Filming Locations for Arabesque

Veteran director Stanley Donen invests this lightweight – and rather un-PC – sub-Hitchcockian comedy thriller with lurid sixties visuals, as Professor Pollock (Gregory Peck) is marked for death after he deciphers some mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The university where Prof Pollock lectures is, of course, Oxford, and you can see the rather grand quad where he’s propositioned at St John’s College on St Giles Street. It’s the inner Canterbury Quad (which also appears in Joseph Losey’s Accident, released the following year).

Touristy London locations include Regent’s Park Zoo; Trafalgar Square (unable to use a helicopter shot, Donen took his camera up Nelson’s Column using block and tackle); the British Museum; the Royal Enclosure at Ascot Racetrack in Berkshire, and Waterloo Station.

The climactic chase, with helicopter-borne villains pursuing Pollock and Yasmin Azir (Sophia Loren) under a railway viaduct, was filmed at Crumlin, on the railway line between Newport and Abertillery, Gwent in South Wales. In the first edition of the Worldwide Guide, I made the mistake of calling this the Abertillery Viaduct, and received a through slagging off from the Crumlin Viaduct website. I've learned my lesson. Sadly, the viaduct was demolished shortly after filming.

According to studio publicity, road, rail, gas and electricity were cut off during the stunt filming, and 350 people from a nearby village had to be evacuated – though £2 ‘disturbance money’ was handed out to each family. Ms Loren’s wardrobe, by comparison, cost £53,500.