vicenti and Pratt captive. But soldiers arrive in airboats and place Fitzpatrick under arrest, leaving Vicky to consider whether she would like her make-believe engagement to Dr. Snow to be real.

Production

Florida second unit scenes were shot in February 1965 at Paradise Park on Silver River, Sharpes Ferry Bridge, Indian Lake and at the Silver Springs Airport with members of a Ocala, Florida community theatre group the Marion Players acting as stand ins and doubles for the principal actors. Ross Allen, operator of Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute, provided most of the alligators for the swamp scenes[2].

Cast

Claudia Cardinale in one of her costumes for the film.

Reception

The film earned an estimated $2 million in rentals in North America.[3]

Influence

The sequences where Hudson's character Dr Snow finds the secret base using only sounds he heard on the journey was used in Joe Smith, American and its remake The Big Operator as well as being borrowed for an almost identical scene in the 1992 film Sneakers.

References

  1. ↑ "Blindfold". American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved 2014-08-10.
  2. ↑ http://www.ocala.com/news/20061015/marion-players-get-jobs-in-hudson-movie-blindfold
  3. ↑ "Big Rental Pictures of 1966", Variety, 4 January 1967 p 8


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