This flick is one of a series of Billy Wilder-directed movies which trace the sexual revolution of the 60's. The Apartment, Irma La Douce, Kiss Me, Stupid, and Avanti all have female roles which were quite shocking at the time. While Shirley MacLaine is not a very convincing hooker in Irma La Douce, Kim Novak is a very attractive prostitute (and sometime waitress) in Kiss Me, Stupid. She's professional: "Get out of here," she tells Ray Walston as she is about to service Dean Martin, "I've got a job to do." She is sentimental, as some working girls are: She happily plays the part of Ray Waltson's wife for a night. She's experienced: Her voice has a husky, worldly, I-know-my-job quality that makes a customer comfortable. She steals the movie, but Felicia Farr and Dean Martin contribute credible performances to support her. Ray Walston, as Felicia Farr's ridiculously jealous husband (he suspects her of cheating with a fourteen year old boy), does his best with an absurd character, but there's nothing of his Singing in the Rain character here. Still, Kim Novak makes this a gem of a movie. Be warned, though. As the trailer says, this movie is for adults only.
One heck of a hilarious comedy movie
This movie may raise some eyebrows but one must admit its one heck of a hilarious comedy. Very funny script and surprising still funny and not outdated after all these years. Simply loved it for its superb humor!
a perverse little comedy
Sex runs rampant throughout Billy Wilder's films. One can only wonder what they would have been like if he had continued past the sexual revolution of the late sixties. As it is, this little set piece of the swinging sixties shows a tolerance, if not sanction, of the stray, recreational encounter, while celebrating the bond of devotion.
Dean Martin and Kim Novak are dead on as the swinging idol and the experienced escort, but the centerpiece of the movie is a loving couple. Ray Walston has been criticized as being too serious and energetic as the jealous husband, a part originally created for Peter Sellers just before a heart attack forced the casting change. Sellers would have added the right comic touch to keep the early jealousy scenes from getting uncomfortably realistic. But this character requires Walston's strong emotional depth to make his sudden love and protection of an imposter wife hired for the id-driven singer believable. Plus, Walston's broadway musical background doesn't hurt when he ends up singing the unfamiliar Gershwin tunes he has supposedly written and is trying to sell to the lusting Dino.
Felicia Farr has the pivotal role of the beautiful wife with a healthy enough spirit to tolerate and correct her husband's foibles, and find a way to support him by indulging in some recreational fulfilment. She is the embodiment of early sixties sophistication.
Good, not great. Better than any sex comedy you are likely to encounter any time soon.
The complete obscurity of Avanti! is a cinematic injustice that needs to be rectified. Jack Lemmon and director Billy Wilder made their share of hits together (Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, for starters), but this wry, melancholy comedy was completely out of touch with its time (which recalls a Wilder one-liner from the '70s: "Who the hell would want to be in touch with these times?"). It may have flopped badly in 1972, but it wears well in retrospect. Lemmon plays a jerk American businessman called to Italy to pick up the body of his father, who died while enjoying a secret (and, it turns out, annual) liaison with a mistress. With the help of a delightful Englishwoman (Juliet Mills) who happens to be the daughter of the "other woman," Lemmon finds... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jack Lemmon - Juliet Mills - Clive Revill Director(s): Billy Wilder DVD Release Date: Released the 15 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Hardly ever mentioned in the category of lightning-paced comedies--the His Girl Friday and Preston Sturges kind--is this breathless cold war farce from the great Billy Wilder. Adapted from a one-act play by Ferenc Molnár, Wilder and collaborator I.A.L. Diamond's hilarious screenplay is a whirlwind collection of one-liners, gags, and double-entendres, anchored for the cameras by Jimmy Cagney's cagey and frenetic performance (one of his best), and, under Wilder's direction, executed with diamond-like precision. The gangster-movie icon plays a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin (the film's 1961 release put it squarely in the middle of the world's laserlike focus on East vs. West tensions) who has parlayed expanding American consumerism into a chance to break through the Iron... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Cagney - Horst Buchholz - Pamela Tiffin Director(s): Billy Wilder DVD Release Date: Released the 15 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Austin Powers undoubtedly stole a few moves from Matt Helm, the swinging secret agent embodied by Dean Martin in four intentionally dopey late-'60s movies. The Silencers is the first and best of the bunch--but at that, it's barely a movie. Dino is first seen reclining in his automated bed, and he hardly wakes up for the remainder of the picture. (When a stunt double performs athletic moves in the action scenes, you rub your eyes at the impossibility of Martin moving that quickly.) And yet Matt Helm manages to stave off a nuclear disaster in the southwest desert, the nefarious plot of a Chinese archvillain (Victor Buono). The 007-style gadgets include exploding sportcoat buttons, plus the wet bar in Dino's station wagon--so he can gulp whiskey while he drives. The women are, of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dean Martin - Stella Stevens Director(s): Phil Karlson DVD Release Date: Released the 11 November 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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This 1970 Billy Wilder comedy-drama about a major defeat in the career of Sherlock Holmes may have little to do with the legacy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in its uncut form it happens to be one of the finest films of the decade. Robert Stephens makes a perfectly splendid Holmes, brilliant, sophisticated, and deeply flawed, while Colin Blakely plays Dr. Watson as a drinker and ladies' man with more personality and intelligence than is often granted him by filmmakers. The case (which has some echoes of Doyle's story "The Bruce-Partington Plans") begins with Holmes aiding the distressed Madame Valladon (Geneviève Page), who is searching for her missing husband. The inquiry shifts to Scotland, and despite a stern warning from the hero's brother, Mycroft Holmes (Christopher Lee),... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Stephens - Christopher Lee Director(s): Billy Wilder DVD Release Date: Released the 15 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This laugh-a-minute farce takes place in Occupied Germany, in the years following World War II. French officer Henri Rochard (Cary Grant) gets assigned to pair up with Lt. Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan) to track down black marketers; they're already well acquainted and can't stand each other's presence. Eventually their antagonism turns to love, however, and they marry. Problem number two: navigating through U.S. Army red tape, which necessitates that Rochard be classified as a war bride and cross-dress to gain entry into the States. Grant makes an even less convincing woman than he does a Frenchman. The alternate title of this movie was You Can't Sleep Here, a phrase Grant hears over and over as he sleeps in all manner of horribly awkward and uncomfortable circumstances. Sheridan... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Cary Grant - Ann Sheridan Director(s): Howard Hawks DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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