Bedazzled (1967 film)
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Bedazzled is a saucy 1967 motion picture retelling of the Faust legend set in the Swinging London of the 1960s.
Cultural effects
Films exploiting and celebrating the social and economic freedoms of the so-called swinging 60s were common, but Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's intelligent and witty comedy manages to be amusing and to reassert the Faust legend's timeless caveats about greed and sexual passion. The film has been one of the few of that era that are still received as fresh and funny. It was remade under the same title in 2000. See ''Bedazzled (2000 film)
Plot summary
Stanley Moon (Moore) is a dissatisfied introverted young man who works in a fast-food restaurant and admires, from afar, the waitress Margaret (Bron). Despairing of his unrequited infatuation, he is in the process of an incompetent suicide attempt when he is interrupted by Satan, incarnated as George Spiggott (Cook).
In return for his soul, Spiggot offers Stanley seven wishes. Stanley consumes these opportunities in trying to satisfy his lust for Margaret, but Spiggott schemingly twists his words to frustrate any consummation of desire. On one occasion, he reincarnates Stanley as a nun.
Spiggott fills the time between these episodes with acts of minor vandalism and spite, incompetently assisted by the seven deadly sins personified, most memorably Lust (Raquel Welch).
Ultimately, a surplus of souls spares Stanley eternal damnation and he returns to his old job, wiser and more clear-sighted. In the closing scene, Spiggott threatens revenge on God by unleashing all the tawdry and shallow technological curses of the modern age: All right, you great git, you've asked for it. I'll cover the world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burgers.
Quotations
- George Spiggott:
- *"You fill me with inertia."
- *"What terrible sins I have working for me. I suppose it's the wages."
- *[to Lust] "Pick your clothes up. You're due down at the Foreign Office."
- *[offering anything in exchange for Stanley's soul ] "What would you like to be? Prime Minister? Oh no, wait, I've already signed that deal."
- *"There was a time when I used to get lots of ideas... I thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon. The only thing I've come up with recently is advertising."
- *"It's the standard contract. Gives you seven wishes in accordance with the mystic rules of life. Seven Days of the Week, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Seas, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers..." (also directed by Donen)
- * [To a pigeon about to fly over a man] "Release your do-dahs"
- * "You realize that suicide's a criminal offense. In less enlightened times they'd have hung you for it."
- * "Suicide, really -- that's the last thing you should try."
- * [During a conversation about politics a character with the world's worst speech impediment struggles to express a thought. Spiggot replies dismissively...] "Well, that's easy for you to say."
- * In the words of Marcel Proust -- and this applies to any woman in the world -- if you can stay up and listen with a fair degree of attention to whatever garbage, no matter how stupid it is, that they're coming out with, till ten minutes past four in the morning... you're in!
- * "I lost Mussolini that way, all that work, then right at the end with his last breath he says, 'Scusi. Mille regretti,' and up he goes!"
- Stanley Moon:
- *[reading Faustian contract] "I, Stanley Moon, hereinafter and in the hereafter to be known as 'The Damned' - The damned?!"
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