The Spy in the Sandwich

Tracking Sandwich Eaters

Saturday, July 25, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 91

[91st of 100]. To quote the film's iconic last line, "Nobody's perfect" -- but this film almost certainly is. I don't exactly remember when I first watched this 1959 film, which is a fine distillation of disparate genres: it is a romantic comedy, a buddy movie, a crime caper, a musical, and a farce. Most likely it was in my college years, in my phase of seeking out the major works of film masters -- but I know for sure that my introduction to it was one of sheer delight. No other responses seems possible for this story about two bumbling jazz musicians -- Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon -- who are on the run from gangsters after they've witnessed the infamous St. Valentines Day massacre in Chicago. They hide by disguising themselves as female musicians in an all-girl ensemble bound for a gig somewhere in Florida, until Marilyn Monroe's Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk, a ditsy, love-seeking ukulele player, changes their game, with hilarious results. I laughed. I marvelled at the tight script and the towering sense of direction. I found every single detail organic to what made the entirety work. But then again, this is Billy Wilder we're talking about, a filmmaker who had an extraordinary keenness on what made popular cinema kinetic and interesting, and often funny. Even when he was cynical -- as he definitely was in The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, and Sunset Boulevard -- there is always something magnetic about his films, something which we can attribute to his eye for structure and form; he insisted on these as more than vital to filmmaking, a wisdom he would impart regularly to younger filmmakers like Cameron Crowe. This feel for form rendered his films polished and accomplished, and endlessly watchable. Film critic Nick Bugeja once wrote: "His images don’t contain the catharsis of Peckinpah or the poeticism of Antonioni. They are simple and laconic, producing a sharpness in meaning and effect: young screenwriter Joe Gillis [William Holden] floating face-down in Norma Desmond’s Hollywood pool; insurance man Walter Neff [Fred MacMurray] sitting against a wall, curled up with his head in his hands, wracked with guilt over his malignant schemes and actions; Chuck Tatum [Kirk Douglas] collapsing into the face of the camera from a long-unaddressed knife wound, bringing an end to his life of tabloid journalism and abject exploitation." When he takes these very qualities to make this comedy, what results is a scintillating film many would acknowledge to be the greatest comedy ever made. Film critic Nicholas Barber, writing for the BBC, "It is structured so meticulously that it glides from moment to moment with the elegance of an Olympic figure skater, and the consummate screwball dialogue, by Wilder and IAL Diamond, is so polished that every line includes either a joke, a double meaning, or an allusion to a line elsewhere in the film." He also notes that "the film is an anthem in praise of tolerance, acceptance, and the possibility of transformation ... an anthem that we need to hear now more than ever." That's the measure of this film's appeal and endurance, and while nobody and nothing may be perfect, it is that reach that defines its own perfection. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film