What I remember:
This was a film that was released at the height of the
British invasion. I was 10 or so, and like all kids my age, obsessed with the
Beatles, Carnaby Street, Petula Clark, the Mersey beat. Oh yeah, and the early
James Bond movies! Vietnam and civil rights were on the radar, but I was 10.
Bachelorhood was being celebrated with vigor, thanks to the Playboy
phenomenon. The overriding idea was that
single, wealthy men could have all the nubile starlets they wanted. If you were
married, then you were stuck with Bertha and her curlers and rolling pin. To
quote Richard Pryor, " I'll be standing in that LOOOONG mufuckin'
line"!"
The story
I remember is that Jack Lemmon plays a wealthy cartoonist (impossible, unless
you were Charles Schulz). He is perennially single, a New York bachelor, with a
"man's man" as a servant, played by veteran Brit actor
Terry-Thomas. He gets drunk at a party,
and ends up eloping with a gorgeous blonde from Italy, who it turns out speaks no English. Upon
waking up, and seeing all the detritus from a hasty honeymoon, he freaks and
realizes that he has blown his happy bachelorhood. The rest of the film is him
plotting the perfect murder of his gorgeous wife, played by Virna Lisi. Even in my almost pubescent state, I could
only shout at the screen in my mind, saying, "Are you crazy? This woman is
sexy and willing and indulgent, and best of all, you don't have to listen to a
thing that comes out of her mouth! This is the perfect woman! And you want to
knock her off?" Yeah I was
frustrated! And jealous!
So why
did I love this movie so much? Besides the fantasy stuff that obviously would
appeal to someone in my age group, there was a lot of comedy, that great
Lemmon-y self-effacing humor that he mastered. Also, his comics tell the story
of what he wants to do, and you're not really sure I he's going to really
kill her, or if it's just for his comic
strip. It was almost like they liked the story-board so much, they put it in
the film. Anyway, this is a completely
forgotten '60's treasure. Or at least the 10 year old me thought so.
After re-watching:
“Been
married 38 years myself. And I don't regret one day of it. The one day I don't
regret was... August 2, 1936. She was off visiting her ailing mother at the
time.”-
Judge
Blackstone.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Syndicated cartoonist Stanley Ford (Jack
Lemmon) has a happy bachelorhood, living in a midtown Manhattan townhouse with
his man-servant Charles (Terry-Thomas). His comic strip is about a James Bond type
hero named Bash Brannigan. Ford acts out
all of Bash’s capers before he draws them, while Charles takes pictures that
help him capture the story visually. One night at a friend’s bachelor party, he
falls in love at first sight with a girl (Virna Lisi) who comes out of a cake.
He wakes up the next morning to find that he is married to her, and he and his
butler are horrified. As he becomes domesticated, so does his cartoon
alter-ego, and he begins to plot how the cartoon can knock off his wife and
regain his previous studly lifestyle.
STORY/THEME
Well….isn’t this a misogynist piece of
work? Yet there is much more to it than meets the eye.
Obviously, the concept of a “Tender Trap”,
a woman using matrimony to enslave a man is not only dated, but horribly
incorrect. Back in the days before the Women’s Liberation movement, it was of
course the women who were slaves, so many stuck in loveless marriages with
unfaithful husbands. But there were also men who felt imprisoned by the concept
of family and domestication. This movie speaks directly to them. Comically, of
course.
George Axelrod wrote and produced “How To
Murder Your Wife”. Yes, the same man who co-wrote “The Manchurian Candidate”
with Director John Frankenheimer. However the rest of his output seems to
reflect our film, in that the majority of it is RomCom, or at least what used
to be considered Romantic Comedy. “HTMYW” was a cute piece of fluff, meant to
be in the mold of some of Axelrod’s other breezy products; “Secret Life of An
American Wife”, “The Seven Year Itch”, “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter”.
The Stanley Ford/Bash Brannigan duality of
the lead is fascinating in a lot of ways. Ford constantly says that he would
never ask Bash to do anything he hadn’t done himself. So Ford acts out the
capers that he eventually draws, with Charles photographing all the action. Of
course Ford isn’t actually risking his life at any time, and it all feels like
a spoiled little boy who hasn’t given up playing spy well into his 30’s. Again,
the entire concept appeals to the tween male.
When Ford marries, he is quickly
domesticated, and all the foibles of the henpecked boob that he has become also
become part of the comic strip. "Bash Brannigan" becomes “The Brannigans”, sans
sexy vignettes that the film audience gets to infer. His readership booms,
because now women enjoy the strip. Ford finally decides to take a stand when
his wife crashes the all-men’s athletic club he belongs to. But he takes a
stand as Bash, not Ford.
So when the plot to kill his wife is
illustrated clearly in the strip, and of course, she sees it and leaves him, he
gets accused of the murder he only committed in make-believe. Her
disappearance causes Ford to be on trial (despite there being no body), and he
manages to acquit himself by appealing to the all male jury, ADMITTING that he
killed her, but explaining it as “Justifiable Homicide”.
EXCUSE ME? He admits he murdered his wife,
and gets off scot-free? I mean, I know this is a fantasy, but that’s pretty
horrific, if you ask me. Sure, we know he didn’t ACTUALLY do it, but the jury
doesn’t know this. What seemed kind of edgy, quirky and charming back then, is
today kind of repellant, now that we have seen the terrors of domestic violence
all over our TV and Movie screens.
FILMMAKING
Yes, I have been a tad harsh on this cotton
candy of a movie, so let’s praise what really is good about it. There are a lot
of very quick sight gags throughout, and set design has a lot to do with it.
The single man’s pad, and it is quite a place, right near The Warwick Hotel in
midtown Manhattan, is decorated in a very leather, chrome and mahogany style.
Basically it’s a Cadillac Fleetwood up on the blocks, and on steroids. When the
wife takes over, it quickly transforms into the typical married household. But
it’s the artwork that really does a 180; paintings of medieval soldiers and the
like become big-eyed children. These changes are subtle and hilarious for the
observant audience members. There is another artwork moment that is priceless;
when Mrs. Ford is going wild at the big party, Lemmon is observing mouth agape,
exactly mimicking the expression of someone in a painting right above his head.
The humor of drunkenness is also
beautifully done. The bachelor party that starts as a wake (all mourning the
man’s loss of bachelorhood) and turns into a wild bash (pun intended) when he
realizes that his fiancé is calling things off, has a great scene with the
Judge and Ford both bracing themselves with wide stances on opposite walls.
The funniest of these scenes comes when
Ford drugs his wife to induce unconsciousness, and at first she gets so high that
she dances on the piano before passing out. After spiriting her away from his
party, his lawyer’s old henpecking wife gets nosy, and Ford slips her the Mickey
too. When SHE gets up on the piano, imitating the scene the young sexy wife
just enacted, it is sidesplitting.
Virna Lisi is photographed so alluringly,
that there is never a question of why Ford succumbs to her charms. She is a
goddess, and her eyes in particular are highlighted by the camera and light
work of the crew.
There are some really inane moments
however, and none quite so dumb as the cement mixer that makes a
“Gloppita-gloppita” sound. Rather than just using the natural sound of the mixer,
they dub in some guy’s voice actually saying “Gloppita-gloppita”, and it is
simply annoying and puerile.
The finale (spoiler alert, right?) when
Mrs. Ford (we never actually learn her first name) returns and Stanley succumbs
back into marital bliss, seems so forced and unreal, that it reminded me of the
recent bomb “The Switch”. That Aniston/Bateman vehicle wasn’t too awful a
RomCom, until the pasted on happy ending
that destroyed the movie in a mere 30 seconds. Why does Mrs.Ford forgive Stanley?
Why does he want to slip back into the domesticated state? It’s all very sloppy
and obviously was just there to mollify the studios and the women in the
audience.
The score, by the great jazz composer and
arranger Neal Hefti, predates his classic music for “The Odd Couple”, and
sounds very much like it. There is a lot of jazz throughout, which, for me
makes the movie much more watchable.
PERFORMANCES
What can I say about Jack Lemmon at this
stage of his career? He was the Chaplin of his time? Not really. He was the
Cary Grant of his time? No, not anywhere as handsome. He is definitely his own
man. The same great comic delivery and physical timing that made him so perfect
for two Billy Wilder classics, “The Apartment” and “Some Like It Hot”, is on
display here. There are moments that are very Wilder-esque, thanks mostly to
Lemmon. The question remains as to whether he is believable as the action-ready
playboy. We know he pulls off the henpecked boob rather easily.
Terry-Thomas has his moments, especially
when he can barely contain his glee on the witness stand and off when he
realizes that it is actually possible that Ford may have killed his wife. The
opening of the film has Terry-Thomas addressing the camera/audience and
describing exactly how ideal the life is that he and his boss have. It seems forced
from a plot/exposition point of view, but his aplomb and demeanor pull it off
effortlessly.
Lisi does a fine job with the role of cute and
endearing language mangler, and is simply drop-dead gorgeous throughout. She has
a scene that is a direct forerunner to Darryl Hannah in “Splash”. Both use TV
to learn English, and both begin spouting dialogue from commercials as if that
is the way normal people speak. It is funny both times, but I wonder if the
great ‘80’s screenwriting team of Ganz and Mandel that brought us “Splash” had
seen “HTMYW” and stolen this idea from it.
Lisi, by the way, is in full make-up at all
times. Her amazing eyes are even more lustrous than would seem possible. It’s
also interesting to observe that what passed for normal eye make-up back in
1965, is only acceptable on a porn-star in 2012. Her mascara looks like it was
applied by the “gloppita-gloppita” machine.
Wonderful support is given by the lawyer
and his wife played by Eddie Mayehoff and Clare Trevor respectively. Mayehoff
is doing his best Jim Backus, complete with “Lovey” Larchmont lockjaw. Trevor,
who has played some great moll roles in films like “Key Largo” and “Murder My
Sweet”, does a superb send-up of the spoiled suburban wife, reminiscent of a
type we saw in tons of sitcoms during the period. Like I said, she is amazing
in the party scene, and also has some great outbursts in the courtroom scene.
ON SECOND LOOK
I have certainly outgrown this film, and
probably outgrew it by the time I was 16. As a piece of era-centric comedy, it
still has its moments. Gazing at the beautiful Virna Lisi is an added benefit,
as is the lively score by Hefti. Unfortunately the movie is so very dated, and
all of its hipness seems faded and lowbrow nowadays.
On First Look: ✭✭✭ On Second
Look: ✭✭
