After the torturous, three-year-long CLEOPATRA shoot, Hollywood was eager to capitalize on the media coverage of the Taylor/Burton affair, and the duo was immediately cast in as the leads in MGM's ensemble aviation drama THE V.I.P.S (1963). Amazingly, given CLEOPATRA'S equally torturous post-production period, THE V.I.P.S managed to be shot, edited, and even released before the mammoth CLEOPATRA hit the screens. So, while CLEOPATRA was actually filmed first, it was the THE V.I.P.S that offered audiences their first glimpse of the couple on screen together. I'm sure that this must have sent executives at 20th Century Fox (the studio that financed the ridiculously expensive CLEOPATRA) through the roof!
When judged on its own terms, THE V.I.P.S is a good soap opera that becomes quite engrossing while it's playing, yet doesn't embed itself in the memory too deeply. It basically focuses on an assortment of wealthy individuals as they suffer and come to terms with their own various personal crises as they are stranded in an airport due to a heavy fog bank. Yes, it relies on the old "watch the rich people suffer" cliché, but the whole enterprise is generally well handled by veteran director Anthony Asquith, and the airport setting provides a luxurious-but-still-claustrophobic arena for these individuals to sort things out. In other words, the film hardly strays from the usual formula, but it does that formula very well.
The players in the drama are the usual assortment of wealthy film characters (businessman, filmmaker, royalty, etc.), but they are well cast. Orson Wells and Margret Rutherford (who won an Oscar for her performance here) are amusing in the more comedic subplots, while the almost unspeakably handsome Rod Taylor is terrific as a financial-strapped businessman and a young Maggie Smith nearly steals the whole film in a heartbreaking turn as his lovesick secretary. As for Taylor and Burton, they are cast in the central love triangle as a married couple is threatened by the suave Lois Jourdan. Both Burton and Jourdan give madly passionate performances that sent many hearts aflutter in the theaters, but the top-billed Taylor is unfortunately given nothing to do aside from look beautiful (which, naturally, she does very well).
When judged on its own terms, THE V.I.P.S is a good soap opera that becomes quite engrossing while it's playing, yet doesn't embed itself in the memory too deeply. It basically focuses on an assortment of wealthy individuals as they suffer and come to terms with their own various personal crises as they are stranded in an airport due to a heavy fog bank. Yes, it relies on the old "watch the rich people suffer" cliché, but the whole enterprise is generally well handled by veteran director Anthony Asquith, and the airport setting provides a luxurious-but-still-claustrophobic arena for these individuals to sort things out. In other words, the film hardly strays from the usual formula, but it does that formula very well.
The players in the drama are the usual assortment of wealthy film characters (businessman, filmmaker, royalty, etc.), but they are well cast. Orson Wells and Margret Rutherford (who won an Oscar for her performance here) are amusing in the more comedic subplots, while the almost unspeakably handsome Rod Taylor is terrific as a financial-strapped businessman and a young Maggie Smith nearly steals the whole film in a heartbreaking turn as his lovesick secretary. As for Taylor and Burton, they are cast in the central love triangle as a married couple is threatened by the suave Lois Jourdan. Both Burton and Jourdan give madly passionate performances that sent many hearts aflutter in the theaters, but the top-billed Taylor is unfortunately given nothing to do aside from look beautiful (which, naturally, she does very well).