Avanti (1972 Billy Wilder) - all the reviews

Juliet Mills on the terrace of the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, Sorrento, doubling for Ischia

Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill (an absolute sensation as the Italian hotel manager), Edward Andrews (J.J. Blodgett).

Brilliantly written by Wilder and IAL Diamond - "The black socks... was it because you were in mourning?" From a play by Samuel A Taylor.

Carlo Rustichelli is only credited as music arranger leading me to infer that the properly catchy melodies are all Italian traditionals.

Notice the brilliant, silent movie opening. Plenty of jokes at the expense of America (and Italy and GB too, come to that). 'Will and Kate Carlucci'. Pippo Franco is Qued's wonderful mortuary guy. So well constructed. Use of 'avanti', three coffins, 'weight problem' etc.

Can't argue with Cameron Crowe: "The prize of Wilder's later-period work." This beautifully constructed, wonderfully written jewel of a film is unfairly undervalued and all but unknown.

The hotel set is very clearly modelled on the Excelsior's actual decor

A view of the front of the hotel - still very much as it is today

Only a few scenes were actually filmed on Ischia - for example, the morgue, harbour and burial scenes, Actually I don't know that! Does anyone?

Shot by Luigi Kuveiller (Profondo Rosso, Warhol's Dracula and Frankenstein. Wilder liked his work on Un Tranquillo Posto di Campagna 1969, directed by Elio Petri, Repulsion-like, with music by Morricone.)

New York Times: "Italy is not a country," Miss Mills says ecstatically, "it's an emotion." But emotion wears thin fairly quickly in "Avanti!" despite its share of shtick, zany local color and flip cracks.

We just can't leave it alone. Every time we go to or come back from Italy...

Notes:

Lemmon as roses. Clive Revill brilliant as Carlucci: "When do you sleep?" "In the winter."

The film seems full of Lubitsch touches. Like Hitchcock making Frenzy (basically a return to his old London films) Wilder is going against the grain of the American New Wave in 1972 making an old-time comedy (though it's full of up-to-the-minute pot-shots at the US, Italy and England).

Pippo Franco is the meticulous pathologist. "He always lunches well. He knows all the widows."

A great character actor, Franco joins the ranks of brilliant supporting players like Walter Hampden and Marcel Hillaire in Sabrina.

"Let's have what they would have had."

This surely is from where the Airplane! joke is derived.

"This 'dame' is my niece. She was raised by the Carvelline Sisters!" (Whoever they may be.) Can Juliet Mills look any more angelic? (Compare to So Well Remembered.) She is perfect in this film.

Film writing masterclass - this way...

I'm running out of things to say about this fried gold masterpiece. Though I did notice the lovely detail that the hotel reception rug has been turned up to clean around it better - that's a really professional touch.

"Right now he's writing a musical called 'Splash'. It's about the sinking of the Titanic."

We think the room with the green blind is our room, the real Room 122:

The people in the hotel don't even realise this film was made there.

Maybe why I love those mini vans so much is that J.J. Blodgett is delivered to the hotel on one:

Note Juliet's restless feet in the scene where they're having breakfast in bed together. She has the most expressive feet in film history:

"The things that go on on this floor."

"Three bullets, right between the photographs."

"I don't want to land on Africa."
"That would be bigger sir."

"What are we going to do about you?"

It was inevitable. In a great film you've seen over and over, and can quote and tell the background stories, it's always a pleasure when you spot something new. In the opening scene on the plane when the pilots are alerted that two men are in the toilet, one, then another, then another come out to have a look. Who's flying the plane?

Jack and Juliet are a dream team. I particularly like her reaction shots as they're driving through Ischia (or wherever they are).

Also should mention lower down the cast list Gianfranco Barra (as Bruno), Franco Angrisano (chief negotiating Trotta), Guidarino Guidi (Maitre d' - 'Can I have the apple peeled for you?'), Giacomo Rizzo (barman) and Harry Ray (Dr. Fleischmann - makeup artist on many things including The Odd Couple, How To Murder Your Wife, Kotch, The April Fools, The Apartment and this!)

It's also a text book example of how to choose shot sizes to great effect e.g. morgue scene.

Is this from the upper floor of the Grand Hotel Vittoria Exclesior?

Noticed little Lubitsch subtleties like the dog which knows there's been a murder. Also, the coffee scene - Lemmon drinks it, adds milk, adds sugar, seems to be appreciating it more, then heads to the bathroom and - off camera - we hear him flushing it down the toilet.

There's that feeling which is well caught in Elizabethtown of a character slowly thawing to a place - to a woman, the delicious Juliet Mills, whose best film this is. It's a pleasure to see these actors at work.

It ends where They All Laughed begins. 

And here's some stuff about Izzy Diamond.

Naturally occurring split screen

Q spotted a street scene that must have been filmed in Napoli.

Wilder: "I don't particularly like that picture.. Now what I really wanted to do was, the father is a homosexual, and he had a bellhop with him [in the car]. (Wilder smiles proudly.)  That was the first thing I thought of - wouldn't it be funny if an elderly man who goes every year to take the baths is actually having an affair with the bellhop? But of course they [Paramount] talked me out of it ." I don't see why that wouldn't have worked...