Buy "Rome Take Away Three" and all the other episodes from I Spy Season 2
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Comments from The I Spy Forum continued
Mr. Persoff was excellent in his role as the unsavory Colly Collisis - and his versatility as an actor is certainly highlighted in his 2 very distinctive roles on "I SPY" ... Ropp in "Honorable Assassins" couldn't be more different from the well-tailored, silk suited gangster in "Rome Take Away Three" ... but he portrayed both of these men with great skill and believability. (Guess that's called "acting" :-) )
I DO like Alf Kjellin .... both his acting and directing styles are - for want of a better word "clean" .... maybe "straight-forward, crisp, flawless, controlled" - would also be good descriptions. I always picture Mr. Kjellin as someone coming out of an Ingmar Bergman film (I just looked him up on IMDB - and he DID work with Bergman). And Colonel, he is Swedish.
This is an excerpt from the "I SPY" TV Guide article,"The Ptomaine in Spain Came Mainly on the Plane" by Dick Hobson (March 25, 1967).
This is from a part on filming "A Gift from Alexander" in Italy ...
"Extraneous Swedish yahoos were something else. At an Italian restaurant during an intimate love scene between Robert Culp and guest star Anna Karina, 90 boisterous Scandinavian tourists charged in. I Spy's director happened to be Alf Kjellin, a Swede. The tourists were so dumfounded at being told to shut up in their own language that they meekly complied.”
Other than "I SPY," I have only seen Mr. Kjellin in a "Ship of Fools" and that Frank Sinatra movie "Assault on a Queen." Of course, I think he did a wonderful job in directing "The War Lord"!! I have always wondered how that worked out. Mr. Culp certainly knew "exactly" how he envisioned this story and its characters ....
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and how did having someone else direct him in "his" story go down? Either it was a great collaboration - or Mr. Kjellin understood the story and its emotional landscape well and consulted closely with Mr. Culp - or Mr. Culp just did things his own way? I wonder if he chose Mr. Kjellin to be this episode's director - or was it the luck of the draw, as he described in his commentaries, about "director" selection on other episodes.
Kelly locates Tilde at the beach, and In an effort to get her to reveal who killed Magnusen, he dramatically threatens her with drowning.
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I just checked the "I SPY" episode listings. I had no idea that Mr. Kjellin had directed so many - besides "Rome Take Away Three" and "The War Lord," he directed "A Gift from Alexander" "Bridge of Spies," "Tonia," "Child Out of Time," "Get Thee to a Nunnery," and "Blackout."
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And I agree with the Colonel about the other two characters in "Rome Take Away Three." The actress who played "Tilde" Ulla Stromstedt was extraordinarily beautiful .... but we really get to know very little about her. What I did discover watching it this time, was that when Kelly is trying to get information from Tilde by drowning her, she is shouting "He will kill you!" over and over. I had originally thought she was screaming "He will kill me!" THAT certainly changes the whole perspective! She is trying to protect Kelly's life, even while he is trying to drown her - by refusing to tell him what he wanted to know. She was not acting out of self-preservation, but out of concern for Kelly - a relative stranger. That certainly makes Tilde a far more tragic and noble character than I had originally thought .
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Fearing that he is probably about to be killed, Tilde bids farewell to the photographer Magnusen.
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I just looked Ms. Stromstedt up on IMDB - other than being on "Flipper" and "Hogan's Heroes" and in "Tarzan's Jungle Rebellion" she doesn't seem to have appeared in much else.
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And then there is Elisha Cook Jr. - a talented actor who popped up in so many character roles. I agree with the Colonel, that his transformation from the bravado filled, "you can't push me around" persona that he displayed to Kelly and Scotty - to the truly terrified man who was about to be killed by Collisis was very, very well done.
And then there was that strange-looking assassin Dean Sherman hired to kill him ... I have no idea who he was, but he was very effective in his role.
Other than the characters themselves (and the delightful tag scene where Scotty gets the girl and Kelly very charmingly does NOT), I can't say much for "Rome Take Away Three"- I'll have to go with a "C .... C-"
As ever, Tatia
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