Days of Wine and Roses
by Blake Edwards
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DVD details
Actor: Alan Hewitt, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman, Jack Lemmon, Lee RemickDirector: Blake Edwards
Brand: LEMMON,JACK
Cinematographer: Philip H. Lathrop
Editor: Patrick McCormack
Producer: Martin Manulis
Writer: J.P. Miller
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-06
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
DVD Reviews of Days of Wine and Roses
DVD Review: Edwards' Recall "Laughed and Ran Away Like a Child at Play"
Summary: 4 Stars
THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (1962) is a wonderful film, but this DVD is burdened with an unacceptable Director's Commentary. This highly successful film was everything Blake Edwards, the director, could have wanted from it; or at least it is according to the many reviews and favorable critical comments I've read over the years.
Fresh from the thunderous reception of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, Edwards wisely stuck with Henry Mancini as the movie's musical composer (and whose theme for the movie won Mancini his second Oscar in two years, following TIFFANY's). For WINE AND ROSES, Edwards took his nearly legendary, trademark style--particularly the insouciant, almost breezy charm of the JFK years as represented in TIFFANY'S--and applied it to subject matter that is anything but screwball in nature: alcoholism.
A boozy, needy P.R. guy (Jack Lemmon) "meets cute" and befriends at work a humorous and intelligent, but slightly aloof executive secretary (Lee Remick). In 1962, words like "codependency," "enabling" and "dysfunctional" were not in most Americans' vocabulary but we can see them at work here...and at first they seem glamorous because of all the charm. Lemmon's character grew up the child of itenerant entertainers, and his standards of achievement are largely superficial and visual. He grew up "Eatin' peanut butter," and wants his life to "have class," whether it's a well-stacked "doll" in a cocktail bar, a high standard of living (and drinking), or rounding up a bunch of lovelies as "entertainment" for his firm's many clients.
But after Lemmon's character meets Remick's, his values begin to change. Remick's character got her integrity and stubborn faith in self-reliance from her Norwegian-American immigrant father (played with brilliant understatement by Charles Bickford) who, as a small businessman, cannot understand why large corporations need flacks like Lemmon to tint unfortunate events with a rosy hue. Lemmon's character comes to view his P.R. procurements (correctly) as a kind of glorified pimping. To get away from that and live a "classy" life he takes a lateral move within his firm . . . but is he simply copping out of a more demanding but satisfying career? While Lemmon's life coping with alcoholism becomes a little easier--at least for a while--what happens to Remick is fatal. He gets Remick, who "can't stand the taste of alcohol," to drink with him by exploiting her favorite jones, chocolate. Her first mixed drink is a Brandy Alexander, where the brandy is largely drowned out by Creme de Cacao.
Soon, though, Remick likes her hard-stuff straight, and the film itself moves onto the hard realities of two alcoholics' lives. Things gradually get less and less charming--and more and more on-point with the realities of full-blown alcoholism, until sanity arrives in the form of an Alcholics Anonymous sponsor, played passionately by Jack Klugman. Lemmon's character accepts the then-novel AA conception of alcoholism as a type of disease, but for Remick cutting down on the drinking is "just a matter of self-respect and will power." What will happen?
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is an extraordinary film not only for its style and great acting, and the way the charming plot eases us into the nightmare of full-blown alcoholism, but also for its psychological insights. Every time I see this movie I notice something new: from the symbolism of the cockroaches that Lemmon tries to aerosol-bomb in his girlfriend's "roach palace" of an apartment (look how the middle-class neighbors react); to the fact that Lemmon, whose metaphor for a deprived and rootless upbringing is "Eatin' peanut butter," tries to charm Remick with a box of peanut brittle! (Didn't Freud say that a present says more about the giver than the recipient?)
As such, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is an entirely different turn from the documentary-like, "hard-hitting" social-issue approach to alcoholism that started showing up in the films of the late Eisenhower period in the Fifties. Edwards himself, in the film's commentary track, remarks that in the early Sixties people were just beginning to get used to the kind of metaphors carried by the "roach palace" sequence. Unfortunately, that is one of the very few times the director's comments connect with what's going on up on the screen in any significant way.
A few minutes into the commentary track, Blake Edwards wonders aloud if maybe he shouldn't have seen his movie fresh, so that he could better structure his comments about it. I sure wish he had, because most of the rambling, unfocused remarks he makes about his movie are repetitious ("You've gotta remember I myself was an alcoholic then"), or trite ("That's the way it was back then . . . everybody drank"), or irrelevant if sympathetic ("The last time my wife [Julie Andrews] and I saw Lee [Remick] was in the hospital . . ."). We do hear a little about acting styles, particularly the way Lemmon's comically nebishy persona was harnessed to lighten up a dead-serious theme, but we hear next-to-nothing about the technical aspects of how the film was made.
So while THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is a great movie, not a period piece but a charming bittersweet love story about a love that becomes besotten and horrible (yet not without the possibility of redemption), I feel I must downgrade my star-count from a five to a four because of unacceptable bells-and-whistles. Simply plunking even primary talent like a director or star in front of a film and expecting instant insight is not the way to go for DVD's. Sadly, this DVD has company; it's just among the worst of a field in which Audio Commentary's relevance, usefulness and anecdotal enjoyment are very catch-as-catch-can propositions.
Description of Days of Wine and Roses
Public relations man Joe Clay is a social drinker who is always socializing. He falls in love with Lee Remick and expects her to drink as well. The good times turn very bad.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-JAN-2004
Media Type: DVD
Days of Wine and Roses is one film not to watch if you are melancholic by nature, as this tale of middle-class alcoholism rings very true. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are the besotted couple who find that life is not always fun when viewed through rosé-colored glasses. He's the San Francisco business executive who marries Remick and seduces her into a cocktail culture that soon overpowers them both. It is not a pretty picture when their life shatters around them, but this film is extremely compelling for their performances. It is matched only by Billy Wilder's Lost Weekend and the more explicit Leaving Las Vegas. This was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for the title song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. Filmed by Blake Edwards in 1962, it is based on a Playhouse 90 television production from 1958, starring Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. --Rochelle O'Gorman
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