The Days of Wine and Roses, and The Notorious Landlady

Wow, is it Friday already? Where did the week go? And it's Friday the 13th, at that!

Tonight I joined Subrata and his girlfriend Susan to see more old Jack Lemmon films. First up was The Days of Wine and Roses (1962), a rather depressing film directed by Blake Edwards about a young couple's downfall due to alcoholism.

Joe Clay (Lemmon) is a public relations man for a large firm in San Francisco, and a fondness for liquor. He falls for the boss' secretary, Kirsten Arnesen (Lee Remick), who has a love for chocolate, but who refuses to drink. He soon introduces her to brandy alexanders, however, and she joins him in his drinking. They soon marry and have a daughter, Debbie, but Joe's drinking interferes with his work and he's soon demoted and fired, while Kirsten's drinking problems develop even more serious ramifications. The later part of the film is about their efforts to get back on their feet, including a prominent role by Alcoholics Anonymous.

The contrast between this film and The Thin Man is striking, as the latter (and much earlier) film has its characters drinking like fishes, purely for comedic effect, and with few (if any) ill ramifications. Wine and Roses depicts the complete collapse of this couple, with Joe ending up in the hospital more than once. Some of the scenes are chilling, especially when Joe is on the wagon and Kirsten isn't, and he's torn between his love for her and his need to resist the bottle.

The film's landscape feels strangely sparse, however. Except for a couple of scenes in the office, and some later scenes with AA and with Kirsten's father (Charles Bickford), the two seem to live in their own world, with few friends or acquaintances or outside interests. While this might be accurate in some respects, I was left with the impression that if the two of them curled up and died, few people would even notice, which seems hard to believe. (And where were Joe's parents in all this, I wonder?) The pacing often felt rushed, like the film had so much ground to cover that it just jettisoned all the elements that would have made it feel well-rounded and more realistic. It's less a story than a series of vignettes.

I did notice that the AA members smoked like chimneys, which is both apparently accurate, and was similarly portrayed in recent episodes of the comic strip Funky Winkerbean.

The back half of the double feature was the comedy/mystery The Notorious Landlady (1962). Lemmon plays US diplomatic serviceman Bill Gridley, who's just been assigned to the London office. He rents a flat from fellow American Carly Hardwicke (Kim Novak, who's an awful lot cuter when she's not playing a suicidal character in Hitchcock's sickest film), whom he promptly falls in love with. Unfortunately, he's been instructed by his new boss, Mr. Armbruster (Fred Astaire, of all people) to keep his nose clean, and Armbruster soon learns that Carly is under suspicion of murdering her absent husband. Enlisted unwillingly by Scotland Yard to help, Gridley nonetheless believes in her innocence, and everything comes to a head one foggy evening, resulting in a trial and a silly denouement to the strains of Gilbert and Sullivan.

It's not at all a serious film, but works quite well as a comedy, with many hilarious cracks ("Did that make sense to you?" "Mmm... probably."). Lemmon hams it up effectively, and Novak is cute as a button throughout. (Sadly the film is so hammy that the romantic interludes seem forced.) People who enjoy movies which ends with the main players running around pell-mell leading up to the climax should love the last 15 minutes.

The Notorious Landlady certainly falls short of essential viewing, but it's still worth the trip.

I got a chance to talk more with Subrata and Susan tonight than I had in the past. They do seem rather well-matched, Susan having what seems like the necessary humor and irreverence. (Of course, after Subrata and I had been cheerfully nattering on about science fiction and baseball for a while, Susan remarked that she couldn't understand how we'd become friends, since we clearly had nothing in common!) Apparently she also showed up for gaming last Wednesday, precipitating the appearance of several folks who hadn't been to gaming in a while, just to meet her.