Alcoholics Unanimous

Film: Days of Wine and Roses
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m not a drinker. Oh, I’ll have the occasional drink, but rarely more than one and almost never more than two in a given month. Alcoholism doesn’t run in my family—it sprints and sometimes does the high hurdles. It’s just better if I avoid it in general. That being said, I find movies about addiction fascinating, which makes Days of Wine and Roses a film of particular interest for me. It benefits from a good main cast and from a realistic depiction of alcoholism. This is not a happy film, but it is a very good one that probably should have been nominated for more Oscars than it ultimately was.

Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon) works as a public relations man. A lot of his job appears to be finding attractive young women to hang out with his clients. Because of this, and as a part of his job herding these young women around, Joe drinks a great deal. One night, he meets Kirsten Arnesen (Lee Remick), the secretary for one of Joe’s clients. Joe is immediately attracted to Kirsten, but she doesn’t seem to be that interested in him. He does manage to get her out to dinner, and even though she doesn’t drink, they hit it off. Joe even manages to find a drink that she likes—brandy Alexanders—because of their chocolate content.

Gender Blender

Film: Victor/Victoria
Format: DVD from Manhattan Elwood Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Before I get into discussing Victor Victoria, I should comment on Julie Andrews, the film’s star. I’m not a huge fan of Mary Poppins and my hatred for The Sound of Music is the stuff of legends, but I won’t put any of that at the feet of Julie Andrews. Even if those two roles are glurgey and saccharine, I can’t fault the woman herself. The reason for that is that she also did Victor/Victoria, which demonstrates that Julie Andrews is the definition of an entertainer. Holy crap, but the woman is good.

That’s a good thing, because the premise of Victor Victoria is the sort of thing that beggars belief. It’s not that the basic premise of the film is impossible; it’s that the basic premise of the film is impossible with Julia Andrews as the star. Then again, the film also goes out of its way to work against that premise as much as possible, so the whole thing works out.

In the Navy

Film: Operation Petticoat
Format: DVD from Plano Community Library District through interlibrary loan on laptop.

War comedies are a strange breed of film. War, by nature, is deadly serious, and yet something so terribly serious does lend itself to a particular type of comedy. Black humor is the obvious guess, but a film like Operation Petticoat opts instead for something much closer to screwball. It’s also worth saying that 1959 was a good year for both Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. Both are top billed in this, and both had even more successfully financial films in the same year; Grant had North by Northwest and Curtis did Some Like it Hot.

Rear Admiral Matt Sherman (Cary Grant) boards the submarine Sea Tiger a couple of hours before the sub is to be decommissioned. Inside, he discovers the captain’s log. Since he was the first captain of the sub, it’s his own log, and the entire film is spent in flashback as Sherman goes through the log of the Sea Tiger’s particular adventures during World War II in the Pacific.

Cartier's is More of a Lunch Place

Film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

Let’s get the unpleasant business out of the way right off the top. Yes, Mickey Rooney’s depiction of Y.I. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is unfortunate, ugly, and racist. No, I don’t think it was specifically intended that way, but it’s absolutely how it plays out. Times change, opinions change, behavior changes. We move on. Pretty much everyone involved in the film has commented that he or she wishes it were not the way it is. In one sense, it’s a good thing that we’ve evolved socially enough that we can be made uncomfortable by an ugly stereotype or a character made specifically comic because of his national origin. On the other hand, it puts a pretty solid black mark on what is otherwise considered a classic and what is one of the crown jewels in Audrey Hepburn’s catalog.

I wanted to address that off the bat because blatant racism is something I’ve taken films to task for in the past, even when such racism was a product of its time. I get that we’ve evolved enough to understand it was wrong and that gives us a leg up on where the film industry was 50 years ago. Bully for us. The upcoming release of The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp in the role of a Native American shows that we also haven’t progressed that much beyond the whitewashing of a lot of roles. So, now that we acknowledge this and decry it, let’s move on to the rest of the film. At the very least, the ugly stereotype exists only in bits and pieces and not center stage as in many of the works of D.W. Griffith.