Cinema: In the Cards

Kaleidoscope. On a ledge high above the glittering night city, a Batmanly figure in a black body stocking detaches itself from the darkness and, deftly fixing a pulley wheel to a power line, goes gliding over the neon-slashed abyss to the roof of the next building. The skylight yields, the shadow drops inside. Moments later, eyes gleaming, the intruder extracts a keen little burin from his belt and begins to chisel delicately at a metal printing plate. While he works, he whips out his transistor and earplugs into some late late rock ‘n’ roll.

What’s going on here? Just about the trickiest bit of film-flam since the jewel job in Topkapi. Unhappily, the trickiness is not confined to one episode; this picture skillfully but all too shamelessly mimics the gimmicks that have transformed the Fleming formula into the Bond bind. Nevertheless, if the success of a thriller can be measured in thrills, Kaleidoscope succeeds with a dash that often disguises the balderdash.

The plot gets off to a dashing start. Batman is actually a Nevada gambler (Warren Beatty) who beats the bank at every casino in Europe with the season’s niftiest system: he simply sneaks into the playing-card factory that supplies the casinos, and marks about half a million cards at once by marking the plates they are printed from. Alas, the long arm of the scriptwriter hands him a sneaky shuffle. His best girl (Susannah York) just happens to be the daughter of a Scotland Yard inspector who just happens to require the services of a professional gambler. So the girl turns him into the law, and the law turns him into a copper’s nark. In the facedown,

Hero Beatty sits opposite a crime czar (Eric Porter) and plays five-card stud, bullets wild. Guess who wins.

Hero Beatty tries so hard to act like Sean Connery that once or twice he almost develops a line in his face, and Villain Porter manages to look like a particularly sneery second assistant tarantula keeper from the Port Said headquarters of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. As for the continuity, it goes thunderballing along from zoom shot to crash cut to color-diller costume sequence till the spectator’s senses are knocked eight ways to Sunday. Not a profound experience but an extravagantly stimulating one. At times, indeed, the moviegoer may wonder if he isn’t looking at Kaleidoscope through a kaleidoscope.