Thirty minutes too long; studded with stale reflexive gags & moldy punch lines; and with Jack Lemmon overplaying in his ‘70s style (though less than usual); yet something touching, funny & original comes across in this late Billy Wilder film, his signature sweet & sour sentiment bubbling up thru the missteps. Working his crassness a little too hard, Lemmon’s a classic Ugly American, a big cheese swooping into a relaxed Italian resort town to pick up the body of his dead father and rush back home for the funeral. But along the way, he meets cute³ with Juliet Mills, on a similar mission for her mother. Turns out, the recently deceased pair had been having an annual one month summer fling . . . for the past ten years! Mills cool with the idea, cool with Italian ways; Lemmon uptight about . . . well, everything. You know where this is going, but Wilder & co-scripter I.A.L. Diamond, working from a flop play by Samuel Taylor (author of Wilder’s SABRINA/’54), work up a dandy farce of missing bodies, a blackmailing hotel staffer & his vengeful lover, and a wonderful Clive Revill as a worldly, wise, unflappable hotel manager. Coming right after his equally overlooked PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES/’70, these late flowerings in the Wilder canon, in spite of longueurs & undeniable flaws, are unique and precious in their way. Fool's gold that give good weight.
DOUBLE-BILL: Wilder’s late works couldn’t catch a commercial or critical break. Yet, all worth checking out (even the reviled BUDDY BUDDY/’81) with the exception of his coarse, unfunny FRONT PAGE remake of 1974, slavishly aping the look & style of THE STING/’73, and naturally the only one of these late films to make a buck.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Juliet Mills is tagged as slightly more than pleasingly plump in the film, yet that’s exactly what she is. Shows it off, too. Lemmon, equally nude at the moment, has an inspired comic bit trying to cover up her breasts with a pointedly inadequate pair of shriveled black socks.
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