The cast also includes Harry Andrews, Clive Revill (in a dual role), Michael Craig, Alexander Knox, Rossella Falk and Tina Aumont.

[9] After the assassination of one of their agents in Amsterdam, British Secret Service chief Sir Gerald Tarrant recruits former criminal mastermind Modesty Blaise to protect a shipment of diamonds en route to Abu Tahir, the Sheikh of a small Middle Eastern kingdom.

Modesty agrees to the arrangement, on the condition that she is given total immunity by the British government and complete freedom to deliver the diamonds how she sees fit.

Modesty narrowly survives several attempts on her life by Gabriel's assassins, whose failure leads to their swift execution by the ruthless Mrs Fothergill.

Modesty and Willie set themselves up as live bait to draw Gabriel out, but find themselves pursued by Tarrant and a jilted Paul, being briefly arrested before quickly escaping with the help of some smoke bombs.

Modesty Blaise was released at the height of two cinematic trends: The popularity of James Bond had spawned a number of similarly themed films.

Joseph Losey found it difficult to work with Monica Vitti, as she would invariably be accompanied on the set by director Michelangelo Antonioni, in whose movies she had become famous.

During the sequence, Vitti briefly dons a brunette wig and dresses up in a close approximation of how Holdaway depicted Modesty in the comic strips (images from this scene are often used to represent the film, including the cover of the first Pan Books paperback edition of O'Donnell's novelisation).

As a result, although the basic plotline and characters are based on the comic strip, such as Willie killing a thug in an alley, many changes were made.

[citation needed] Some are cosmetic — Vitti appears as a blonde for most of the film, except for one sequence in which, as noted above, she actually dresses up like a real-life version of the comic strip character.

Also, while the comic strip established early on that Modesty considered herself to be English, her actual ethnic background was left ambiguous beyond her being vaguely from the Middle East region; no attempt was made to disguise Vitti's strong Italian accent, making it apparent that her version of Blaise was from Italy.

For example, as the film progresses, Willie and Modesty fall in love and decide to get married, proclaiming the same during a sudden musical production number that pops up during a lull in the action.

According to Crowther: "The scenery, a few pop-art settings and a gay, nonchalant musical score are indeed, about the only consistently amusing things about this whacky color film.

"[13] Modesty Blaise was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or, but lost to A Man and a Woman and The Birds, the Bees and the Italians.

The film was conceived as a burlesque of the emerging James Bond sagas "with their male-chauvinistic ethic, their infatuation with gadgetry, their depersonalization, their evident and self-glorifying delight in violence, and their complicated story lines.

Rather, Losey offers a "visually sophisticated and bitter" social satire incorporating "violence, government hypocrisy, heroism", yet is "strangely asexual".

Vitti carries her existential despair into this film, and makes the most plodding of superspies...she is disastrously miscast...[23]Hirsch asks rhetorically: "[D]id Losey use her deliberately, to undercut the pop thrust of the material...by offering us this most dour and accommodating of high thriller heroines?