Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) Directed by Billy Wilder and reviewed by Richard Bowden, 9 out of 10 based on the Italian stage comedy L'′Oro della Fantasia (Time for Fantasy), “Wilder Kiss Me, Stupid! Appeared after a long career of hits by the director, culminating with a hat trick in the apartment for which he won an Oscar for each one as producer, director and co-writer, respectively.
In the years that followed, however, the reputation of the director, was struck, he was responsible for several films then less favorable reception: (1966 The Fortune Cookie), another personal favorite of mine in the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes ( 1970), Avanti! (1972) and after these, in 1964, so perhaps his most outrageous single, Kiss Me, Stupid.
Widely regarded at the time as a “mistake” by a respected talent, the latter title was immediately condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, and banned in several cities. Even its original distributor United Artists washed his hands of the film, giving it a limited version of the art through a subsidiary of the movie. Many of these films were later found critical rehabilitation.
Kiss Me Stupid has also found a growing number of advocates, a new generation of viewers to discover their unique tone of joy in reruns on TV night. At a time when the double meaning can be king, Wilder’s film, full of visual and verbal sexual advances, and its ironic irreverence toward traditional values and customs, has acquired an importance that it never had before.
Times have gone a little from the brigade were stuffed shirt shocked by what was then viewed as wanton immorality Wilder’s film, its supposed vulgarity, his point of view of fidelity jaundice. These days the cynicism so characteristic of the director and hence removed the nth seems modern entertaining, while the center of Dean Martin, parodic self-portrait of me satiriasis’El sa habit.
If I skip one night a week I like a headache) can be viewed as one of his most memorable performances - probably because it runs close to home in contemporary eyes than some of his other appearances over now safely packaged. Peter Sellers was originally cast as Orville Spooner, the eternally optimistic and always jealous, singer and songwriter, 62 unexploded ordnance from pop feverishly named Climax, Nevada.
2147. It was one of the great what-if casting choices and went so far as shooting some scenes obviously very played before, for various reasons, the star withdrew. The decision left the plum role to Ray Walston, allowing his best actor on the screen.
Blessed with marriage to a charming woman, Spooner and friend Barney (Cliff Osmond regular Wilder) make your time in a unique opportunity has come when you stop the famous singer “Dino” outside the city of his anything to your car. Stalling the big man while he and his hilarious layers, egg melodious misfire (I’ma poached or without a piece of toast / I am a Yorkshire pudding or without meat roasting ..) the two eventually develop a plan that , on a pretext of jealousy, Spooner’s wife is replaced by Polly, the local host Pistol (Kim Novak), as an ally to seduce the artist in the acceptance of your material.
Meanwhile, Spooner’s wife, certainly a big fan of Dino, but outside his presence and the plot in hand, just drowning their sorrows and went to sleep it off in Polly’s trailer. Later that evening, unexpectedly rejected by Polly and her feelings for the errant tunesmith, singer rampant so unexpectedly finds himself alone with the woman .. In hindsight, Wilder s film is an ideal vehicle for the postmodernists.
It only starts with a track that is full of meaningful elements (a giant, upright arm of the crane is the first of the view of the camera after the drafting Las Vegas Sign CO), but the film also works hard to deconstruct celebrity , family life and the value of marriage. By way of Warm Springs, Climax Paradise Valley is a place of conventional morality, where Spooner happens to be married to the prettiest girl in the city: Zelda (Felicia Farr, for some other regular Wilder, Jack Lemmon s wife).
As it was designed by Alexander Trauner, who also worked on film