CANON OF FILM: "DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES"

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (1962)

Director: Blake Edwards

Screenplay: J.P. Miller

  

Is is strange that when I think of Blake Edwards, this is the film my mind first goes to? Not one of his comedies, not "Breakfast at Tiffany's", but the one dramatic film he made, and the one about alcoholism no less? I thought perhaps this was just a me thing, but honestly, I think there might be something to that. I had put off adding "Days of Wine and Roses" to this Canon for awhile, because on the surface, it does feel like one of the outliers in Blake Edwards's filmography, and I thought I should first get around to more of his comedies before I added this one, but,- well, a few things, one, I'm not actually that big on his comedies. I have to see more of them, but a lot of his material, it's still funny but it doesn't always age that well. I guess "Victor/Victoria" is still pretty good, but ehh,- "10" has always been a weird one to me. Eh, I guess "Operation Petitcoat" will get a laugh or two out of me, and honestly,- I've only seen the first "The Pink Panther" film, and-eh, it's honestly not that good. Apparently most of the sequels are apparently better, but the original is, just, not much of a movie. Peter Sellers is actually barely in it believe it or not, and he is the best part of the film too and if you don't know that going in, it makes the movie a much bigger slog than you'd expect, and even if you did know, it's still, kinda nothing for awhile.... (And, I don't know if this is a controversial opinion, but I just can't stand the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's".) So, that, and I just happened to come across it again recently and was stirred by how powerful and observant the film actually was. I thought maybe it was just how spectacular the performances by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are. Maybe it was the screenplay, especially for a movie that directly involves AA, it actually portrays that organization pretty bluntly, and doesn't exactly show that it as having a monumental success rate that other movies and TV shows tend to subliminally underline. But that wasn't it either. 

No, it was watching that recent "American Masters" episode "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames" recently, where it was revealed that, Edwards along with Jack Lemmon, after completeling the film and having quite a few drinks, then came to realize that they were both alcoholics making a movie about alcoholism. I had known about Lemmon's alcoholism, he famously came out publicly about his struggles when talking about the film during an interview on "Inside the Actors' Studio", but I wasn't aware Blake Edwards had decided to quit drinking and smoking after the film. In hindsight, it makes sense; Edwards was in the middle of a struggling married that was on it's way out, and the other thing about "Days of Wine and Roses" is that, it's not about one alcoholic, and their struggles, it's about a couple who are alcoholics. 

Two people, who essentially come together, because they're alcoholics. At first, Joe (Oscar-nominee Lemmon) is a social drinker, often drinking for work since he works in public relations and does have to organize a lot of events and parties for his clients, but eventually he meets Kristen (Oscar-nominee Remick) who isn't a drinker at all, but she enjoy chocolates, and eventually hanging out with each other, she begins drinking brandi alexanders, because they're like chocolate. (I have no knowledge of the accuracy of this, but it sounds plausible to me.) Eventually they fall in love while they're drinking together, and get married and even have a kid, but their drinking keeps getting them into trouble. 

The scene most everybody remembers is after they swear to stay sober by getting away from the world and they move into her father Ellis's (Charles Bickford) house, and working at his greenhouse. Ellis doesn't exactly approve of Joe to begin with, but they try and succeed for awhile, but then they fall off hard. And Joe, in a desperate, drunken stupor stumbles through the Greenhouse destroying all of the plants 'cause he couldn't find the bottle he had hidden in one of the plants. Even still, you expect for them to eventually come out on the other side of all this somehow, or at least, for Kristen to snap out of it and leave Joe for corrupting her, but it's actually her that never recovers. 

After multiple trips to the Sanitarium, Joe gets help and a sponsor from Jim (Jack Klugman) who convinces him to go to AA. (Which at the time, Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't exactly as well-known as it is now). He tries to convince Kristen as well, but it doesn't take her. She ends up leaving or being missing for days at a time. One time, finding her a real mess at a rundown motel, and not alone originally, and she convinces him to drink again, as that's how she relates to feeling good now, and feeling good being with him. 

Famously, the studios wanted the ending changed, but Jack Lemmon left for Europe after filming and didn't return, so the studios had to keep the ending, where, a barely sober Kristen tries to see her kid, who Joe, sober and working steady for the first time in years, takes care of her in a rundown small apartment. She's not ready to give up drinking for him, or her daughter, and he's not willing to start again to be with her. I guess, the idea is that, he stares at her down from the window of his apartment, as she turns away from the nearby bar and he tends to his daughter who wondering when Mommy will get well, but I also couldn't help thinking that, man, he's literally right looking out the window, overlooking that bar, and the bright neon sign to go, almost like it's taunting Joe, inviting Joe to go in. I guess, even when you're not on your addiction, so much of one's addiction surrounds that person's life that it's not always possible to ever fully get away. For all we know, he can fall off the wagon again one day and one day soon, and both of them are gonna be spending the rest of their lives trying to balance that struggle. The movie benefits in this regard from the time it was shot too, right around the time when the Hayes Code was starting to loosen up a bit. Also, the film just looks gorgeous, especially in the way a lot of those late '50s-early '60s film look, right when widescreen was just taking over and the cinematography looks so sharp. The movie got Oscar nominations for the art direction and costumes as well, and yeah, a lot of this movie shows that these two aren't- like, naturally down on their luck; they start off as movers and shakers, and they look like it, the quintessential young, up-and-coming couple; in another couple decades we'd call them yuppies. Seeing them slowly but surely see their clothes, looks and surroundings dissipate as their drinking overtakes them is really well-done here. Also, Lee Remick is one of the most underrated actresses Hollywood had. Lemmon gets most of the attention, but it's kinda stunning this was Remick's only Oscar nomination, (How did she not get nominated for "Anatomy of a Murder", and how are we not more pissed at the Academy for that snub?) and she is remarkable here. She came along at the right time, and always felt out of place and time; she always seemed like a Ingmar Bergman actress who accidentally ended up in Hollywood, especially in the close-ups. There's much of her performance that's great, but it's her close-ups really stand out; she was often compared with Marilyn Monroe, and other sex symbols of the time, but what they could do with their bodies, she could do as well, but she could it even better with just her face.

"Days of Wine and Roses" originated as an hour-long teleplay on "Playhouse 90", some even still argue that that version with Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie and directed by the great John Frankenheimer is even better than the movie. Both are quite great, but I think Lemmon and Remick's work really make this special. The music enhances everything too, of course I can't mention Blake Edwards without discussing his longtime composer Henry Mancini. Him and the also great Johnny Mercer won Oscars for the title song. That title comes from the Ernest Dowson poem "Vitae Summa Brevis...", which foreshadows that "They are not long, the days of wine and roses, out of a misty dream, our path emerges for awhile, then closes, within a dream." I'm admittedly not a drinker myself, but I have been around a lot of drinkers, and no matter how they are, drunk or sober later on, they do seem to have a dreamlike quality in their inflections when they talk of those nights and events that might've been compromised through their boozy delirium. And I can imagine romances can feel the same way, especially when that's when/where they start. In the old days of film, if there was a couple drinking all the time, it was more like a fun prop or eccentricity, they were like Nick and Nora Charles in "The Thin Man" movies, but that's the thing, people rarely begin as drunks alone. It's kinda stunning that there weren't more films about drunk couples before "Days of Wine and Roses", and even today, alcoholism in film is usually portrayed as a singular, solemn experience; off-the-top-of-my-head, I guess the James Ponsoldt indy "Smashed" with Mary Elizabeth Winstead" is one of the few others that deals with an alcoholic couple, and even that's about one person struggling to get sober, but their aren't many others off-hand. 

"Days of Wine and Roses" got this dynamic more right than the rest did. As much as I adore those other films,- like, you never feel empathy in Ray Milland's struggles in "The Lost Weekend", because 'cause he's so hell-bent on having more drinks, but also, 'cause it is so personally insular; it's more about how an alcoholic feels as oppose to the lives of others he's effecting with their drinking. "Days of Wine and Roses" is all about how drinking effects everybody's lives in the film. That's why this one still holds up and remains so powerful, we might not all have been alcoholics, but we've all seen and known how alcoholism effects others, and how those others' alcoholism can effect us; that's why it remains so powerful even today. 

It might have been nice to see Blake Edwards make more serious and dramatic movies, but considering this is what he comes up with when he does do it, I totally get why he would gladly spend most of the rest of his life just trying to make us laugh instead.