The “truly farcical” movie Michael Caine wishes he never made: “What could possibly go wrong?”
Actors across the industry no doubt breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the old studio system was phased out, ensuring they were no longer signed to multi-picture contracts without having any say in the movies they appeared in. Michael Caine definitely was, because he ended up with back-to-back bombs.
The late 1960s were a curious time in the icon’s career. He’d successfully made the leap from British cinema to Hollywood, and his first Academy Award nomination for Alfie had made him a star. The period coincided with some of his best films, like The Ipcress File and The Italian Job, but also some stinkers.
Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it. With the benefit of hindsight, Caine admitted that signing a two-picture deal with 20th Century was “disastrous,” but he wasn’t to know that both of them would leave him thoroughly dejected and concerned about his immediate future.
Andre de Toth’s war story Play Dirty placed Caine in the baking heat of Almería, and after spending the entirety of principal photography as a sweaty shambles who’d have to shovel up horseshit to keep the production on schedule, he refused to return to the Spanish municipality and instigated his golden rule that the shooting locations were now of paramount importance to his choosing of roles.
Before that happened, though, he was excited about the film. “On the surface, it is a good action story, based on fact, with a moral to it and some controversy,” he wrote in his memoir, What’s It All About. “So what could possibly go wrong? The short answer is everything. Play Dirty is a prime example of how you can start out with a good story and the very best of intentions and yet get gradually worn down into mediocrity.”
Almería was a Hollywood hotbed at the time, and Caine’s stint in Spain coincided with several other crews using many of the same locations, leading to what he called some “truly farcical situations” when “several units were shooting simultaneously” and kept ruining each other’s shots, leading to time-consuming delays as the crew had to reset each shot and go again until it was captured without interruption.
In the end, all he had to show for it was a miserable time abroad, the constant stench of horse manure in his nostrils, and a movie that disappointed at the box office and fell flat with critics. Not to state the obvious, but his 20th Century Fox excursion hadn’t gotten off to the most promising start.
Remarkably, it got worse. Caine fulfilled his obligation with Guy Green’s mystery thriller The Magus, a film he called “one I’d rather forget” because he turned up on the set completely unprepared and had absolutely no clue what it was about. It showed, and only reinforced his belief that he’d made a grave error in inking a deal with the powerhouse studio.
It was a comedy of errors from beginning to end, and the only positive is that it didn’t do as much damage to Caine’s standing in Hollywood as he thought it might.
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