Days of Wine and Roses
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Movie Reviews of Days of Wine and Roses
Movie Review: The bottom of Hell is a Brandy Alexander bubble bath
Summary: 5 Stars
Alcoholism is a disease. Fine. And yet wrong. The disease is obsessivity, the fact that some people cannot live within satisfying an obsession of some kind. And I am afraid everyone has a degree of obsessivity that could lead to a catastrophe in many situations. The problem is the object of this obsessivity. It is dangerous if it is excessive and aiming at an object that destroys your willpower, your selfcontrol, your selfesteem. It can be alcohol. It can be tobacco. It can be eating. It can be coffee or tea or any spft drink. It can be any illicit drug. It can be any medical and legal drug. It can be work. It can be absolutely anything. Many of those things are not dangerous but some can be deadly both for the person concerned by the obsession and for the people around the person. Fast driving is just the same. And this obessivity becomes dangerous when one is addicted to the object of the obsession. Addiction is the worst thing that may happen to a sane person. But don't forget that addiction, any addiction is rooted in the deepest layers of one's personality, in his or her deepest past, in her or his most intimate experiences. There are only two ways to deal with such a problem. Either to look for the real deeper cause and solve the problem there, if it is solvable, or to keep away from the object of the obsession, in this case alcohol, and that cannot be achieved without the help of people around you. Alcoholism is the derangement of a personality in a social environment and it can only be solved with the willpower of the person supported by the society around him or her. But we must always remember that one is no longer an alcoholic when he does not feel any desire to drink when confronted to the very object of this potential desire, i.e. alcohol. If he lives in a totally alcohol-free environment he may only be a sober alcoholic, and if he comes across alcohol again and accepts to be tempted the relapse is a hundred times worse than the first binge. One is healed when one can keep alcohol away even when alcohol is there is front of one's eyes. There is no merit not to fall to temptation if there is no temptation. At least that is what Milton used to think and I believe he was deeply right on this question.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Movie Review: Two comic geniuses make one of the most potent dramas ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Until The Days of Wine and Roses, Jack Lemmon was known by moviegoers as one of the great comic actors creating three of the greatest movie comedies of the late 50's and early 60's - Mister Roberts, Some Like it Hot and The Apartment. Director Blake Edwards was known for his brilliant comedies including Operation Petticoat and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
But when the two got together it was pure drama. Add to this, Lee Remick in her first mainstream starring role.
The Days of Wine and Roses was one of the first films to take on social alcoholism. Joe Clay is an up and coming public relations man in the early 60's when public relations meant getting party girls and drinking the client under the table. At one of these events he meets the straight laced Kirsten. He offends her by assuming she was one of the party girls. But there is something about him that she finds disarming.
Soon they are married and she is pulled into his world of social drinking. But it is worse for her because this was the era of stay at home mother. So she has no outlet and becomes dependant on alcohol to fill her drab day.
They both hit rock bottom. This scene is very scary. But it shows that not only do you have to hit rock bottom but also be ready to start climbing back up. (By the way, when you think they hit rock bottom is not rock bottom! They still have far to go!)
Until this film, most films on alcoholism are about one alcoholic and the girlfriend or spouse that try to save them. This film is more realistic than any before as both main characters slide into the abyss and only have themselves to get out.
Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are both stunning and deserved their Oscar nominations. This was a turning point in both careers. Lemmon would easily slip from comedy to drama the rest of his career. While Remick would scorch both the big and little screen until her untimely death.
Also, this would be Edward's crowning achievement. He would create great comedies in the future but would never find another drama to surpass this.
And let's not forget Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer's Oscar winning song.
Movie Review: Graphic portrayal of the ugliness of alcoholism
Summary: 5 Stars
Blake Edwards Days of Wine and Roses is a sobering and gritty representation of the desperate and often unforgiving world of alcoholism. Edwards does not restrain himself in showing the utter destruction of life wrought by the bottle.
Public relations agent Joe Clay played by Jack Lemmon is an alcoholic, spawned by the rigors of entertaining his clients. He becomes enamored with the lovely Lee Remick playing secretary of one of his clients, Kirsten Arnesen. Remick, a wholesome girl and teetotaler is wooed by Lemmon and they eventually marry. As part of the arrangement Lemmon seduces her to alcohol and they both are now addicted.
The resposibility of parenthood does not curb their ugly habit and their lives quickly spiral out of control. Lemmon proceeds to lose job after job and they deteriorate into a sordid existence. They make several aborted attempts for sobriety aided by Remicks nurturing father, landscaper Ellis Arnesen played passionately by craggy veteran actor Charles Bickford.
Both Remick and Lemmon revert back to drinking with Lemmon winding up straight jacketed in a padded cell in a detox ward.
Lemmon aided by Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor Jim Hungerford played by Jack Klugman finally is able to conquer his demons and remain sober. Remick however at movies end is regretably not ready to follow the same path, foresaking both her marriage and child for the comfort of the bottle.
Both Remick and Lemmon give stark and frighteningly realistic acting performances as the unfortunate Mr. & Mrs. Clay. The scene where Lemmon tears apart his father in laws greenhouse searching for a hidden bottle of booze is particularly effective. Under Edwards steady hand, Days of Wine and Roses is the most powerful revelation of alcoholism since the gripping The Lost Weekend.
Movie Review: ...4-5-3...4-3-5...3-5-4...
Summary: 5 Stars
To witness the power of great acting, to understand the craft and the depth of the form, I suggest watching Days of Wine and Roses. Elevated to classic status as a tale of alcohol's maddening grip on a marriage, it's two leads-Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick-deliver gut-wrenching, soul-crushing performances, the film is potent for it's exposure of addiction and it's harrowing imagery of the physical and emotional torment it renders.
Immediate associations with The Lost Weekend and Leaving Las Vegas are legitimate. Though those two revolve around an individuals alcoholism as opposed to a couples, they do provide a gage of the evolving cinematic vision of addiction, and for their respective times were bold films. Both leads (Milland & Cage) also won Oscars. Lemmon and Remick were both nominated-he lost to Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird), she to Anne Bancroft's Annie Sullivan (The Miracle Worker).
I would say too that Days of Wine and Roses succeeds as a tale of the everyman within the social structure, willing and able to climb the ladder, whose alcoholism may have preceeded his occupational necessity to drink, or may not have. Lost amidst the corporation he works for as a p.r. man his lack of definition and satisfaction, clarified by his having to procure (ala The Apartment) young women for his boss' parties, drives him as much into marriage as into alcoholism.
Considering this came out in 1962, it must be regarded that a young woman, wholesome and kind, working as a secretary who transforms into a housewife who's parenting suffers for her rapt addiction to booze, who abandons and betrays those closest to her, was a striking and devastating vision.
The ending to Days of Wine and Roses is not only bleak, haunting and quiet, it's poetic.
Movie Review: Jack Lemmon's Oscar performance
Summary: 5 Stars
Yeah-I know he didn't win. Yet after seeing the movie when I was only 12 and then several times more as I grew up, it still remains a mystery why he did not win the Oscar. All the reviews I have read are great, however everyone seems to forget the truly best scene. Jack breaks into a liquor store and gets caught by the owner. As he lies on the floor the owner says,"I didn't know you needed a drink that bad Pal!" and starts to pour booze from a bottle held suspended over Jack's prostate form. Jack tries to suck it down as the booze flows all over his face. I had seen that same look on my Dad's face, so I guess that's why it sticks. After seeing the movie the first time I got "scared straight". I never even started drinking. The last scene has Jack's wife visiting him in his small apartment. He had been booze free for a while and starting to put his single "Dad" life back together. His wife had forced herself to be sober just so she could talk to him. You can feel how deeply this man loves her. She leaves after admitting she has to drink because the World seems so dirty when she is sober and Jack is at the door staring after her and you see the reflection of a blinking BAR light flashing in the glass door. Scary stuff for 1962. It leaves you with the feeling of "will he or won't he".
When I was a Psych Nurse I would sometimes sneak this movie on to the unit. I would show it during group sessions. I was shocked by how many younger people claimed to think Jack Lemmon was only a comedian. Most of them (suffering from addictions) were very moved by the film.