Billy and Izzy's film was reviled on release - you can see why - it sails on uncomfortable waters (if that doesn't mix up too many metaphors). But actually there's a fair bit to unpick. For example. it isn't Ray Walston's idea to entice visiting star 'Dino' with his 'wife' (Wilder's changing identities theme revisited) - in fact the Dean Martin character emerges as the only wholly unlikeable one. (Cliff Osmond's isn't much better.) And in a plot switch, Walston is finally unable to cope with his 'wife' being seduced, and throws Dino out - by this time he is actually seeing Kim Novak as his real wife, in a bizarre turn of plot - and she of course loves being Mrs Suburbia, for a change. Thus the aberrant sexual politics are corrected. And we are to suppose that his real wife, Felicia Farr, also enjoys her night of being 'Polly the Pistol'. It's actually divinely plotted.
And as always there's a whole gallery of marvellous props (including a TV store and a parrot) which are plot points, notably the mannequin of his wife which in a great scene seems to haunt him (thus the intriguing shot where he shuts it away, not behind one door but three). And the scene with the grapefruit half - a reference to Cagney and Mae Clarke in Public Enemy.
It's got that clockwork plot mechanism thing going on in which nothing is wasted, with a great Previn score to meld it together. Filmed by La Shalle, edited by Daniel Mandell, production design Alexandre Trauner, assoc prod Doane Harrison.
 |
| Knowing she had something of a reputation, Wilder put her in her place right from the off, then treated her 'like Garbo'. She didn't give him any trouble* |
The critics hated it - but to put that into perspective, most of them had hated The Apartment too...
* Maurice Zolotow, 'Billy Wilder in Hollywood'.
No comments:
Post a Comment